The Sunday Salon - The other side of loving books

I've had people ask me in the past if I ever review books I didn't like, and the answer is yes, yes I do. I review 98% of what I read (when I skip a book, it's usually due to lack of time), and I don't like everything. But it's true that these negative reviews are largely outnumbered by ones of books I did like, simply because as someone who reads for pleasure and has limited time in which to do so, I naturally gravitate towards literature I'm likely to enjoy - and over the years I've come to know my own reading taste well enough that the hits are far more common than the misses.

While I usually agree with bloggers who write about the importance of negative reviews, I also sympathise with those who prefer to write about books they liked. Personally I also find it a lot more enjoyable to write enthusiastic reviews than negative ones. Also, as C.B. James' recently reminded us, the paranoidly-inclined among us have another thing to worry about: how do we express our dislike for a book without hurting the feelings of those who love it? I don't worry much about authors - not because I'm not aware that they're people too, but because I think coping with bad reviews is a professional skill most acquire early on. But I do worry about other readers. Possibly you're thinking that we should all just grow thicker skins, and if so, you have a point. But as several commenters pointed out over at C.B. James' blog, the conversational and personal nature of blogging lends itself to these concerns. We tend to feel personally invested in the books we love, as well as in the recommendations we make.

Like in any social group, in a community of readers there are interpersonal relationships to be considered. It's only human to worry about whether someone who rejects a book that speaks to us so personally is also rejecting a part of us. (Not necessarily, I don't think. Among other things, there's the fact that most of us tend to be much harsher to ideas or situations when we're exposed to them on the pages of a book than we'd ever be to a real human being. Especially someone we already know.) But anyway, I think that being both honest and not hurtful is perfectly possible, and I don't see why it shouldn't be done. Tact and kindness are everything, and using the right tone can even let you get away with being extremely sarcastic about a book without making readers who disagree with you feel stupid - and I can think of a few bloggers who excel at this.

My question for you today is: which books did you hate with the same kind of intensity usually reserved for your very favourites? Because we're all so passionate about literature, strong negative reactions are bond to happen sometimes. Were any of them recommended by a fellow blogger or book club member, or by a personal friend? If so, did you immediately tell them how you felt, or did you feel tempted to run and hide in the book-hatred closet?

Hate is a strong word, I know, and even books I have a problem with usually have enough going for them that I hesitate to use it. But the following is a list of cases in which I'm willing to make an exception. They're the champions, the worst of the worst - some of my all-time least favourite books. I apologise in advance to any fans. Rest assured that I'd never think any less of you for loving them.


The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton - I just passionately disliked Morton's writing style, to the point that I surprised myself. I reviewed this not too long ago, so I won't repeat what I said then. Apologies to the fans!

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe - This was probably the only time I actually physically flung a book away from me in disgust, and definitely the only time I actively rooted for a character to commit suicide. And yes, I'm properly ashamed of myself for how incredibly mean and insensitive that sounds, but I have to be honest, right? I think I possibly approached this book from the wrong angle - I was told it was very passionate and moving, and so I expected to be moved. Instead I spent the whole book laughing at how ridiculous and overdramatic the whole thing was, as well as at the over the top prose - but then again, what did I expect from a Romantic classic? If I had been in the right kind of mood for unintentionally hilarious Romantic excesses, I might have enjoyed it a lot more.

Eurico, O Presbítero by Alexandre Herculano - This is a Portuguese Romantic classic - a pseudo-medieval novel in the vein of Walter Scott - and much of what I said about Werther goes for this as well. I read them both in my late teens, and it's possible that I just took things too seriously back then. I suspect that this, too, is a book I'd have felt differently about had I approached it with humour, kind of like I did with The Phantom of the Opera recently, or The Castle of Otranto last year. But at the same time, my reaction to both was negative enough that I hesitate to ever try them again.

Brida,The Devil and Mrs Prymm, The Pilgramage, and whatever else I've read by Paulo Coelho (there were four of them, I think): Paulo Coelho is hugely popular, I know, but he's also by far my all-time least favourite author. It actually saddens me that his is the name most widely associated with contemporary Brazilian literature, because it has SO much more to offer. Anyway. I know many people find his work inspirational, and to which their own, but my problem with him is that his plots always strike me as completely hollow; his characters as mere puppets - they are nothing but vehicles for The Message. He's a a self-help author (nothing at all against self-help; it's just usually not for me) posing as a fiction author, and I think that's where my intense dislike for his books come from.

Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach - The way I felt about this book was pretty much the same as the way I feel about Paulo Coelho. Sorry!

The Helmet of Horror by Victor Pelevin - Too conceptual for me, I'm afraid. Probably I missed something, but the book actually irritated me, which doesn't happen often at all.

Blood Canticle by Anne Rice - This one is difficult to write about, because it's by an author I like (she was my favourite when I was in my early teens) and about characters I love(d). But that's probably the very reason why I hated it so much. As a fan of the series (of two series, actually, because this book merges her Vampire Chronicles and her Mayfair Witches series), I had developed my own vision of the characters. And yes, the writer has the right to betray that vision, but fans also have the right to be disappointed when characters they've loved for years suddenly begin to act in ways they hate. I'm not alone here, I know - this book caused an infamous breach of the first rule of Public Relations for Writers 101 on Anne Rice's part, when she started arguing with reviewers on Amazon. Thinking about this actually saddens me, so I'll stop now. Kthxbai.

The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis - Ah, Narnia. How I wish I loved you. But I came to you too late, and can't leave my biases behind when I enter you, though I truly wish I could. This is my least favourite of the Narnia books (though I stopped before The Last Battle). I remember a moment in the creation scene, when Aslan tells the humans present that they own the rest of Nature, which horrified me. (It also troubles me to consider that in Narnia other animals are sentient species too, yet they always regard humans with servitude - why?) The reason why it horrified me is that I tend to associate that sense of superiority/entitlement towards Nature with much of the trouble the world's in nowadays. And yes, this is a purely ideological disconnect of the kind I discussed last week. It's one beyond which can't see, which is my own failing, I know. But sadly I just can't help it.

Feel free to post your own list - I'd love to see it, even if it's made entirely of books I love.

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Blankets by Craig Thompson

Dear friends who haven't read Blankets yet: please read it right now. I'm serious. And if you're thinking, "Could it possibly be as good as everyone says it is?", the answer is yes - as good, if not better. You might also be thinking, "What is Blankets?", in which case: Blankets is a graphic memoir by Craig Thompson, which focuses on his childhood and adolescence. He grew up in a small town in Wisconsin where he didn't feel he fit in, and was raised by strict religious parents who, thought well-meaning, were sometimes quite cruel.

Blankets details the story of Thompson's loss of faith, of his acceptance of his wish to become an artist, and of his relationship with his first love, Raina. Remember what I was saying the other day about how memoirs rely a little bit too much on being true sometimes, as if that were a get out of jail free card? Well, that's not the case at all here. Blankets is autobiographical, yes, but it's also one fabulous piece of storytelling.

The lovely Aarti from Booklust and I both read this book last weekend - I read it in a single sitting, in a total of about three hours, and began our discussion immediately after I finished. What follows is our joint review of the book, which I hope you'll enjoy reading (yes, we had a lot to say, but Blankets is just that rich):

Ana: I have literally just finished the book, and I have to say I'm sad it wasn't 1200 pages long instead of 600. It was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. My expectations were high, but they were still surpassed. Don't you just love it when that happens?

Somehow Blankets was pretty different from what I was expecting. I knew the basics - it's a graphic memoir about a young man who grew up in a strict religious family and later on lost his faith - but I had no idea what to expect from the tone, and I'd imagined it differently. What surprised me was the tenderness with which the story is told. He never sounds angry - just sad, frightened, and so movingly human and vulnerable. I also appreciated how subtle and understated it often was, but I'll return to this point in more detail later on.


Aarti: I finished the book last night and really just say "ditto." I wasn't expecting it to be the way it was, too. I was expecting more anger- maybe because my last graphic novel Fun Home at times sounded a little angry. But yes, I think "movingly human and vulnerable" is an excellent description. I loved the way he drew his younger self- how small he & his brother were compared to his father. The scenes where his parents confront him about his drawing a naked woman, and he is all curled up in a ball on the bed. The scenes where he leaves his cabin at church camp to do confession in the game room under the loud heater. The end, when he goes walking alone outside. I also thought that the scenes with Raina's father, when he is standing outside his son's door with his shoulders slumped, or sitting out in the car hoping his wife will speak with him, or when he is all alone cleaning up a house he no longer lives in... they were all just so touching and so beautiful.

I think for me, Fun Home was more about the words and Blankets was more about the pictures. But they are so different it is unfair for me to compare the two (however, the two of them being the only ones I've read, I think I kind of have to). I just loved the drawings in this book. And I think it showed me just how powerful the graphic format can be for writing memoirs. There is so much more "show, not tell" in the book- something that so many teachers harp on in school through using other verbal cues, but which the GN format does by its very nature.

I also found the relationship with Raina very real and bittersweet. I could see why she didn't want a relationship, but I also felt for Craig at the time. It seemed like Raina's life was just so exhausting. That section of her family life really spoke to me, too, because one of my friends is pregnant with twins currently and was really scared for some time that they might both have Down's Syndrome, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to go through with the pregnancy if she was going to be raising two children with special needs. I think that decision would be so hard to make and probably involve a lot of judging on the parts of a lot of people. But seeing the way Raina's family dynamics worked, with two kids with special needs- I think it is a huge decision to undertake and can affect so much in a relationship. It isn't something to enter into lightly.


I also felt for Craig in all of his efforts to reconcile his drawing with his relationship to God. How he wanted to draw instead of sing and tried so many ways to do both but people just wouldn't listen to him. And how people kept describing Heaven in ways that make it seem very, very disenchanting. (And how would they really even know how Heaven is, anyway, to say "You're wrong" about it?) I could totally understand his quote at the end saying that he believes in Christ and his teachings, but not in the Bible or the dogmatic approach so many people take to religion. I think a lot of people feel that way. I find it amazing that people exist who think the Bible has not been changed over the past 2,000 years (or longer, with the Old Testament); that it's still exactly what God said to his people. (They should read Small Gods, really!) And I've always found it interesting that Christians believed that Christ was a new prophet for religion and took up with him, but fought so strongly against Mohammed when he did the same thing hundreds of years later. I would think that would make them more understanding, but no- they just became terrified of the new religion.

Ok, enough meandering from me for now!

Ana: Everyone should read Small Gods!

You know, even having read other graphic memoirs, I had somehow linked Blankets and Fun Home too in my head. Bechdel does sound a little angry at times (which I understand), and maybe this unconscious link is why I expected Thompson's tone to be similar. His tenderness really took me by surprise. I loved the fact that even though he suffered at his parents' hands, and at the hands of other community members (like that Sunday School teacher who told him his vision of heaven was not valid), he never portrays anyone as a monster. Did you notice that he dedicates the book "to my family, with love"? Reading that again after I'd finished the book made me cry. The characters are all so human, so nuanced. They're sometimes cruel, and they make mistakes, but he writes with the knowledge that they were doing the best they could - the best they knew how. The emotional place the book seems to be coming from is one where there's sadness, but forgiveness too.


Another thing I wanted to address was what you said about the art: Yes, absolutely! Craig Thompson knows how to take full advantage of the comics medium, and the art is as much a part of the storytelling as the words are - often a more important part. There were so many panels that left me teary-eyed... Craig alone in bed when his brother Phil was locked in the cubicle for the night; when Raina's father catches them sleeping in the same bad and his facial expression changes from anger to acceptance; Raina and Craig together, in each other's arms, as she sings him The Cure's "Just Like Heaven"... I could go on. The art is beautiful, detailed, and a great part of what sets the book's emotional tone.

I was saying earlier that I wanted to return to what I said about it being so subtle and understated: what I meant is that there are things he shows us but doesn't dwell on; doesn't comment on, even. For example, the sexual abuse he and his brother suffer at the hands of a babysitter. And also how both this experience and his faith influenced his views of sexuality and tinged his passion for Raina with guilt. It's not that these things are addressed superficially - they're actually a huge part of the experiences he's writing about. They're not dealt with superficially, but it's almost as if they're too frail, too raw to touch or dwell on. Like he's telling readers, "Here's what happened to me. I'm not entirely sure if I can talk about it, so I will show you instead". That, too, is what made Blankets feel so vulnerable to me - and I love it for it.

I came across a quote about the book on Wikipedia that I wanted to share: Thompson has said that the novel grew out of a simple idea: to describe what it feels like to sleep next to someone for the first time. Isn't that beautiful? Of course, the book does a lot more than just this, but it also captures that feeling perfectly: the tenderness, the longing, the hint of fear, the perfect happiness... ah, I'm getting teary-eyed again just thinking about it.

Please visit Aarti's blog for the rest of our conversation!



And for other opinions of Blankets, visit Lu, Chris, Heather, Shelf Love, Katrina, or Bart. (Did I miss yours?)

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RIP J.D.Salinger

1919-2010

At 91, at home, and from natural causes is not a bad way to go, I know, but it saddens me to think someone who has given me so much is no longer in the world. I've never really posted about my love for Salinger here, I don't think, mostly because I read and re-read him before I started this blog. But he's one of my favourite authors. The Catcher on the Rye was one of the first classics I ever truly connected with, and after that I devoured the rest of his books and stories in a matter of months, and loved them all. They meant the world to me then, and still do now.

I think I'll go re-read "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" for the hundredth time as a tribute. Rest in peace, Salinger. And thank you.

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Nevermore: A Graphic Adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's Short Stories

Nevermore collects some of Edgar Allan Poe’s more well-known tales, adapted and illustrated by different comics writers and artists: “The Raven”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, “The Facts in the case of Mr Valdemar”, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Black Cat”, “The Oval Portrait”, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Masque of the Red Death”.

Most of these writers and artists chose to update the stories’ original settings, and most added enough changes for Nevermore to be more accurately described as an anthology of graphic retellings of Poe. This was a surprise, but by no means an unpleasant one. I’ve always been interested in retellings – in how a familiar tale, told from a different angle, can tell us entirely new things. If this is valid for myths and fairy tales, why not for Gothic classics? (Did I ever tell you I used to dream of one day retelling Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla from her point of view? I’m no writer, but I really hope someone will do it someday.)

One of my favourite retellings was “The Pit and the Pendulum”, which updates the story in the light of modern-day fears of terrorism, hasty arrests, and use of torture. “The Black Cat” managed to leave out certain scenes from the original story and still be dark and make complete sense—for which I’m incredibly grateful. I confess I was dreading this particular story, because bad things being done to cats is one of my big no-go areas, and I'm afraid the original tale was enough to traumatise me for life.

The modern-day version of “The Oval Portrait” is still a story about obsession and art-versus-life, but this time it involves a photographer and a celebrity. And Alice Duke (a debut artists, no less), whose art was my favourite in the whole book, brings “The Tell-Tale’s Heart” claustrophobic and guilt-ridden mood completely to life.

The art, which is in black and white for all the stories, accurately captures the eerie atmosphere of Poe’s world, and often also adds a new twist: the art in “The Raven”, for example, put me in mind of noir detective stories; “The Pit and the Pendulum” of science fiction classics, and “The Masque of the Red Death” of super hero adventures (interestingly enough, this version of the story takes place at a comics convention). I’m sure these choices were not accidental, and I had a lot of fun paying attention to how casting them in new genres subtly changed these stories.


It took me some time to decide what to read for the January Graphic Novels mini-challenge, but I ended up going with Poe because I wanted to read an adaptation of something I was already familiar with (much like I always try to read the book before watching the movie). However, I don’t think those who haven’t read Poe’s original stories would be lost at all, especially as each story is preceded by a short introduction. Also, there was a graphic mini-biography of Poe at the end that made me smile—not because of the overall content, as the poor guy’s life was so ghastly, but because it includes the story of the Poe Toaster. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I love ghost stories, and I think this is one of which Poe would be proud.

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Naïve. Super by Erlend Loe

Naïve. Super opens shortly after its unnamed narrator's twenty-fifth birthday. He describes what happened then, and what follows could perhaps be called a quarter-life crisis: he loses his sense of purpose, drops out of graduate school, and moves into his brother's currently empty apartment, where he reads a science book about the nature of time that strikes him as alternately terrifying and comforting, makes lists, and befriends a five-year-old neighbour. The making lists thing won me over right away, because it's something I can so see myself doing: lists of things that used to excite him as a child; of what his life has and what it lacks; of all the animals he has seen; of animals he's like to see; of things that make him happy; of products he has become emotionally attached to; and so on.

For the first few chapters, I felt somewhat disconnected from Naïve. Super, but that was only because the voice and the writing take some getting used to. Also, it hit me after a while that the narrator sounded quite a bit younger than twenty-five to me. This is something I've seen people say about Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (of which this book reminded me a little), but that I don't think I'd ever felt before about any book. But all it took was some mental readjusting for it to stop bothering me, which happened quickly enough. Perhaps my sense of dissonance came from the fact that I experienced the sort of crisis he's going through at seventeen - but as he says:

I am not ashamed about having thoughts like these. Maybe I should have had them before. I don't know when people think about these kinds of things. Some probably do it as early as age fifteen. I didn't. But I'm thinking about them now. And I'm not ashamed. The whole point of sitting in this flat is just so that I can have these kinds of thought. I hope that things get better when I'm finished thinking.

He's right; there's nothing to be ashamed of. The other reason why I quoted this passage is because I wanted to show you what the style is like - the short sentences, the casual language, the apparent simplicity, behind which lurk big ideas, scary thoughts, and real and often overwhelming feelings. There's nothing actually naïve about Naïve. Super, I don't think. Nor cutesy, despite the narrator's habit of coping with problems by going to the toy store to get himself something. It's a book about the very real loneliness, purposelessness, lack of enthusiasm, and fear we might be losing our minds that most of experience at one point or another in our lives.

Let me tell you why I decided to get this book, as I think it'll help me make the point I'm trying to make: first, it's mentioned in a song by my new favourite band, Allo, Darlin'. There are worse reasons to buy a book, right? Secondly, a few days after noticing the reference, I also noticed that another band I love, The Boy Least Likely To, lists it as a favourite book on their sidebar. So I ordered it. And the reason why I'm telling you this is because I think the kind of universe these bands create in their music (example) is similar to the universe of this book. It may seem light and bouncy and cute and naïve, but actually, it deals with the Big Stuff.

...it's much like that funny and sarcastic friend you have; the one who, in a light voice and in-between jokes, and also without seeming to make much of it at all, will talk to you about Big Things. When you get home and think back on the conversation, you realise it was actually pretty personal and delicate and important. And for a moment you wish that this fact had sunk in back then, so you could have - actually, nevermind. You couldn't have done anything differently, because you knew then and know now that the slightly detached manner in which you talked and the casual tone of the conversation is the only way either of you can handle having a conversation that makes you feel so vulnerable.

Reading Naïve. Super was a bit like talking to one of those friends. And it was an excellent book.

(Have you posted about it to? Let me know and I'll add your link here.)

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Books, Baguettes & Bedbugs by Jeremy Mercer

Jeremy Mercer is a crime reporter from Canada who, displeased with the course his life has taken (and also frightened by what appears to be a job-related death threat), one day decides to leave everything behind to go to Paris. There, he ends up staying at George Whitman’s legendary Shakespeare & Company bookstore (not to be confused with the original Sylvia Beach store), which has been a safe harbour for writers and intellectuals in need of a place to stay for over four decades. Books, Baguettes & Bedbugs is both a memoir of Mercer’s months at the store and a history of the place itself, as well as a biography of sorts of the man who founded it.

It’s so difficult to write about a book I both really enjoyed and didn’t care for much at all. What I liked were the historical and bookish bits—the history of Shakespeare & Company as a stronghold of counter-culture, the anecdotes about the literary figures that stopped there over the years, and even the biographical information about George Whitman, who sounds like a very interesting man (though by “interesting” I don’t necessarily mean pleasant: considering that he wanted to evict one of the bookstore’s residents for reading mysteries, I have a feeling he wouldn’t let me and my foul comic-ish and fantasy-ish ways even cross the threshold).

What I wasn’t so crazy about were the more personal parts about Mercer’s life—and such is the curse of the memoir. I have to find someone extremely interesting to want to read about them in detail. Plus I think memoirs sometimes suffer from another problem, and this might have been the case here: because what’s being described is presented as fact, their authors sometimes don’t go out of their way to make it feel true. But it doesn’t really matter whether or not something really happened if it doesn’t come alive on the pages. When reading Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs, I sometimes felt I needed a little more in terms of storytelling to really become immersed in Shakespeare & Company’s atmosphere.

Another thing I sometimes had a problem with was the tone: there were moments when I couldn’t take it seriously because it felt somewhat boastful, artificial, and trying a little too hard to be hip – a little too “Oh man, let me tell you about that time I crashed at that crazy bookshop in Paris, it was sooo rad, we played at being poor and I hooked up with a hot exotic girl and it was so awesome, maaan” for my taste. This probably sounds meaner than I intend it to, and it could easily be as much me as the book, but it occasionally bothered me.

But I don’t want to leave you thinking I hated the book, so let me return to the positives: The history surrounding Shakespeare & Company is truly fascinating, and I hope that the problems Mercer describes about its future have been solved by now: they debated creating a foundation similar to the one behind City Lights in San Francisco, whose founder is George Whitman’s friend, but the idea didn't seem to take off. Whitman, by the way, was 86 at the time Mercer stayed at the bookstore, and was still actively running it. Now, at 96, he has finally passed the management of the bookstore to his daughter, but he’s still around.

But let me show you what I mean about the place’s history:

The finishing touch to these archives were the autobiographies from forty years of bookstore visitors. Stashed around the store were the scribbled stories of anyone from Allen Ginsberg to John Denver and they gave tantalizing glimpses of anyone who passed through Shakespeare and Company. Astonishingly, the themes kept repeating themselves: people disillusioned with mainstream culture, looking for a place to lick their wounds, yearning to make the world a better place.

They discuss the possibility of having a librarian come in and catalogue everything, but Whitman’s constant generosity to the complete strangers he houses and often feeds means this is not something Shakespeare & Company could really afford. Still, I instantly started daydreaming about being that librarian. How fantastic would that be? It’s not too different a job from the one I currently have, actually, except the bit about it being a hundred times more exciting.

For a glimpse of Shakespeare & Company, here’s the opening scene of one of my favourite movies, which is set at the store (the opening scene, that is, not the whole movie):




(A side note about that book idea Ethan Hawke’s character says he had: the other day I remembered it, and spent the whole day trying to figure out what book that premise was from, and also thinking that I really had to read it. Eventually I asked my boyfriend, who solemnly informed that sadly it belonged to a fictional book. Boooo.)

Other opinions:
Fleur Fish Reads
My Cozy Book Nook (Time Was Soft There is the book’s American title.)
Sassymonkey Reads

(Did I miss yours?)

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The Sunday Salon - On Judging Characters

After publishing my post on Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four this past week, I started wondering if I'd come across as a moralistic or judgemental reader. Specifically, I commented on Holmes' drug use in the book's opening scene, and though I meant my comment to be neutral, I later started worrying I had sounded disapproving. Before I go any further, let me start by reassuring my fellow readers, especially Jeanne, Frances and Gavin, with whom I discussed this in the comments, that it's absolutely not anything you said. It's just that worrying about miscommunication is something I constantly do. And I can't tell you how much I truly appreciated your comments, as I always do any comments that make me think.

The discussion that followed did make me think: it made me think about the different ways in which books can be read; the different ways in which we can engage with characters, ideas, and ideologies that are different from our own. It also reminded me of a conversation I had with my Irish Studies professor last year. She expressed some frustration over the fact that she felt that some of her students, even graduate students, often had trouble seeing beyond their immediate ethical objections to the reading material they were meant to be discussing. I think we were reading a play that featured domestic violence at the time (but not a play that condoned domestic violence), and she felt that part of the class resisted engaging with it at all because they objected to the subject matter.

I don't want to use the word she used, which was "sophisticated", to describe forms of reading that go beyond immediate ethical reactions. If I did, I might sound like I was belittling what, while perhaps not appropriate in a classroom context, is as valid a personal reaction to one's reading experience as any other. All the same, quick judgement is something I try to avoid when I'm reading - and sometimes fail to, as humans always do. But I don't remember the last time I disliked a book because the characters lied, stole, kicked kittens, failed to stand up for themselves, took candy from children, made unwise choices, or did or said anything I disapproved of.

Of course, I'd be a hypocrite if I said I've never rejected a book for ideological reasons. But the thing is, for me that's not really the same as judging the characters. I have disliked books for being sexist or racist, for example, and I know this will continue to happen. But that's not necessarily the same as said books having racist or sexist characters. What determines my reaction is the overall tone of the book - how different points of view are framed, the presence or absence of alternative voices, the way the book leaves or doesn't leave room for other modes of thought, beliefs or courses of action. It's something that can be difficult to pinpoint, but that I think I recognise if I see. Most of all, it's whether the book leaves room for questions, or seems to assume our allegiance will naturally be with one of the sides of the matter, namely the one it presents. Does this make sense?

Thinking back on my reading over the past few months, I remembered The Screwed-Up Live of Charlie the Second, a book in which the main character's stance on certain matters (for example, there was a comment that try as I might I couldn't interpret as anything other than extremely dismissive of feminism) was very off-putting for me. I didn't hate the book because of this - there were other things about it that I definitely did like - but it did affect my overall feelings about it. I think that what complicated matters was the fact that this was a first person narration. When I read a book like this, I have to spend a lot of time in the head of someone I dislike, which can be tricky. How do you draw the line between the character's voice and the book's tone in such cases? It certainly can be done (Kazuo Ishiguro, for example, is brilliant at this), but it's probably not easy even for the author, and it demands more of the reader. The risk for miscommunication is certainly higher. It also doesn't help that, regardless of point of view, sometimes books have both characters who behave objectionably and overall ideological stances I find problematic.

I guess that my overall point is that deciding how I want to read and finding a balance can be difficult. While I don't think that an ideological disconnect with a book is the same as taking a moralistic stance or a crying for a bonfire, when the former happens I worry that people will assume I mean the latter. On the other hand, I hope that refraining from judging characters whose actions I'd certainly not give the thumbs up to in real live will not make me sound unaware, undiscerning, or indifferent to matters I actually do very much care about.

Just to be completely clear, I do find that both are perfectly valid personal reactions to reading. I also think this can be a fascinating topic to discuss, but sadly I've had a few frustrating experiences in the past that ended with one of the parties slipping into self-righteousness ('I care more than you do because I have Higher Moral Standards'). And that's neither useful nor fun.

One final thought: a few months ago I was lucky enough to be able to attend a conference in which a philosophy professor discussed this very topic - reading and ethics. The whole thing was fascinating, and one of the points he made was that reading is often exactly about getting us to engage with alternative ethical universes. I absolutely agree. Books open me up to ideas, both good and bad, that I might shy away from in real life, and I hope that regardless of my own stance, this will help me deepen my understanding of Life, The Universe, and Everything. This is actually one of the things that makes reading so rich and rewarding an experience for me.

What do you think? Do you see a difference between disliking a book because you have a problem with its overall ideological stance and simply passing judgement on its characters? Do you do either? How do you prefer to read, and why? Do you think any of this even matters?

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Something else: if you're interested in diversifying your reading or helping POC authors gain more visibility in the book blogging world, make sure you read Teresa's Sunday Salon post today. She has created what could become an amazing resource, but for it to be as good as it can be she needs your help.

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Kitteh Memorial Fund

My friend Jason at Moored at Sea is organizing a fundraising for The Great Lake Bengal Rescue, a charity that tries to find homes for Bengal cats - though I can't imagine that he'd mind if you donated to an animal rescue charity in your area instead. The fundraising was inspired by Neil Gaiman's cat Zoe, whose story has had the whole internet in tears over the past few days, and also by our fellow book blogger Bookfool, who lost a beloved cat recently. Jason's post also made me immediately think of another blogging friend, Daphne, whose lovely kitty's passing last year also broke my heart.

I currently have four cats - Mi, Dia, Pedrês and Calvin - and their presence in my life means the world to me. Because I've been a cat owner all my life, I've had to deal with several losses over the years. I know the grief of unexpectedly losing a beloved animal very well - though I imagine that the experience is a little different for every person, just like losing a loved one is... but the point is, it hurts. It hurts not to be able to save an animal who has come to regard us with such trust.

We can't bring them back, but we can do our bit to help make sure other cats, somewhere in the world, have good lives. So if you have a little something to spare in the name of a cat you have loved, please click over to Jason's blog for the donation link. If you can't donate but would still like to help, you could always do so by spreading the word.

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The Unsung Heroes of YA

Kelly at YAnnabe, who is very awesome and full of excellent ideas, intrigued me recently when she asked bloggers who enjoy reading Young Adult literature to contact her about a Secret Project. This secret project, it turns out, is to devote a day to posting about our favourite obscure YA titles: those books that just don’t seem to get the love they deserve. Here’s what Kelly has to say:

I teamed up with about 40 other bloggers to pick our favorite unsung YA heroes. These are YA books we love and think deserve more attention from the world of YA readers.
But how are we achieving this?

• Today and tomorrow, you’ll find our picks on our blogs. Check out our lists! We bet you’ll find a few new-to-you titles you’re interested in reading. But we’re also secretly hoping you’ll think about your own unsung YA heroes and put together your own list. Because we’d really like to see it so we can read your favorites too. You’ll find links to all the lists and instructions for making your own at the end of this post.
  
• Tomorrow, check back on my blog for a round-up uber-list of the titles that were most common across all our Unsung YA Heroes picks.
  
• If you’re on Twitter, you can follow all the Unsung YA Heroes scuttlebutt by watching the #unsungYA tag.
  

One thing that the books I’m about to highlight have in common is the fact that they all illustrate an often overlooked fact about YA: YA (and children’s lit) is not a dumbed-down, simplified version of adult fiction. It’s also not a genre, but a marketing category. Not only does it cover every genre, but there are books that are published as adult fiction in some markets and as YA in others. If this doesn’t tell you that it’s not the content, tone or level of complexity of a book that determines where it gets placed in the bookshop, I don’t know what will.

YA is very much not something I turn to when I want books that will allow me to “turn my brain off”. What it is is a somewhat arbitrary label applied to books that are mostly about young people and that have as much to say about what it means to be human as any others. These were all books that moved me, challenged me, made me think, and made me feel that my life was richer for having read them. But on to the books:

a cool moonlight by Angela Johnson probably qualifies as MG fiction, but that doesn’t really matter, right? What matters is that I, an adult reader, found plenty to love here. Here’s what I said when I reviewed this book a few months ago: My favourite thing about a cool moonlight was seeing Lila grow more and more comfortable in her own skin. By the end of the book, she has stopped daydreaming of becoming “normal” and is beginning to learn to accept herself. She knows she'll never play in the sunlight, but she realizes there's still a lot to enjoy about her life. I also loved Lila’s family. There were so many moments of quiet tenderness in this book.

Wolf by Gillian Cross seems to have become somewhat obscure even though it’s a Carnegie Medal winner – which is a pity, as Wolf is a smart and riveting story about a young girl dealing with the consequences of violence. It’s also about fear, about our relationship with wolves, about non-traditional families, about the IRA, and about human nature. It more than deserves to be rediscovered by a new generation of readers.

Swan Sister, edited by Terry Windling and Ellen Datlow, is one of my very favourite anthologies of fairy tale retellings. Contributors include Neil Gaiman, Jane Yolen, Gregory Frost, Tanith Lee and Midori Snyder, just to name a few. The stories are all very different, and they're all original and beautifully written. The title story, my favourite in the book, moved me to tears.

The Savage by David Almond and Dave McKean is a book whose presence on the list Kelly sent me (a list of books owned by fewer than 500 LibraryThing users) surprised me, since both the author and the illustrator are pretty big names. But then again, you don’t hear as much about The Savage as you do about Skellig—and it's just as good. It’s the story of a boy dealing with the loss of his father and who begins to write a story. One day, the line between his life and his story begins to blur... What follows is a wonderfully illustrated novella about the power of fiction and about surviving grief.

Finally, Black Maria by Diana Wynne Jones is my favourite of the lot. I really do wish more people would read it, as it’s one of my very favourite DWJ books to date. And what is it about, you ask? Witches! Time travel! Gender stereotypes, the silliness thereof! Grumpy relatives! Small seaside towns! All nicely wrapped up in Diana Wynne Jones' customary warmth, humour and wisdom.

Click the links for my full reviews of these books, and don’t forget to visit Kelly for the link-round up and master list tomorrow. Also, remember it’s still not too late to tells us about your own obscure favourites! One of my favourite things about blogging is how bloggers recommend great books to one another all the time, but a potential pitfall of this is that we run the risk of winding up reading from the same small-ish list of books. So make sure you show your overlooked favourites some love.

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The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman asks us to imagine what most would perhaps consider unimaginable: what would the world be like without us? What would happen to the planet if tomorrow human beings disappeared without a trace? But rather than just a thought experiment, The World Without Us is a book that forces us to consider the extent and the permanency of the damage we have already done to our planet. It’s also an absolutely fascinating collection of facts about topics that range from biology, evolution, and geology to geography, obscure history and demographics.

I learned so much from this book. I learned about different theories on the disappearance of megafauna in the American continent; about the real impact of plastic resides in the oceans (and also to carefully read the label of any exfoliant I buy, to make sure the little beads are not plastic); about the building of the Panama Canal; about the oil industry in Texas; about the underground cities in Cappadocia; about the several attempts humankind has made over the years to communicate with other sentient species somewhere out there; and so on. And if any of this sounds like it wouldn’t be interesting or relevant, fear not: Alan Weisman makes it so.

And it’s not just the subject matter of The World Without Us that is fascinating: the book is also wonderfully written. Weisman’s calm, collected tone forces readers to consider the implications of his thought experiment dispassionately, and thus we engage with ideas we would probably reject if we were upset or afraid. By taking humans out of the picture completely, The World Without Us becomes—not necessarily depressing or scary, but eye-opening. I love people, I really do. And even though we constantly do horrifying things, I don’t want us to go. But I love the rest of nature too, and I don’t want anything else to have to go because of us.

The fact that a world without us has some definitive perks probably makes this book even scarier than even the bleakest post-apocalyptic fiction. Or perhaps just sadder; I don’t know. One thing I do know is that this is a humbling work, as it should be. Also, that it filled me with wonder and awe – as the best science writing always does – in the face of the hardiness of nature. While never sugar-coating just how destructive our impact on the environment has been and continues to be, Weisman also emphasises the resilience and adaptability of life. Our current lifestyle is more harmful than most of us can even begin to understand, but hopefully this too shall pass. The species we lose will never come back, and I’m all for putting a stop to this while we still can. But it’s at least a little bit comforting to think that evolution still has one fascinating trick or two up its sleeve.

My favourite chapter was the one entitled “Art beyond us”, which focuses on a topic I have thought about before: how impermanent even what we think of as timeless masterpieces, as the highest points of human achievement, actually is. It was a beautiful and moving chapter, and I especially liked the information on the Pioneer projects Carl Sagan was involved in (about which I only knew in passing). It's so fascinating to think that there are bits of human art and music out there in the universe, like a message in a bottle in a large, large ocean.

As much as The World Without Us made me think, I think that, in the end, I failed to really imagine a world empty of humans; a world with nobody here to witness any of this. It's kind of like trying to imagine our own deaths: ultimately, all we can imagine is our reaction to the world's reaction, or what a world empty of us would look like through our eyes. Perhaps for that reason, more than frightening me The World Without Us left me thinking about how, horrible things we do aside, it's such a blessing that we're still here at all, able to embark on a thought experiment of this kind.

Memorable passages (warning: the first is wonderful, but the other two are awful. Or rather, they're about awful things):

Think of the misty, brooding forest that loomed behind your eyelids when, as a child, someone read you the Grimms Brother’s fairy tales. Here, ash and linden tree towers nearly 150 feet, their huge canopies shading a moist, tangled understory of hornbeams, ferns, swamp alders and crockery-sized fungi. Oaks, shrouded with half a millennium of moss, grow so immense here that great spotted woodpeckers store spruce cones in their three-inch-deep bark furrows. The air, thick and cool, is draped with silence that parts briefly for a nutcracker’s croak, a pygmy owl’s low whistle, of a wolf’s wail, and returns to stillness.

When Ana María’s grandparents were young, she says, the forest easily fed them, even though the Zápara were then one of the largest tribes of the Amazon, with some 200,000 members living in villages along all the neighbouring rivers. Then something happened far away, and nothing in their world—or anybody’s—was ever the same.
What happened was that Henry Ford figured out how to mass-produce automobiles. The demand for inflatable tubes and tires soon found ambitious Europeans heading up every navigable Amazonian stream, claiming land with rubber trees and seizing laborers to tap them. In Ecuador, they were aided by highland Quichua Indians evangelized earlier by Spanish missionaries and happy to help chain the heathen, lowland Zápara men to trees and work them until they fell. Zápara women and girls, taken as breeders or sex slaves, were raped to death.

In Hong Kong, shark fin soup commands up to $100 per bowl. After slicing off their pectoral and dorsal fins, finners throw mutilated sharks, still alive, back into the sea. Rudderless, they sink to the bottom and suffocate. Despite campaigns to ban the delicacy, in less remote waters an estimated 100 million sharks die this way every year.

Other opinions:
In the Shadow of Mt TBR

(Did I miss yours?)

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The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Sign of Four begins with Mr Sherlock Holmes placidly shooting up some cocaine in his home. I kid you not! But his afternoon entertainment, is, alas, interrupted when a new case demands his attention. A lady by the name of Mary Morstan visits Holmes and Dr Watson, and tells them about the suspicious disappearance of her father some years back, right after his return from India. The disappearance, however, is only the start of the mystery. Someone who believes Ms Morstan suffered a great injustice has been sending her valuable parcels for some years. And now that someone wants to meet her face to face.

The Sign of Four is very Victorian, both in the worst and in the best possible ways. It’s deliciously atmospheric: full of foggy and gas-lit streets and a sense of menace and expectation. It’s also full of the examples of the hocus-pocus Victorian notion of science, which always make me simultaneously smile and roll my eyes. Examples:

It was a September evening, and not yet seven o'clock, but the day had been a dreary one, and a dense drizzly fog lay low upon the great city. Mud-colored clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets. Down the Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There was, to my mind, something eerie and ghost-like in the endless procession of faces which flitted across these narrow bars of light—sad faces and glad, haggard and merry. Like all human kind, they flitted from the gloom into the light, and so back into the gloom once more.

And:

"I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule. Have you ever had occasion to study character in handwriting? What do you make of this fellow's scribble?"
"It is legible and regular," I answered. "A man of business habits and some force of character."
Holmes shook his head. "Look at his long letters," he said. "They hardly rise above the common herd. That d might be an a, and that l an e. Men of character always differentiate their long letters, however illegibly they may write. There is vacillation in his k's and self-esteem in his capitals.

Unfortunately, some of the other ways in which this book is very Victorian include helpless and frail ladies in distress, class prejudice, and blatant racism—with references to “savages” becoming increasingly frequent as the story progresses. This was ultimately part of why the plot itself didn’t work for me—but more on that soon.

Lest anyone assume otherwise: I didn’t dislike The Sign of Four, but I think it’s the weakest of the Sherlock Holmes novels I’ve read so far, and I can certainly see why isn’t as popular as A Study in Scarlet or The Hound of the Baskervilles. It hasn’t aged nearly as well. One thing I very much liked was the Holmes/Watson dynamics. I’m not sure whether this is a heretic thing to say, but I like Dr Watson a lot more than I like Sherlock Holmes. But what I like the most is seeing them together. It's Watson’s presence that humanises Holmes. It’s the fact that we see the great detective through his loyal friend’s eyes that keeps the former’s arrogance, detachment and cold calculating nature from ever becoming off-putting or unpleasant. Watson is kind, and Watson admires Holmes; therefore, we grow to like him as well.

As for the mystery itself: I’m beginning to see (and seriously, if I’d only taken a moment to think I’d have known this all along) that mysteries are like fantasy books. It’s not really about the mystery, just like it’s never really about the fantasy elements. In this case, there were things beyond the mystery that I liked, and thanks to those I’m glad I read The Sign of Four. But as I was saying earlier, after a certain point the plot completely crumbled for me. This happened because to suspend my disbelief, I would be required to buy into a racist worldview. To believe in the mystery is to believe in dark-skinned “savages” with uncontrollable murderous urges; to believe in sub-human monsters; to silence all the questions that any contemporary reader can’t help (I hope) but ask. And that's not something I could bring myself to do.

I’m not sure why I keep reading Sherlock Holmes novels when everyone tells me the short stories are much better. I promise I’ll read those soon.

Other opinions:
Just a (Reading) Fool

(Did I miss yours?)

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Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield

I have built my entire life around loving music, and I surround myself with it. I’m always racing to catch up on my next favorite song. But I never stop playing my mixes- Every fan makes them. The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with—nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of a life.

Love is a Mix Tape (a book in which each chapter is named after and preceded by the tracklist of a mix tape) is a memoir about Rob Sheffield’s experience as a lifelong music fan and as a young widower. Sheffield’s wife, Renée, suddenly dies in front of him one Sunday morning when they were both relaxing at home. She was in her earlier thirties, and they had been married for five years. Using his many mix tapes to guide him, he writes about how they first met, about their short time together, and about how he coped with her passing.

Yes, Love is a Mix Tape is as heartbreaking as you're imagining. The suddenness and the circumstances of Renée’s passing make it something out of the most unimaginable and unbelievable nightmare—as evidenced by Sheffield’s reaction after it happened. He didn’t want to leave the house, so that he could be there to pick up the phone when she called saying there had been a mistake, and she was coming home. He didn't want to call their family or friends, because later he'd have to call them again and apologise for alarming them unnecessarily. All this after she had already been pronounced dead.

But the thing is, this book is not just sad. It’s also passionate, enthusiastic, full of life. Though Sheffield eventually does find a way to move on with his life, there is no faux-cheerful conclusion or anything of the sort. The passion and the excitement are there all along, mixed with the most acute grief. “Moving on” is actually entirely the wrong expression, as he does not want to leave his love or his memories of Renée behind. The grief, the loss, the joy of ever having had her in his life, become a part of his very love for music, which is in its turn a crucial part of who he is.

But none of that means that he can’t, after time, find room in his heart for other loves. If Love is a Mix Tape is hopeful, it’s exactly because the pain feels all too real. I don’t like to even imagine being in Rob Sheffield’s shoes – who does? – but it does seem to me that the only way to cope with this sort of loss would be to accept that no, it will not be okay. It will always hurt. Only, there is life beyond the pain.

As I was saying, there’s more than just grief in Love is a Mix Tape, so let me tell you about the music: the book is very 90’s in its cultural landscape. The 90’s were not my decade; the 00’s were. In the 90’s I was a child or a young teen who was only starting to discover music. But I did listen to the radio, and recorded songs from it, and I had an older brother who bought CDs and swapped tapes with his friends…So I do remember some of it very well. I remember the excitement around Nirvana, and I remember when Kurt died. And I’ve read enough about music online to have sort of absorbed other people’s memories of When Pavement Came Along.

Most of all, though, I have made countless mixed CDs, and I know very well what it’s like to have a particular sequence of songs bring you back to a certain moment in your life. Sheffield is great at exploring the close connection between memory and music, as well as the latter’s ability to… not heal us, because that probably sounds forced and trite, but to make us face our emotions, reclaim them, integrate them in our lives. This is a beautiful, funny, passionate and heartbreaking book.

Favourite passages:

I now get scared of forgetting anything about Renée, even the tiniest detail, even the bands on this tape I can’t stand—if she touched them, I want to hear her fingertips. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night, my heart pounding, trying to remember: what was Renée’s shoe size? What color were her eyes? What was her birthday, her grandparents’ first names, that Willie Nelson song we heard on the radio in Atlanta? The memory comes back, hours or days later. It always comes back. But in the moment, I panic. I’m positive it’s gone for good. I’m shaking from that sensation now, trying to remember some of this music. Nothing connects to the moment like music. I count on the music to bring me back—or, more precisely, to bring her forward.

You lose a certain kind of innocence when you experience this type of kindness. You lose your right to be a jaded cynic. You can no longer go back through the looking glass and pretend not to know what you know about kindness. It’s a defeat, in a way. One afternoon, I sat by Tonsler Park in Charlottesville and watched a Little League game and remembered my own days as a right fielder in the tall grass. I thought, None of these kids knows yet how much a coffin costs. None of these kids knows anything about funeral bills or the word “decedent.” But there’s a lot I know I wouldn’t give up. People kept showing me unreasonable kindness, inexplicable kindness, indefensible kindness. People were kind when they knew nobody would ever notice, much less praise them for it. People were even kind when they knew I wouldn’t appreciate it.

Some nights I would drive up Route 29 to the all-night WalMart. I’d push a cart around with some paper towels inside to look like a real shopper, just to spy on married people. I just wanted to be near them, to listen to them argue. This one is $2.99! But this one is $1.49 for just one! But $2.99 is cheaper per roll! But $1.49 is cheaper than $2.99! But we can store the other one! We live in a house, not a spare-towel storage unit, and we’ll pay more than $1.49 rent for the space it takes to store it! But you can never have too much of it! And so on. Married people fight over some dumb shit when they think there aren’t any widowers eavesdropping. And they never think there are widowers eavesdropping.

Reviewed at:
The Book Lady’s Blog
The Literate Housewife Review
The 3R's Blog

(Did I miss yours?)

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Again

Sadly I won't have time to write a more detailed post on this today, but I still wanted to call your attention to another case of whitewashing in the YA book industry: Magic Under Glass, a fantasy book with a dark-skinned Eastern protagonist, displays a white model on the cover. It seems that the Liar controversy a few months ago was not enough to make publishers understand why this is a big no-no, or why it matters at all.

Some have pointed out, in the comments to the post I linked to, that the cover artist probably hadn't read the book to begin with. I don't know whether they did, so I won't argue with that, but I'm sure that somebody somewhere who did read the book saw the cover before it was published. Furthermore, there's something problematic about simply accepting the assumption that, unless given specific instructions, the artist would "naturally" pick the "default" model - a white girl.

But all this aside, I think that when having these conversations it's much more useful to focus on consequences than to speculate about intentions. No matter what the intention was, the message sent out to teens of colour is the same: they're being told they don't matter. If racism were only ever perpetrated by people who set out to be malicious, it would be a much smaller problem than it is.

Ari and Susan have written much better posts on this, so I suggest you visit them. They also link to some other relevant posts, and give you suggestions on how you can help. Also, I hope Susan won't mind if I quote her powerful words:

Whitewashing is racist. It says no one is interested in any character other than the white standard. It says we do not value diversity. It says POC at best can be a sidekick. POC can earn the publisher money but we cannot represent them.

That's all there is to it, really. And that doesn't change even if it's an honest mistake, even if the person responsible for this particular cover happened to have the best intentions in the world.

Since I'm here, I might as well announce the winner of my Tipping the Velvet giveaway: sayer-of-the-word-queer number 13, Michelle. Congratulations, Michelle! E-mail me your address and I'll send the book your away as soon as possible.

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Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

Set in the late 1880’s and early 1890’s, Tipping the Velvet is the story of Nan King’s incredible journey from Whitstable to London; of her transformation from an oyster girl to a music hall star to a… well, I won’t give it all away. It all begins when Nan sees a singer by the name of Kitty Butler perform at a nearby music hall. Kitty sings dressed as a boy, and is, as Nan puts it, the most marvellous girl she has ever seen. Nan returns to see her day after day, and the two become friends. When Kitty is offered a chance to perform in London, Nan leaves everything behind to follow her as her dresser, and thus irrevocably changes the course of her life.

Early in the story, Nan says that she feels like her passion for Kitty is making her glow from the inside; and that she fears that everyone will see this light and know what’s in her heart. Nan’s love for Kitty does light her up, but not in the manner one initially expects: it makes her visible; it causes her to flourish, to discover her body, her identity, and her sexuality. And this is only the beginning of her transformation, which is as astonishing as it feels natural. Tipping the Velvet is a bildungsroman in the truest sense of the word. We watch Nan rebuild herself, her world, and her life, not only once but again and yet again, until, like a fairy tale heroine, she arrives to her true home.

I can hardly believe that this was Sarah Waters’ debut novel. Nan’s voice feels so authentic, and the writing is so lovely, so bold, so precise and masterful and deliberate. I was particularly taken by Waters’ very careful use of words such as “queer” or “lewd”—nothing is done accidentally. In addition to this, Tipping the Velvet is perhaps thematically richer and wider in scope than the other Sarah Waters novels I’ve read so far (not that I didn’t love them all, of course).

Tipping the Velvet deals with sexuality; with gender identity; with class and social inequality; with prostitution; with the fringes of Victorian society; with the world of Fabians and socialist and trade unionist and other revolutionaries; and with love and longing and fear, and wanting to live as if you belong in the world (which everyone should be entitled to). I love the fact that this book shows us a different facet of this time period than Waters’ other Victorian novels do; I love the fact that it’s a romp, as Waters called it: it’s fun and sexy and daring and it involves cross-dressing and bohemian artists’ lives and Victorian strap-ons—but not just.

One of my favourite scenes was when Nan, recovering from a difficult personal period, decides to go out for the first time in months, and try to make London her own again. At first she does so dressed as a girl, and this proves impossible. She is watched at every turn, and the city seems hostile and ready to devour her. She returns the following day dressed as a boy, and the difference is astonishing. Only as a young man is she able to claim the city for herself. Tipping the Velvet also offers similar commentary on class—on the presence and absence of status and money, and the gigantic difference these make in what you’re allowed to do and how much you can afford to bend the rules.

Another thing this book does is deal more directly with the consequences of homophobia than Waters’ other works. Not that it wasn’t there in Affinity or The Night Watch or Fingersmith—sadly homophobia is an unavoidable part of all her queer characters’ lives. But Tipping the Velvet tackles it head on, and shows us how living in secret and shame, how having to hide, how rejecting that part of yourself can suffocate you; can poison even love.

Finally, I loved the ending. I was afraid, somehow, that Sarah Waters had only written one happy ending, and that I should prepare myself for the worst. But—well, I’ll only say it was complicated, and bittersweet, and perfect for those very reasons. Tipping the Velvet is an amazing journey—daring, colourful, unforgettable and intense. Oh, why did it ever have to end?

(Also—I spent the whole month of December going on and on about how much I wanted, nay, needed this book, and the result was that not one but two people listened: my boyfriend and my lovely Secret Santa, Alessandra. If you’d like my extra copy, just include the word “queer” in your comment. I’ll put your name in the metaphorical hat and announce the winner by the end of the week.)

A few of my favourite passages:

Like the freckles, it made her – not unremarkable, as I had feared to find her; but marvellously, achingly real. Hearing it, I understood at last my wildness of the past seven days. I thought, how queer it is! —and yet, how very ordinary: I am in love with you.

I let my hand drop; she kept her fingers upon my lips, then moved them, very slowly, to my cheek, my ear, my throat, my neck. Then her features gave a shiver and she said in a whisper: ‘You won’t tell a soul, Nan—will you?’
I think I sighed then: sighed to know—to know for sure, at last!—that there was something to be told. And then I dipped my face to hers, and shut my eyes.
Her mouth was chill, at first, then very warm—the only warm thing, it seemed to me, in the whole of the frozen city; and when she took her lips away—as she did, after a moment, to give a quick, anxious glance towards our hunched and nodding driver—my own felt wet and sore and naked in the bitter December breezes, as if her kiss had flayed them.

His pleasure had turned, at the last, to a kind of grief; and his love was a love so fierce and so secret it must be satisfied, with a stranger, in a reeking court like this. I knew about that kind of love. I knew how it was to bare your palpitating heart, and be fearful as you did so that the beats should come too loudly, and betray you.
I had kept my heart-beats smothered; and had been betrayed, anyway.
And now I had betrayed another, like myself.

Other opinions:
Flight Into Fantasy
Jenny's Books
A Striped Armchair
books i done read
LayRa

(Let me know if I missed yours!)

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I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly and JM Ken Niimura

Barbara Thorson, a bunny-ear-wearing and D&D obsessed fifth-grader, is, according to her teachers and classmates, pretty weird. She’s fiercely independent and sarcastic, has occasional violent bursts of anger, and proudly declares to a career counsellor who’s talking to her class that she already has a career, thank you very much—she’s a giant-killer. As the story progresses, readers begin to see the loneliness that hides behind Barbara’s independence, to glimpse the fear behind her sarcasm, and to understand that there are very good reasons for her anger. Barbara is trying to kill the biggest giant of them all. But some giants, alas, cannot be killed.

And that, I’m afraid, is all I can tell you about the story, because I Kill Giants is highly spoilable. The revelation it builds up to is a gradual rather than a sudden one, but there was still a panel that caused me to completely break down in tears. (I was reading this book at work during my lunch break—it’s times like these that make me glad I’m alone in my office all day). This panel - the whole story, really - was so very moving, so painful, and so very real.


Barbara’s giant has a name, but even before we learn it, the glimpses the book gives us of Barbara's world and its mix of fantasy and reality hint at the serious things that remain unsaid. My favourite thing about I Kill Giants was probably how well it captured the psychological processes of a child facing something so horrifying she can’t quite grasp it; how well it portrays her sense of helplessness and her attempts not to be helpless. But as Barbara learns, sometimes being brave means realising that there are things you cannot fight.

There is no way around how sad this story is, but there’s a sense of acceptance mixed with the sadness, a determination to make the most of her circumstances on Barbara’s part, that turns what could have been a devastating ending into a bittersweet one. There’s no denying the pain, but as Barbara tells herself in the final panel, we are stronger than we think.


I honestly don't have enough superlatives to describe I Kill Giants. The story's sheer power, the expressive artwork, the excellent characterization, and the sensitive way in which the characters' emotions are handled made it an instant addition to my list of favourite graphic novels. You know you want to read it too.


Reviewed at:
OF Blog of the Fallen
Un:Bound
Guys Lit Wire
Boarding in my Forties

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Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve

You’ve heard of him. Everyone’s heard of Arthur. Artorios Magnus; the Bear, the Dux Bellorum; the King that Was and Will Be. But you haven’t heard the truth. Not till now. I knew him, see. Saw him, smelled him, heard him talk. When I was a boy I rode with Arthur’s band all up and down the world, and I was there are the roots and beginnings of all stories.

Philip Reeves’ Carnegie Medal-winning Here Lies Arthur is probably the cleverest and most original retelling of the tale of King Arthur and his Knights that I've ever read. The story is told by Gwyna, a slave-girl whom Arthur’s adviser Myrddin (otherwise known as Merlin) takes under his wing. After helping Myrddin with a cunning plan to unite people under Arthur’s leadership, she remains in his service—but with her long hair cut short, and calling herself Gwyn. As she grows up as a boy in Arthur’s war band, she reports what she sees. And what she sees is not what the stories led us to expect.

The Arthur we find here is a petty and brutal warlord who is simply lucky enough to have a good PR. History is written by the victors, after all, so after each successful battle Arthur and Myrddin rewrite history to make the carnage seem not only right, but necessary. Here Lies Arthur, then, is a brutally honest book about storytelling, propaganda, war, violence, and gender. It’s a book that deconstructs not only this myth in particular, but what myths and stories in general have the power to do. It’s also a book that analyses the many ways in which people try to legitimatise violence.

I’ve always been drawn to books that deal with how storytelling and mythmaking are quintessential human activities; how they have the power to create a whole new truth that becomes more important than facts themselves. But Here Lies Arthur is possibly the first that makes an explicit connection between this and propaganda and malleable truths. The interesting thing is that the tone of the book is always ambiguous—there’s no simplified conclusion such as “beware of stories, for They Are Bad”. Instead, we are shown both the positive and the negative: how very human, and how helpful, even, to have a narrative within which to frame your experiences can be; but also how dangerous and blinding, and how distorted the final version of a story can become. It’s complicated, just like life.

What surprised me the most about Here Lies Arthur, though, was how it dealt with gender. I don’t want to give too much away, but we learn early on that Gwyna is to be raised as a boy, and then Philip incorporates a real Arthurian myth about a young Knight raised as a girl… the result is a story that very satisfactory deals with how gender is a social construct, and with the very real and painful consequences that being held to absolute standards of “manliness” or “womanliness” from which you can’t deviate an inch has in people’s lives. But Gwyna, of course, does deviate. She moves freely from one universe to another and oscillates between two identities. She has access to both worlds, and thus she's able to compare them. She is living proof that gender is malleable, and that a middle ground is preferable to either the confined world of women or the boastful world of men.

Another thing I loved was the fact that Here Lies Arthur brilliantly portrays the male culture of violence into which young boys are socialized—a culture that discourages any form of intimacy or open communication—and what happens to those who don't quite fit in. I hadn't read a book that dealt with this so interestingly since Tender Morsels, and if you've been reading me for a while you'll know that for me comparing a book to Tender Morsels is the highest form of praise.

And finally, I loved the ending. I won’t give it away, naturally, but I loved how once again, roles were reversed and expectations were turned upside down. Here Lies Arthur is smart, fresh, thoughtful, difficult to put down, and probably my new favourite Arthurian book.

Favourite passages:

“Gwyna, man do love a story. That’s what we’re going to give them this morning, you and I. A story they’ll remember all their lives, and tell to their children and their children’s children until the whole world knows how Arthur came by the sword from the otherworld. And here we are!”

I liked the Arthur of the stories better, but some of his bravery and mystery rubbed off on the real man, so that when we came back to Arthur’s place in the harvest and I saw him again, I could not help but think of the time he had captures the glass castle in the Irish Seam or sliced the Black Witch into two halves, like two tubs.
Myrddin said he was not an enchanter, but he worked magic all right. He turned me into a boy, and he turned Arthur into a hero.

…but the look on his face was so strange that I hadn’t the heart to take his story away from him. He believed it, see. He believed the old gods were on Arthur’s side just as he believed that winter would follow autumn and the sun would rise tomorrow. And I thought that maybe that believing would make him brave and strong and lucky when the fighting came, and maybe without it he’d be killed, or turn and run away, which was worse than being killed. So I kept quiet, and the magic waters lapped against the sides of the pool.

I remembered the way that he and the other boys talked about girls. They hadn’t the courage to talk to girls yet, but they talked about them endlessly. They watched them at the marketplace. Their heads turned like the heads of watchful girls when Gwenhyfar’s handmaidens passed them in the street. The laughed, and scoffed, and compared one with another, and I couldn’t join in that talk. It uneased me to hear the way they spoke. How hard they talked of girls’ bodies and how little of their feelings. Like women were just created to be used and traded. They respected horses better.

They read it too:
A Bookshelf Monstrosity
Gaskella
Book Nut
Vulpe Libris
Bart's Bookshelf
Susan Hated Literature

(Yours?)

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Daddy-Long-Legs (and Dear Enemy) by Jean Webster

I am so in love with this book! Thank you, Jenny and raidergirl3, for bringing it to my attention. I can’t believe I lived for over a quarter of a century without it. I needed it in my life, even if I didn’t know I did until a few days ago. But let me begin at the beginning:

Daddy-Long-Legs is an epistolary novel first published in 1912. It’s about an orphan, Jerusha Abbot (later known as Judy), who one day is told that one of the orphanage’s trustees will sponsor her university education. This philanthropist, who prefers to remain anonymous, only requests that in exchange Judy write him monthly letters about the progress of her education. They are to be addressed to Mr John Smith, and Judy is not to expect any response. All the same, she is to keep writing. Judy catches a glimpse of this man the day the deal is made, and because he’s tall with skinny arms and legs, she renames him Daddy-Long-Legs:

Before leaving yesterday morning, Mrs. Lippett and I had a very serious talk. She told me how to behave all the rest of my life, and especially how to behave towards the kind gentleman who is doing so much for me. I must take care to be Very Respectful.
But how can one be very respectful to a person who wishes to be called John Smith? Why couldn't you have picked out a name with a little personality? I might as well write letters to Dear Hitching-Post or Dear Clothes-Prop.
I have been thinking about you a great deal this summer; having somebody take an interest in me after all these years makes me feel as though I had found a sort of family. It seems as though I belonged to somebody now, and it's a very comfortable sensation. I must say, however, that when I think about you, my imagination has very little to work upon. There are just three things that I know:
I. You are tall.
II. You are rich.
III. You hate girls.
I suppose I might call you Dear Mr. Girl-Hater. Only that's rather insulting to me. Or Dear Mr. Rich-Man, but that's insulting to you, as though money were the only important thing about you. Besides, being rich is such a very external quality. Maybe you won't stay rich all your life; lots of very clever men get smashed up in Wall Street. But at least you will stay tall all your life! So I've decided to call you Dear Daddy-Long-Legs. I hope you won't mind. It's just a private pet name we won't tell Mrs. Lippett.

And this is only the first of four year’s worth of charming, spirited and funny letters. I confess that I was perhaps naturally predisposed to love this book, because it’s both an epistolary novel and a novel from the early twentieth-century that argues for women’s education. But really, what made me fall in love with Daddy-Long-Legs was Judy’s voice. She reminded me a bit of Anne Shirley – both are orphans, unconventional, lively, and aspiring writers – and yet she’s still very much herself. I can’t understand why this book is not as popular as Anne of Green Gables. (Or is it, and I live under a rock?) I also can’t possibly convey what a delight Judy is, so let me give you a few more examples instead:

I forgot to post this yesterday, so I will add an indignant postscript. We had a bishop this morning, and WHAT DO YOU THINK HE SAID? 'The most beneficent promise made us in the Bible is this, "The poor ye have always with you." They were put here in order to keep us charitable.' The poor, please observe, being a sort of useful domestic animal. If I hadn't grown into such a perfect lady, I should have gone up after service and told him what I thought.

Should you mind, just for a little while, pretending you are my grandmother? Sallie has one and Julia and Leonora each two, and they were all comparing them tonight. I can't think of anything I'd rather have; it's such a respectable relationship. So, if you really don't object—When I went into town yesterday, I saw the sweetest cap of Cluny lace trimmed with lavender ribbon. I am going to make you a present of it on your eighty-third birthday.
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
That's the clock in the chapel tower striking twelve. I believe I am sleepy after all.
Good night, Granny.
I love you dearly.
Judy

That's the way with everybody. I don't agree with the theory that adversity and sorrow and disappointment develop moral strength. The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness. I have no faith in misanthropes. (Fine word! Just learned it.) You are not a misanthrope are you, Daddy?

You know, Daddy, I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people's places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding. It ought to be cultivated in children. But the John Grier Home instantly stamped out the slightest flicker that appeared. Duty was the one quality that was encouraged. I don't think children ought to know the meaning of the word; it's odious, detestable. They ought to do everything from love.

Oh Judy, I love you! Can you tell how smart and funny she is? Also, I don’t want to say that her greatest charm is her naivety, because that would be doing her a great disservice, but… she spent the first eighteen years of her life at the John Griers Home, where she was sheltered from most of the experiences young girls her age had gone through. To watch her experience things for the first time and approach the world as if it entirely were new was enchanting. She’s so…earnest, in the best possible sense of the word. And so eager to experience, well, everything. Including literature! I loved seeing her discover classics for the first time - Jane Eyre, Hamlet, Little Women, Treasure Island, and so on.

You should all read Daddy-Long-Legs right now. Did I mention that it’s (unfortunately) very short, and that you could read it in only about two hours? And that it will fill you with happiness and make you smile for the rest of the day? Also, that it’s not just a collection of charming letters – it has a Real Plot and everything? A clever plot too, even if easy to see coming. (Possibly spoiler-ish: any misgivings I might have had about certain, er, white lies were mostly erased by the fact that the characters’ ties just seem so genuine. Also, the power dynamics didn’t alarm me, which was a pleasant surprise. Also, aww. But let me shut up before I say too much.) As I was saying, go read it right now!

Dear Enemy, the not-sequel, was published in 1915. I’m calling it a not-sequel because this is the best way to approach it. I started it as soon as I finished Daddy Long-Legs because I wanted more of it, which is not what Dear Enemy is. However, once I got over my disappointment over the fact that I wasn’t reading more of Daddy-Long-Legs, I was able to love it for what it is.

What it is, then, is a collection of letters sent by Judy’s college friend Sallie to several correspondents, including Judy herself. In them, she retells her experiences as the new superintendent of the John Griers Home, the orphanage where Judy grew up. Sallie’s voice is not Judy’s, but it’s charming in its own right. And the book, while not as delightful and satisfying, is actually a bit meatier than Daddy Long-Legs. It deals with new theories concerning education and child-rearing, with the value of women’s work, and with other themes central to first wave feminism. One of the main things Sallie learns is that no, she doesn’t have to settle for the domestic sphere and live a life of suffocation; and yes, she’s just as entitled to pursue something that satisfies her as a man is, and just as capable. And her work is worth just as much.

Unfortunately, one of the new social theories that were popular at the time was eugenics, as evidenced by passages such as this:

It seems that feeblemindedness is a very hereditary quality, and science isn't able to overcome it. No operation has been discovered for introducing brains into the head of a child who didn't start with them. And the child grows up with, say, a nine-year brain in a thirty-year body, and becomes an easy tool for any criminal he meets. Our prisons are one-third full of feeble-minded convicts. Society ought to segregate them on feeble-minded farms, where they can earn their livings in peaceful menial pursuits, and not have children. Then in a generation or so we might be able to wipe them out.

NO, SALLIE, NO! This is interesting as an historical document, I suppose, but it still made me cringe. And it made me sad, too, because I liked Sallie a lot—because she was so kind in so many ways, and yet here she was, accepting a patronising and appalling form of cruelty so casually. But that's the early 20th century for you. And, in not entirely dissimilar ways, the early 21st too. That’s just people for you, I guess. The good news is that later on, her actual experience with these children causes her to doubt the Doom and Gloom social theories she was exposed to.

I urged you to read Daddy-Long-Legs, and I’m going to tell you to go ahead and read Dear Enemy too—but keep in mind that it won’t be more of the same. Still, Sallie is most definitely worth getting to know.

Some more interesting bits:

Sandy has two passions in life: one is for cod-liver oil and the other for spinach, neither popular in our nursery. Some time ago—before I came, in fact—he had ordered cod-liver oil for all {aenemic} of the{ }—Heavens! there's that word again! {aneamic} —children, and had given instructions as to its application to Miss Snaith. Yesterday, in his suspicious Scotch fashion, he began nosing about to find out why the poor little rats weren't fattening up as fast as he thought they ought, and he unearthed a hideous scandal. They haven't received a whiff of cod-liver oil for three whole weeks! At that point he exploded, and all was joy and excitement and hysterics.

The Hon. Cy was awfully impressed with the new dining room, especially when he heard that Betsy had put on those rabbits with her own lily-white hands. Stenciling rabbits on walls, he allows, is a fitting pursuit for a woman, but an executive position like mine is a trifle out of her sphere. He thinks it would be far wiser if Mr. Pendleton did not give me such free scope in the spending of his money.

I must tell you the joke about my enemy—not the Hon. Cy, but my first, my original enemy. He has undertaken a new field of endeavor. He says quite soberly (everything he does is sober; he has never smiled yet) that he has been watching me closely since my arrival, and though I am untrained and foolish and flippant (sic), he doesn't think that I am really so superficial as I at first appeared. I have an almost masculine ability of grasping the whole of a question and going straight to the point. Aren't men funny? When they want to pay you the greatest compliment in their power, they naively tell you that you have a masculine mind. There is one compliment, incidentally, that I shall never be paying him. I cannot honestly say that he has a quickness of perception almost feminine.

I can't tell you how pleased I am that Betsy's salary is to be raised, and that we are to keep her permanently. But the Hon. Cy Wykoff deprecates the step. He has been making inquiries, and he finds that her people are perfectly able to take care of her without any salary.
"You don't furnish legal advice for nothing," say I to him. "Why should she furnish her trained services for nothing?"
"This is charitable work."
"Then work which is undertaken for your own good should be paid, but work which is undertaken for the public good should not be paid?"
"Fiddlesticks!" says he. "She's a woman, and her family ought to support her."

(At which point both Sallie and I rolled our eyes.)

Other opinions:
Kay’s Bookshelf
Naked Without Books
Booklust
Books ans Chocolate

(Did I miss yours?)

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