Post 292: Untimely Guest

Untimely Guest by Marian Babson.  ISBN: 9780312011031.

In this book, Bridie is forced out of her convent by changes in the Catholic Church in the 1970's and into the home of her brother Kevin and sister-in-law Eleanor, who happens to be a Protestant.  Throughout pretty much the entire novel Eleanor and her entire immediate family are constantly worried about how long Bridie will be staying with them and how much she will disrupt their lives.  While I can understand their concern, I imagine having your convent closed and being forced to re-enter the secular world is probably a lot more distressing than anything that Bridie can and did do as a house guest (well, other than things said during the numerous family fights, but that's a different situation).

The truth is that Bridie was never really treated as a welcome guest and was extended no sort of compassion whatsoever.  Rather than Eleanor stopping to think about what it might mean to Bridie to have this big, encompassing, and unexpected life change and realizing that Bridie might need some time to get through the shock and grieve, she just assumes that Bridie will act like a normal person who is simply visiting relatives.  Because of this, even despite Bridie's "odd" and somewhat presumptuous behavior (she cleaned Eleanor's kitchen for example), I actually sympathized more with Bridie the "intruder" than Eleanor the "intruded upon."

I almost wonder how much of this awkwardness could have been avoided if Eleanor had simply left Bridie alone until Bridie was comfortable enough to socialize on her own terms.  If she was truly to be treated as a family member in the household, then this is what would have happened naturally.  Instead because she was treated as a guest and interloper, Eleanor was constantly trying to foist niceties upon someone who didn't want them.  Eleanor is not only put off by this, but shocked when Bridie actually tries to do anything to cope with her new surroundings, including removing all decorative touches to her guest room.  Had Eleanor been as compassionate and thoughtful as she was supposedly presented to us I think she might have been able to put herself in Bridie's shoes and understood that Bridie was merely trying to regain some kind of control over her surroundings at a time when she felt she had none.  Not to mention, Eleanor would have respected Bridie's privacy and wouldn't have snooped in the first place, regardless of whether or not it was her own home.

On the other hand, most of Bridie's behavior might have been avoided if clear rules had been set up before she arrived.  Bridie, coming from a strict order of nuns, might actually have coped better if she had household rules to follow rather than going from a highly disciplined daily schedule to complete chaos.  At the very least Eleanor and Kevin needed to get their acts together and figure out that they were not responsible for Bridie's behavior and to stop blaming each other or trying to get the other to go talk to her about it.  If it was bothering them both, they should have approach Bridie together and talked as three adults about what they could do to make Bridie feel more comfortable and what Bridie could do in turn to be a better guest.

This may seem a bit upfront and rude, but when taking in long term guests, becoming a room mate, or entering into any other kind of potentially stressful living situation, it is much preferable to everyone trying to tiptoe around while still managing to make each other miserable.  If people aren't willing to change their daily habits, etc., it then becomes much easier for one party to say, "Okay, well thanks for giving me a shot, can I stay for a couple of days while I figure out alternate arrangements?"  Readers, have you had any bad house guests who have stayed with you for an indeterminate amount of time?  What was your solution to the problem?  Did you just wait it out?  How did that work for you?

My review can be found on Goodreads.
LibsNote: I won this from a Forgotten Bookmarks contest.

Post 291: Kyle B. (guest blogger)

Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell. ISBN: 978030737870.

So this Bissell guy is kind of a goof. I was hoping he would really get into some of the reasons that video games are important, but I was pretty disappointed. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let the moment go to waste. Let’s take a moment and talk video games in a sort of academic sense, yes?

I’m going to leave aside the economic/sociological issue of the necessity of a healthy gaming culture in a technological society, because that is an Important Thing deserving of its own book. Instead, I’m focusing a bit on what video games have done for us mentally.

Our days are full of decisions, from when to get out of bed to what to eat, to whether or not to send nuclear missiles against Norway. Not all of these decisions are that ponderous, but some change lives. When it comes down to it, we get stressed out by all the choices we have. One of the things that video games (and other diversions) do is provide us with an imaginary escape from that stress.

Most forms of entertainment are strictly guided. A book can only be picked up and put down; a movie really can only be watched one way. The thing that gaming gives us that other recreation can’t is the ability to choose within the experience itself what will happen.

This guided experience, whether in narrative or non-narrative games, is more or less a vicarious life (and probably what Bissell meant by the title Extra Lives). Here, the choices you make are almost always life-changing in one way or another, meaning survival or ruin for the respective avatar, but aside from finding that last great power up or getting a new ending, these choices don’t make a lasting difference in your own life (or, generally a positive one – who continues playing a game that isn’t rewarding to them?). A gamer gets all of the catharsis of making big decisions without the crushing stress of knowing it could destroy everything she’s worked for her whole life. Even in games where a different choice means another playthrough, the only cost is time, if the player is willing to pay that for another catharsis.

When the experience does affect the gamer, it becomes a shared experience with other gamers who have covered the same ground. Maybe different choices were made, different styles of gameplay attempted. The comparison should lead to an even richer discussion between those gamers.

I’m not saying games are the only compelling way to experience entertainment and enrichment (first, I am a writer/reader, so no; second, there are still plenty of games out there that refuse to entertain or enrich), and I’m not even saying that there isn’t a serious danger of allowing directors to corral and restrain our imaginations to the confines of that event. I’m just saying that video games, as art and experience, are important.

Kyle B. is some guy you've never heard of, but he's okay with that. He's a writer and journalist (also both a lover and fighter) that graduated from Kent State University a few years ago, with some slight gainful employment since. He loves to read but pretty much puts a new book back on the shelf if a couple of the first words on the jacket are "murder mystery" or "romance."

GuestNote: I guess Super Smash Bros. Brawl or Pokemon are some I use for stress relief, but there are lots of games out there to choose from. Animal Crossing is a better "relaxing" game, but I used to jam out to Meteos.
LibsNote: In case you were wondering, my favorite stress relief video games consist of Katamari Damacy and variants of Tetris.  Meteos is also pretty awesome. What about you readers?

Post 290: Fried

Fried: Why You Burn Out and How to Revive by Joan Borysenko.  ISBN: 9781401925505 (eBook).

I think I hate self-help books more than I hate mystery novels now.  I felt that this title had such great potential and then it just devolved into personal anecdotes that didn't really seem to illustrate much of anything, other than Borysenko trying to prove herself as a good person/teacher/therapist.  I really wish someone besides therapists would write these books because every time I read one of these it feels more like it's written for another therapist than the people it's actually trying to help.

In this case, Fried didn't really answer any of my questions.  It offered advice about how to prevent burnout, mostly by diet and exercise and meditation, but how am I supposed to be motivated to do that to begin with?  Well, there was the suggestion of doing a couple of writing exercises about what motivates me, but given all the writing I already do, that feels more like homework and less like something that's going to make me feel less overloaded.  Then there's the suggestion of doing something I enjoy, like going bowling.  A lot of the things I like doing cost money or I'm already doing or at least trying to do.

And this doesn't cover why I, specifically, am burned out.  It's focused more for people who are working, and specifically for people who are working at jobs they are ill-suited for.  Well, I already know what job I'm well suited for, I just can't get one.  So instead of being burned out from overwork, I'm burned out from underwork, and from the constant worry and stress that that has produced.  I am almost always on the verge of tears in frustration because I don't know what else to do.  I did sign up for a temp agency (finally) on the 5th and something may or may not come of that, but even if it leads to full time employment it probably won't be something I'm passionate about.

Anyway, I'm focusing too much on one book.  I dislike that the people who write these feel we need to know a whole bunch of psychological information before they tell us how to solve our problems (if they ever actually get around to it).  I would prefer they say, "these are the effects of this particular situation, here is some very basic background as to why and how.  Here is how you should fix it and the psychological changes that need to take place."  In fact, I don't even need to know about the psychological changes that will take place, I just need to know that it will work, that it will do something to make me happier or at least less miserable than I currently am.  I need to be productive, or at least more so in the area of applying to jobs, but every time I look at a job description I see all of the things that I'm not instead of all of the things that I am and I wonder how that's going to work against me.  These are things I can't change, but I also have no idea how to fend off the crushing sense of despair and uselessness that overcomes me every time I start a cover letter.

So, since self-help books don't seem to be helping me with this, I'm going to take some of Borysenko's advice.  I really enjoy not reading self-help books.  Let's try that for awhile.

My review can be found at Goodreads.  The only other reviews I've seen have been on Amazon.com.. at least one of the reviews was a person mentioned in the book.
LibsNote: Free copy received via NetGalley.

Post 289: The Passage

The Passage by Justin Cronin.  ISBN: 9780345504968.

I think I would be remiss if I didn't share at least one passage from, uh, The Passage with you.  I find some of Cronin's punctuation choices a bit weird, but I am assuming that he meant to have some sentences be short and choppy and others long and windy to capture the tone of this book.  After a while it stopped bothering me so much and I was able to just read and read and get carried away.  Here's one of my favorite sections (of which I actually have many):

"A thousand recollected lives were passing through her, a thousand stories -- of love and work, of parents and children, of duty and joy and grief.  Beds slept in and meals eaten, and the bliss and pain of the body, and a view of summer leaves from a window on a morning it had rained; the nights of loneliness and the nights of love, the soul in its body's keeping always longing to be known." Page 722.

I like this because it reminds me of the feeling I get from reading.  It was referring to something completely different of course, but every time I read or listen to a new story it feels like this passage to me.  It feels like the souls and lives of others are going through me, and I get to keep little bits and pieces of memory from this life or that life.  I get to feel my soul awaken to the plights of these fictional characters.

I guess you could say that reading has almost always been a religious experience for me.  There is something mystical and magical about being able to experience the lives of other people in such a way, even to create the lives of other people.  Even the words on the page themselves are completely awe inspiring in the sense that these tiny shapes are able to convey meaning and emotion to me, and that someone else was the author of that meaning.

On some level I understand the mechanics of reading and how it works in the brain.  It's mostly a matter of shape recognition.  We are able to recognize certain shapes as being certain things.  For instance, a tree has a wide variety of shape variances, but has pretty standard characteristics once you begin to narrow down what is a tree versus what isn't a tree.  We actually all have pictures in our minds of what "tree" is, for some of us it's a palm or an oak or a willow, etc. and this is the image our brain uses when recognizing whether or not something is a tree.  In the case of letters, they represent a variation of sounds, in conjunction with other letters that dictates what sound it forms.  One could argue that we don't have the same attachment to letters as we do to "tree", but I imagine it works on a pretty similar principle, and more so when letters appear in certain combinations.

But the mere fact that our brain can learn to do this is simply amazing to me.  That any human being can learn to communicate in this way is sort of like a miracle.  I don't think I've ever grown weary or bored of the experience of reading itself.  I may not like a certain book I'm reading, but I can still step outside of it and say, "How cool is it that I actually know what this person is trying to tell me and they wrote it last year or last century and in a different state."  Does anyone else feel this way when they're reading or is it just me?  Is it because I had such a difficult time learning to read, and then it just felt like it clicked all of a sudden?  Have you had any "religious" moments while reading?  Why do you do it, how does it make you feel?  Are there other quotes that describe your reading experiences that you'd like to share?

There is a great video interview with Justin Cronin and librarian Nancy Pearl.  It's on the longish side, but if you've already read the book or are thinking about it, this will help you enjoy it even more.  Since this has so much hype, here is a review with trepidation from The Word Zombie.  I thought it only appropriate to include a positive (but still pointing out flaws), if very detailed review from Love Vampires, no spoilers though; they talk about theme, character, character development, plot development, etc.
LibsNote: Copy from the library.

Post 288: The Passage

The Passage by Justin Cronin.  ISBN: 9780345504968.

Another thing this book did, that I think it did very well, was the divergence of cultures.  We saw three post-Bad Shit Happened societies, all of which had their own customs and languages.  One was militarized, one was governed by households in a sort of mostly predetermined roles in society sort of thing, and the last I feel is a bit too spoilery to talk about in detail, but let's just say it was pretty cult-like.

The thing he succeeded with most was the diverging of language.  Each group had their own term for the "vampires."  They were known as smokes, virals, and dracs and each community more or less stuck to their word of choice when referring to them.  There were other language developments that occurred in the book to refer to certain aspects of life in the Post-Bad (as I will now refer to any such event in a book, from now on and forever).  I think I'll talk about two of my favorites, mostly because there are lots of these in here, and uh, I'm sure you'd like to enjoy discovering them for yourself.

My first favorite phrase is "living in his own time now."  This happened whenever people knew they were dying or doing something dangerous that would likely get them killed.  I like it because it implies that people who are close to death, either because they are sick or in dangerous professions, sort of live in a time outside of everyone else.  You can almost feel what people mean when they say it, and it definitely invokes the whole "everyone dies alone" philosophy and kind of amplifies it by ten.  It's as if, not only are they dying alone, but they aren't even on the same level existence as everyone else anymore.  And I have to imagine that's what it would feel like to be that close to death and to know that you are that close to death.

My second phrase is probably "taken up."  This probably doesn't seem like it's all that important, but if you can imagine something worse than death, something like becoming a violent blood-sucking monster, wouldn't you come up with a euphemism for it?  And that is exactly what this is.  Instead of saying, "he became a viral/drac/smoke" these people say that someone was taken up.  It is somehow more powerful to say it this way, even though they are not directly referring to what is happening.  It's probably because using this phrase does a better job of displaying exactly how afraid people are of becoming vampires and how distasteful and discomforting it is to even talk about it in the Post-Bad.

I will say one thing against Cronin, I don't think he did enough of this.  Given that these pockets of civilization became completely isolated from each other, and in completely different areas of the country,  I'm pretty sure the language would have diverged more than it did in the novel.  Still, I think it was an excellent attempt, and probably something that a less adept novelist would have overlooked.  For anyone who read the book, what did you think of these linguistic developments?  Or are there others books you've enjoyed that have explored this aspect of language?

There is a great video interview with Justin Cronin and librarian Nancy Pearl.  It's on the longish side, but if you've already read the book or are thinking about it, this will help you enjoy it even more.  Since this has so much hype, here is a review with trepidation from The Word Zombie.  I thought it only appropriate to include a positive (but still pointing out flaws), if very detailed review from Love Vampires, no spoilers though; they talk about theme, character, character development, plot development, etc.
LibsNote: Copy from the library.

Post 287: The Passage

The Passage by Justin Cronin.  ISBN: 9780345504968.

One of the things I liked most about this novel is that Cronin doesn't feel the need to stick with characters once their contributions to the story are over.  This is kind of a problem with many narratives told in third person.  Yes, the third person narrator is great because it can be omnipotent, but does it really need to be?  Fantasy seems to suffer most from this predicament.  I don't know if authors feel we become totally invested in the lives of every single character, and therefore need to know the end narrative of all of the characters, or if fantasy writers just really enjoy neat little bundles tied up with string.

Oh sure, this book follows a lot of characters.  In fact, there is a century's worth.  In the second part of the book, we meet a whole community of them, with about 20 being worthy of names and individual traits, but Cronin seems to know when to let them go on living off screen.  I liked that.  It allowed my mind to wonder and worry about those characters I only got brief hints of, but who obviously had loves and hates and fears and hopes for the future.  It felt like the story was a stone or maybe a set of stones, and anywhere from one to three characters had a stone at any given time.  Whoever had the stone was the person whose narrative we followed.  Once they left a place, we didn't see that place again.  Once someone parted company from the stone-carrier, we lost all knowledge of that person unless they had a stone of their own.

It worked.  It worked really well.  I didn't need to know what was happening to Amy during the 90 or so years she wasn't involved in the story.  It wasn't important.  I was curious about it, but I feel that Cronin filled in missing details where they were necessary, rather than throwing them in just because they were interesting.  Besides, there are two other books to this series, so I imagine we'll get more back story, if and when it is necessary.

I really have to hand it to Cronin, this technique worked perfectly for his story.  It managed to create a sense of uncertainty about what was happening in a very uncertain world.  I don't think it would have held the same tone if we were constantly being given peeks at what was happening to the people that were left behind so that the others could hopefully find a way to change the world.  It rang more true than having someone pop in with a scene about little Jimmy and how he gasped his last breath as blah, blah, blah.  We're done with Jimmy, it doesn't really matter to the story if he lives or dies anymore, leave him, his story is done.  And so is this post, good day, sir!

There is a great video interview with Justin Cronin and librarian Nancy Pearl.  It's on the longish side, but if you've already read the book or are thinking about it, this will help you enjoy it even more.  Since this has so much hype, here is a review with trepidation from The Word Zombie.  I thought it only appropriate to include a positive (but still pointing out flaws), if very detailed review from Love Vampires, no spoilers though; they talk about theme, character, character development, plot development, etc.
LibsNote: Copy from the library.

Post 286: something else

A Diatribe Against the Sanitizing, Political Correction, or Otherwise Censoring  of Books

So, I debated about whether or not I was going to write this or not, but then I decided that this is a good issue for a librarian/historian to tackle, and maybe not everyone has heard the news.  A couple of days ago, I found out that NewSouth Books has decided to remove the word "nigger" from Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and replace it with the "less offensive" slave and servant.

Let me just start by saying that one of the reasons I did not like reading those books was because that word was so pervasive.  However, removing the word doesn't remove the atrocities that occurred or erase racism.  All it does is try to hide the ugliness under a rug; but then look at the publishing company.  I am in no way surprised or shocked that a company based in Montgomery, Alabama and Louisville, Kentucky are trying to whitewash the two novels that are in many ways the only experience Northerners have with The South.  I just want to say, if you want to remove the word "nigger" from anything, how about starting with the mouths of your high schoolers?  I can't tell you how many times I heard that word bandied about by the Good Ol' Boys who for some reason thought I was a big ol' Yank and ought to go home, despite the fact that the Civil War has been over for nearly 150 years now.  

And if you think the word "nigger" is so offensive, then why for the love of god did we "celebrate" Robert E. Lee day on the same day as Martin Luther King day?  Might that not be considered just a little insensitive given what each was fighting for?  That's about as thoughtful as giving someone with lactose intolerance a cheesecake for their birthday.  I'm not against celebrating Southern history, there is definitely some benefit in studying it and even celebrating the fact that most of the negative stuff is over, at least in the legal sense.  I am all for having a "Thank god, we don't enslave men, women, and children just because they happened to have dark skin" day.  This would be a great thing to celebrate.  There ought to be freakin' hoe downs and dancing by the glow of the bonfire and spiritual orgies of the joyous celebration of freedom.  But revering a hero of the South without recognizing that maybe he was just a little fucked up is disregarding a major fact of history and completely defeats the purpose of studying it all together.

The fact that NewSouth is removing this word from the text is an awful lot like denying a part of history.  In essence, they are no better than the people who denied that the Holocaust ever happened, despite the evidence of survivors, documentation by the Nazis, and the physical camps themselves.  And the reason that Huck Finn is such a powerful book is the friendship between Huck and Jim, despite the fact that everyone else thinks that Jim is an inferior person.  By removing the word "nigger" from the text, we are essentially neutering Huck Finn and removing the potency of the development of that relationship.  In this way, the relationship becomes more about overcoming class than racism and you might as well just turn Jim into an uneducated white farmer.  In the end, the word "nigger" is important to the story and taking it out changes the meaning, making it a different book, and Mark Twain's name ought to be removed.  I highly doubt he would want to be associated with this abomination, and you can bet if he were still alive he'd be working on a hell of a letter to the editor right now.

In response to Alan Gribben's reasoning behind this decision

I understand that you want this work to continue being taught.  I agree that it is extremely distressing that it is being removed from the classroom simply because it contains this particular word.  However, this is not the solution.  The problem is that there are people out there who not only wish to parent their own children, but have taken it upon themselves to prevent other people's children from being exposed to ideas or words they disagree with.  

In the introduction to this work, which is thankfully available for free online, Gribben states, "Consequently in this edition I have translated each usage of the n-word to read 'slave' instead, since the term 'slave' is closest in meaning and implication."  No.  The term slave is not inherently negative in all cultures nor an indication of a necessarily inferior class of people.  Nigger does not equal slave, because a slave can still be seen as a person, one who was subjugated into this brand of servitude regardless of their innate worth or intelligence.  "Niggers" were seen as being inherently inferior and undeserving of respect of body, mind, soul, or family relations.  If you wanted to replace the word nigger, it ought to have been with something that held the same connotations of inferiority and worthlessness that most people in the South showed black Americans at that time; slave just doesn't quite do it.

And now a word from someone else on the matter:

Post 285: a general update

Not a whole lot going on right now with me personally.  Continuing to look for work.  I've decided to go back to temping.  I had actually been meaning to do so long before now, but things kept coming up.  I think part of it is I just really don't want to do it.  I want to be a librarian, and anything else just feels like a waste of my talents.  Still, gotta eat.  Also, in order to keep my author tags at the bottom of the page less cluttered, I've decided to remove the ones I haven't covered in a year.  This won't take effect until March 2011, and the tags will still be there.  If you're looking for someone particular, I recommend using the search bar at the top left of the blog.  Anyway, you don't watch me for this, on with the reading list!

The Passage by Justin Cronin.
I have been wanting to read this since NPR first started talking about.  All of the reviews and attention it's gotten since have only made me more desperate to get my hands on it.  But it is such a BIG book.  I wasn't sure if I could spend that much time with it and keep up with the blog.  Luckily I managed to build up a buffer between some insane reading endeavors, a guest blog or two, and one of these here general updates.  I'm actually about a quarter of the way through the book as of writing this post and it. Is. Amazing.

Fried: Why You Burn Out and How To Revive by Joan Z. Borysenko.
This caught my eye on NetGalley.  I had actually requested and received access to it ages ago, but now that I have my eReader I think it'll be much easier for me to sit and read.  By the way, using Adobe Digital Editions to load eBooks is really easy.  I've taken a glance at Fried, so far it doesn't look too preachy and might prove useful to my situation.

A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler.
Still working my way through my ALA 2010 stack.  This is one of those, as are the next two on this list.  I, um, I like the cover?  In any case, it seems to be well rated on Goodreads and Donna of Bites seems to think highly of it, so we'll see what I think.  Psst, if you click on the link you can enter to win a copy of A Blue So Dark, contest ends January 17, 2011.

The Diviner's Tale by Brad Morrow.
Even though this is another mystery novel, it seems like it might involve more character development than the usual who-dunnit.  I'm interested to see how Cassandra reacts to finding a woman murdered in the woods and what goes from there.

The Eden Hunter by Skip Horack.
This appears to be historical fiction about a relatively untouched topic: a Pygmy captured and sold into slavery in 1812.  Looks like an interesting adventure-type romp through Florida.

Untimely Guest by Marian Babson.
It's another one of my Forgotten Bookmark wins.  I looked through the stack recently and was glad to see there wasn't any more Ted Wood, not that I would have read anything else by him anyway.  There are however far more Lillian Braun Jackson books than I can ignore, and she's honestly not bad enough to skip over.  Dammit.  I am kind of glad I'm torturing myself this way, I will have an excuse to never read another mystery in my life when this is over.

Post 284: Dayna Ingram (guest blogger)

Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell.  ISBN: 9780316057554.

I love when books get adapted into movies, because usually I have never heard of the book being adapted, and I am excited to read it more than I am excited to see the movie. I've discovered wonderful stories this way (White Oleander; Girl, Interrupted), and so I was super excited to read Winter's Bone after I saw a trailer for the independent film. The book is very atmospheric, and sort of noir-ish in its plot, but the characterization of Ree Dolly is what really pulled me through it. She is a literary heroine in the style of Clarice Starling: all vulnerability hidden under a necessarily tough exterior (a little girl trying to survive in a man's world), and her stoicism is quite touching. The complexity of her character is only deepened by her sexual relationship with her best friend Gail.

While this relationship is never made explicit, it is completely there, and very important in how Ree deals with her lot in life. The non-exploitative, nicely subtle way Woodrell handles this relationship is very welcome, allowing the reader to infer its significance and use their own imagination to read between the lines. It's tragic but it's not sensational or overtly sentimental, and of course Ree bares the burden of her desire, like she does all her other unfulfilled desires, with stoic grace. So this relationship surprised me, and made me really excited to see how the movie handled this aspect of the novel. And, of course, the movie completely dropped the entire thing.

Okay, I understand that the film was playing more with the atmosphere of the setting and doing some tonal things and wasn't really focused on character-building as much as the novel was. (In fact, the movie was under whelming and entirely confusing; if I hadn't read the novel beforehand, I don't think I would have understood the plot at all.) They set up the friendship between Ree and Gail but it was never as deep as it was in the novel (even disregarding the sexual nature of the relationship, it was still a very intimate and important friendship that the film ignored). Maybe the relationship is only important to me because, as a gay lady, I yearn for more complex representations of sexual identity and especially women just in general in my books and movies. But I don't think I am alone in seeing this. It's something that I would expect certain readers to go ahead and ignore if it bucked up against their narrow worldviews or fragile identities, but for the screenwriters to ignore it completely? It's almost as outrageous as the Fried Green Tomatoes adaptation, which excised the much more explicit lesbian identity of Idgie Threadgoode entirely from the story.

Listen, I know movies are shorter and therefore must cut certain aspects of stories for purposes of length, but that is not what I see happening here when important aspects of a character are completely shut down. I see screenwriters or producers or studio execs getting scared that they'll offend some throwback sensibility of their oh-so naïve audience by presenting them with “alternative lifestyles,” so rather than develop a complex, whole, individual character, they whittle the character down to their most acceptable/relatable traits (woman-precocious-just-needs-a-good-man; woman-young-headstrong-just-needs-a-good-man).

I'd like to think, in 2011, we've progressed beyond this simplification. I'd like to think, if I want to see lesbians or non-heterosexual ladies on my screen, I don't have to go out and specifically rent a Lesbian Movie (I've seen them all, anyway). I'd like to know what Woodrell thinks about this. I'd like to think I am not the only one who is ranting about this.

Dayna's review can be found on Goodreads.

Dayna Ingram is a writer and student living in the Bay Area. She received her BA in Creative Writing from Antioch College in 2008, and is currently working on her MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. She works at Half Price Books, where she buys more books than she can reasonably hope to read in a lifetime.  She is also the author of Sleep Like This.

Post 283: The Clearing

The Clearing by Heather Davis.  ISBN: 9780547263670 (ARC - published April 2010).

I am one of those people who enjoys detailed descriptions; not the ones that go overlong, but the ones that have just the right amount of balance and depth.  For instance, this description of a grocery store put me right into the scene:

"We entered the store, where the air conditioner was set to please a polar bear.  The scents of meat counter, bleachy disinfectant, freshly fried donuts, and overripe tomatoes hit my nose all at once.  It was almost too much to take in.  To top that, the place was packed with families with shopping carts full of groceries and dirty-faced toddlers.  The cashiers did swift business while chattering over a scratchy-sounding country song piped through the PA system."  Page 11.

Other than that last line, which is a bit awkward, this is a really great description.  Not only can we picture exactly where Amy is, but we can feel it.  There are context clues to indicate that Amy feels overwhelmed in this place, even though there are familiar sights and sounds associated with it.  She's not the only Amy who feels that way, and so this passage probably spoke to me more than it might another reader.

I hate shopping.  I hate shopping for food, for clothes, for just about anything.  I especially hate big chain stores that are designed to inundate your senses so you will: a) not take the time to make rational purchase decisions because you feel rushed or harried; b) spend as much time in the store as possible in the hopes that you will pick up additional purchases.  There mere idea of spending more than 30 minutes in a grocery store makes my head hurt, but because we have so many options and the store layouts are constantly changing and sometimes confusing, that is what happens in the bigger stores.

I can't go into a big store and spend more than five minutes there without getting this completely dazed look on my face.  There is something about the smell of the fried and/or rotisserie chickens from the deli counter permeating the store, the ubiquitous pop music, the constant dodging and maneuvering of shopping carts, the too bright lights, and the overwhelming selection of brands, portions, and pricing that just overloads my brain.  By the time I get to the cashier, I can barely respond to simple questions; sometimes I have to sit in my car for five minutes and let the silence sink in before I feel safe driving again.

Part of this is probably because I have an absolute loathing of shopping carts, mostly in the hands of other people.  I couldn't really tell you where this loathing came from.  It probably started when shopping with my mom and brother; my brother always insisted on pushing the cart.  I don't recall him ever purposely shoving the cart into me, although I imagined he at least threatened to do so, and in general he was not a very trustworthy person even at that young of an age.  Perhaps it's just me, but it seems once people get something like that in their hands they become irresponsible lunatics. It's as if all of a sudden they have become contestants on Supermarket Sweep, only the goal is not just to get through the supermarket as fast as possible, but also to mow down as many strangers as possible in between parking themselves in front of the exact brand of spaghetti sauce someone else wants while gabbing to their neighbor about Bob hitting himself with a hammer again or Jane's latest yeast infection.

This is why for the longest time I shopped at Aldi's, and will hopefully do so again when I finally hunt down that ever-elusive snipe known as a Job.  I may have paid more for certain things, and the selection wasn't great, but at least I could get in and out of there in a matter of minutes.  I could take my time deliberating about whether or not I wanted that can of biscuit dough, because I didn't fry all my brain cells three aisles down trying to figure out if I wanted wheat bread, whole grain wheat bread, wheat bread with riboflavin, or magical wheat bread made of pony spit and freshly squeezed rainbows guaranteed to cure cancer and AIDs and do your fucking laundry.

Magical bread, it's delicious and it will do your laundry.  PS: this is from Yakitate Japan, watch it, it's awesome.

In any case, I hate shopping and would rather not spend any more time at it than I have to.  It is not enjoyable for me, especially if I already feel rushed, to put myself in a situation where the atmosphere is designed to make me feel rushed.  This is why I also avoid eating at fast food places.  But that is another ramble, for another time.

My review can be found on Goodreads.
LibsNote: Free copy received from the publisher's booth at ALA 2010.
The quote was checked with a final copy via Google Books.