2nd March, 2010 by Christina - 1 Comment
As I stated last week, Thursday night I had plans to go to a reading by Cathy Erway at Word in Brooklyn. If you live in New England, you are well aware that Thursday was dreadful with its wet snow. Sure it looked pretty when you were indoors looking out. But when you were walking in the insta-slush that was forming–not so fun. Despite the snow, I made it to the reading and then was sad that I couldn’t eat any of the crostinis that Erway had brought. Why do you hate me gluten?
The reading was great. I consider it to be a bit free form as the snow meant people were arriving in waves. Erway would read a section (starting with her adventures in dumpster diving, because who isn’t curious about someone actually pulling food out of a trash bag on the street?), answer a question or two, and then read from another section at the audience’s request.
By the time I had made it home, the rain portion of the weather was getting more flake-like and I went to bed with a food craving that I’ll discuss in a moment. Come morning the “snow” was blowing sideways and I happily returned to bed when my boss called to tell me she was closing the office. Hurray for a three day weekend! Most of my morning was spent diving into Erway’s book The Art of Eating In.
Quick rundown of the book–Erway decided to stop eating out. In New York. Which is a huge feat when you realize how many people in this city have NEVER. USED. THEIR. STOVE. (Seriously. I know so many people who have a pristine kitchen because they eat out or order take-out for every meal. At most they have some yogurt and beer in the fridge. Maybe a pint of ice cream in the freezer, but more likely vodka.) Two years later she was an Internet sensation having blogged her project and having gotten involved in local supper club, slow food, and cook-off groups, as well as checking out subcultures such as the previously mentioned dumpster divers and foraging groups. And she got a gig writing on the Huffington Post and a show on Heritage Radio Network.
Then she got a book deal. Bitch.
I jest. At the end of the reading I got to speak with Erway a little and she comes across in person as really sweet and adorable. And she comes across that way in her book. Out of all the foodie memoirs by New Yorkers going around these days (Julie and Julia by Julie Powell and I Loved, I Lost, I Ate Spaghettiby Giulia Melucci), The Art of Eating In might just officially have become far and away my favorite. This isn’t some life crisis saved by food, it’s simply a girl who by saving money and eating healthier manages to learn more about the social and cultural roles of food as they apply to her.
Back to my story. A little after noon I got it into my head that I was going to make cupcakes. A friend was celebrating her birthday with a big night out and all the girls were coming over to my place before heading down the street to this underground event a block away. What’s great about this group of girls is that I wasn’t the only one with food issues–there was a vegan, another Celiac, and one with a nut allergy. These sounded like the most disgusting cupcakes ever because I was going to make ones that EVERYONE could eat. Vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free, soy-free, nut-free cupcakes. They can’t possibly be good.
Except the recipe is award-winning–like Best Cupcake in New York award-winning. I really wish I had invented it, but alas Erin McKenna, owner of Baby Cakes, beat me to it. Thank god she wrote a cookbook so I can make these suckers at home.
I was so inspired by Erway’s chapter on bread making that I trucked off into the snow to the grocery store, where they only had three ingredients. To make matters worse, one of those three ingredients was potato starch. And I am not eating nightshades. There was almost a temper tantrum of terrible-two proportions right there in the aisle. I haven’t been deprived of cupcakes all this time (case in point: Star Trek-a-Thon), but they are crumbly* and sugary and DAMMIT I WANT THESE CUPCAKES NOW!
Cupcakes aside, I threw a pretty darn good party with homemade hummus. Not as exciting, but whatever. There was also champagne, which made up for things.
Loved the book. Like I said, it’s the best of the foodie memoirs I’ve read–you actually learn about food and cooking. Erway states early on that a professor in college once put her class on a week long media fast. He had at one point done a longer term media fast living within communities that actively shun modern media and technology (Amish) and ones that simply don’t have access. The self removal from what is essentially an overload and glut of noise left him (and the class) with a better understanding of media. Removing one’s self from restaurant culture while actively cooking (rather than just popping something into the microwave) means learning more about food and community that comes with eating.
Colin and Salvatore, on Five Borough Book Review, recently readJonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals and quoted from the book:
‘We are made of stories,’ Foer writes; ‘We are not only the tellers of our stories, we are the stories themselves. If my wife and I raise our son as a vegetarian, he will not eat his great-grandmother’s singular dish, will never receive that unique and most direct expression of her love, will perhaps never think of her as the Greatest Chef Who Ever Lived. Her primal story, our family’s primal story, will have to change.’
Erway makes a similar point, how we cook at home connects us to our family and friends in ways that eating in a restaurant won’t and makes us more aware of our food and sense of self:
I was at a dinner party one night, and my neighbor in the next seat told me about how, during a phone conversation with his mother, he’d expressed a little frustration with paying for restaurant food. She followed up by mailing him a stack of recipes written by his Dominican grandmother. Not only were they greatly helpful in allowing him to re-create some of the dishes he’d always loved, but he said it was almost like receiving a diary from his grandmother.
Restaurant eating changes one’s food philosophy drastically. When your food arrives, made by a stranger in a different neutral setting each night, we actually disconnect from the food. Food is about more than just taste–food is social,** economics, geography, history, and more. Erway points out a common problem among those raised in the city when she encounters two teenagers while berry picking in Prospect Park–they do not know where their food comes from.
Erway eventually ended her two years of not eating out in New York and called it the end of an era. Reading the chapter could not have come at a more fortuitous time. I too ended an era the same night as I reached this point in the book. After twenty years as a vegetarian, I ate meat. This changes my food lifestyle and opens up new avenues of thinking as I redevelop what I believe about how I eat. With Erway, there were so many grey areas as to what constituted eating out or not as well as limited social interactions. For me, choices in food open up and I have to reevaluate why I chose to stop eating meat in the first place and all my own grey areas which included eating eggs or a beef based broth. My decision had been weighing on my mind for quite some time. On my way home from the reading all I could think about was how much I wanted a pork chop. A pork chop! It’s not easy to finally change to a long time habit, but it can result in some interesting changing and a reawakening desire for foods not eaten in a long long time.
*Lesson time: Gluten-free cupcakes mean no traditional flour. Gluten is a protein in wheat that is full of sticky power. It’s used as thickener in sauces and dressings. Without it, bread made from rice or quinoa flower is dry and crumbly. Most of the time it tastes bad too. McKenna’s recipe uses Xanthan Gum to recreate the hold Gluten has. I wouldn’t know if it actually works because I didn’t get to make the cupcakes.
**I can’t for the life of me remember where I read this, but an author explained a trip to Germany and arriving late at night. On a health kick, s/he had a salad and went to bed to recover while his/her companions stayed up drinking and eating bratwurst with the locals. Come morning, the author was still jet lagged and out of sorts while the socialized and communal eating and drinking had revived everyone who had stayed up.
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1st March, 2010 by Christina - No Comments
Hmmm, She Who Must Be Obeyed. What an honorific. Surprisingly, this book is not about my mother. Color me shocked.
Years ago I dated a guy with terrible taste in movies. Ang Lee’s Hulk…Daredevil…and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.* I’ve stated numerous times previously that despite being an absolutely horrible movie, I for some reason decided to read the comic version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and loved it so much that I went back for more.
In the process I also managed to start hunting down some of the Victorian era novels referenced in the comics that I hadn’t already read. One of them, King Solomon’s Mines, ended up becoming far and away my favorite of the bunch. After reading The Lost City of Z this past autumn, I felt the need to return to Haggard’s work since Colonel Fawcett was a template inspiration for many of popular literary daredevil explorers–including Haggard’s Allan Quartermain.
Haggard returns to Africa in She (Who Must Be Obeyed)–more commonly known as just SHE–with a well built scholarly man (Holly), his adopted hottie son (Leo), and their loyal servant (Job). The three are on a “hunting trip” which is more or less (mostly less) an attempt to uncover the truth about some mysterious artifacts detailing the fate of some of Leo’s ancestors. Instead of shooting rhino, the men discover an immortal woman who is more attractive than any other woman by tenfold. And she happens to believe that Leo is the reincarnated soul of her dead lover. I might start using that as a pick-up line.
Along the way there are natural disasters, violent tribes, frightful landscapes to traverse, and the knowledge that SHE also killed her lover who turned out not to be her lover because he already had a wife (pregnant) and rejected the advances of SHE. Opps. What’s that old saying about a woman scorned?
Maybe at the time of publication it was more riveting as the “Lost World” genre was taking hold with knock-offs of Haggard’s previous King Solomon’s Mines (which went on to be the inspiration for Indiana Jones). Colonialism was a bug caught by the populace of “civilized” countries and there were plenty of undiscovered lands remaining. These lands had natives with customs and habits unique and unusual, or that had simply been lost over time by the evolving Western societies.
Instead of being riveted and curious about the possibility of such a tribe as the Amahaggar or the abandoned city and catacombs of Kor, I was bored to tears as we plodded along from one flash of adventure to the next. Plod Plod Plod HURRICANE! Plod Plod Plod CANIBALISM! Plod Plod Plod CORPSE TORCHES! Even worse is that there is a build up to the power SHE possesses over the tribe, however, punishment is meted out by her servants. Only in private, and briefly at that, is her true (and unnatural) power showcased when one person will not obey her. Granted, SHE has built up fear and power among these people over a few thousand years mostly based on manipulation of their superstition and limited knowledge.
I do wonder if our fast-paced life made me impatient as I read along or if there was something I was missing in the drawn-out plot. For being such a classic novel, I don’t know of anyone else whose read the book. If you have, please let me know what you think.
*BTW, I have nothing against superhero or comic book-based film adaptations in general. These three just happened to suck and were what was out in theaters at the time. Seriously, I don’t know anyone who can say that Ang Lee’s Hulk was any good.
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19th February, 2010 by Christina - No Comments
There is no such thing as immortality. At least not as we know it. We die, plants die, eventually planets die and so do stars. I guess if you were to break things down to the atomic level, you could theoretically say we don’t die and that we just get reshaped.
As humans, the closest thing to immortality is to be written down in a book. It helps if the book goes on to be wildly successful and becomes a classic read by successive generations. Readers become so attached to characters that it becomes impossible for authors to kill them off. Can you imagine the uproar if J.K. Rowling had killed Harry Potter in the end? For good, not for that half/fake/temporary death thing she did there. Hell, killing Dumbledore was enough to almost get her lynched.
Sometimes, despite killing a character off, an author is forced to revive them in some way. Case in point, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of the Detective’s Resurrection. Okay, there’s no actual story by that title, but after throwing Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty off a cliff, readers were so angry that Holmes ended up miraculously surviving before eventually returning to London. Doyle killed him off in the first place because he was so sick of pandering to readers. Ironic, huh?
Sherlock Holmes has gone on to be one of the most recognizable characters in literary history (thanks in no small part to the film industry and a certain deerstalker cap), and numerous sequels and adaptations have been written about him by other authors, including The Final Solution, an early book by literary superstar Michael Chabon.
More often than not, books about the famous detective focus on the logic behind uncovering “whodunnit” as it relates to a specific mystery. Despite two mysteries being presented in The Final Solution, Chabon’s story provides a subtle focus on Sherlock Holmes’s mortality. While he may live on through stories, as a man, Holmes is bound to die one day. Here he is not youthful or even sprightly middle-aged. Rather, he is an old man–one who is heavily alluded to but never named, 90-some-odd years old, ever closer to having one foot in the grave. The old man is well aware of his mortality and his encroaching end of days. He worries about having his body discovered in an undignified manner, a thought that dwells in his mind as his body–and mind–slowly falter a little more each day.
As pointed out elsewhere, Holmes only manages to solve one of the intertwined mysteries. It’s been such a long time since I’ve read any of his adventures, that I too missed the subtly suggested solution to the second. It’s somewhat easy to come to a general conclusion, having a solid background in Holmesian knowledge helps to see where Chabon makes references for the reader to draw upon.
I’m looking forward to return to my collection for a few re-reads and to compare notes on what Chabon hints at with what Doyle wrote. It’s exciting to see an author actively draw on the original mysteries rather than just on characterization when creating new mysteries for the detective whose death just never seems to come.
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17th February, 2010 by Christina - 2 Comments
Committed. That’s an awkward word. It seems to be so often used in tandem with the words, “a crime.” You can be committed to jail, a life of drudgery, or to a mental hospital. So why anyone would want to use the same word in relation to what should be an act of love is beyond me. However, the word is also used in many positive ways. We commit acts of love and kindness, commit ourselves to charity work, and we commit ourselves to being supportive of our friends and family in their time of need.
Gilbert uses her latest book, Committed, to explore both sides of the word as it relates to making the commitment of marriage. Having gone through a rather unamiable divorce and a journey around the world to rediscover herself (as told in the bestseller Eat, Pray, Love), Gilbert uses the book as an excuse to work through her own fears and concerns when faced with the fact that her Brazilian-born lover with an Australian citizenship will no longer be allowed to enter the U.S. after abusing the visa process unless they get married.
While the purpose and reasons for getting married have changed over the centuries (Gilbert takes us through a basic history), over the past few decades it seems that changes have been drastic. During the Regency Era, more and more novels touted the desire for romantic relationships–marriage for love rather than for social, economic, or security reasons. The changes are compounded by the constantly changing shape of courting for arranged marriages to chaperoned social meetings to dinner dates to drinks to the current state of hook-up culture. It’s no wonder Gilbert, and many other people, have concerns with whether or not they ever want to get married. Going from a point where movies and fairy tales shape our desires for the perfect everlasting relationship to one of confusion and self-doubt is inevitable as we try to navigate the constantly fluctuating state of two people coming together. An act that should be easy is made less so when the outside influences of church, state, family, and media compound on top of our personal neurosis and baggage.
Despite spending much of the year between government ultimatum (and the desire to stay together after exchanging personal and private vows) and the paperwork going through, traveling throughout Southeast Asia, Gilbert’s second book is less about the act of a physical journey shaping your internal journey and more about a journey through time. By studying the history of marriage and different view points, she is able to create a meaning for marriage that works for her and is not foisted upon her by standard definitions.
They say that marriage is what you make of it–no two are alike. But our definitions and basic understanding 0f marriage confine it to a narrow ideal that can’t possibly explain what marriage is to all people. There is a famous quote said by Groucho Marx that ties back to the negative connotations of “committed:”
Marriage is a wonderful institution…but who wants to live in an institution?
But as Gilbert points out, for all the institutionalizing of marriage that has been forced upon people over the years, what makes or breaks the marriage is how the two people in it choose what it is to them and how to make it work.
Despite its best seller status, Eat, Pray, Love was not beloved by everyone. Gilbert points out in the introduction to Committed that writing a follow-up to a bestseller is a lot of pressure. I’ve already recommended Committed to a friend whose reasons for not enjoying the previous book don’t preclude her from liking the current. Likewise, I can see how fans of the first might find the second less enjoyable. Just as people go into marriage with expectations and have moments where they dislike their spouse, so too do we approach books with expectations and like some books by the same author more than others. I personally really like Gilbert’s writing style–it’s casual but slightly more formal than a conversation over coffee. Those who told me they did not like Eat, Pray, Love often had a problem with something Gilbert said or did along the way of her journey but liked the premise and writing style. With different subject matter and the approach to it, I think a number of people who couldn’t connect with the author the first time could quite enjoy giving her another shot.
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16th February, 2010 by Marcelo - 10 Comments
I’ve been in the e-reader market for over a year now. The Amazon Kindle never interested me due to the closed-off DRM-laden Kindle market and the inability to sideload files. I was briefly interested in Sony’s Pocket Reader because of its small size and low price. But then Barnes & Noble announced their nook e-reader and I got major gadget lust. It had a beautiful form factor, a brilliant mixture of e-ink and LCD touchscreen tech, and an open architecture that allowed sideloading of my own content. Thanks to a very generous Christmas present from my dad, I received my brand new nook a week ago.
My new nook (with case) feels remarkably like a book.
Quick verdict? It rocks. I love it and I’m going to be doing a lot of reading on it. If you want a very detailed review with tech specs and all that, I recommend any one of the many reviews you can find through Google. I want to focus on three main points/objections I hear from people when I talk about my nook:
1) I like the physical feel of books. I could never read books on a screen. I hear this one all the time from people who love books and love reading them. There’s a whole mythology here about the smell of old paper, the tactile physical sensations of thumbing through a crinkly classic, the old world musty airs of comfortable leather sofas and pipe smoke. My uncle Alberto, who refuses to even have an email address, wrote an entire book about this sort of thing. They see e-readers as a sterile and unfulfilling alternative, one that is trying to push their old pastime into the dustbin of history.
But here’s the thing–the nook (and most other e-readers) are designed with this experience in mind. The e-ink screen reads like paper, pure and simple. It requires good light, provides about the same page size as a trade paperback, and combined with one of B&N’s lovely flip cover cases feels surprisingly booklike. I’ve sat with this thing for hours, flipping digital pages just as I would flip real ones, getting lost in the stories the same way I would if they were on physical paper. There’s nothing sterile or soulless about it; on the contrary, it’s a solid extension of the same soulful process, the act of reading, that so many book lovers seem to love as much or more than the books themselves.
2) Why go through all the trouble with a nook or a Kindle when Apple’s iPad is going to change everything? It’s true–from a technology standpoint, Apple’s new tablet device is going to be sick. It’s going to have an iBooks Store that will compete with (and possibly eclipse) the Amazon and B&N offerings. The iPad can also play games, browse the web, check email–it’s extendable via all sorts of apps. Compared to the nook or the Kindle, which only do one thing, it seems like a no-brainer.
Except for that damned screen. Using the best e-reader app available (Stanza), I’ve read two long novels on my iPhone so far (Cory Doctorow’s Makers and a reread of The Stand by Stephen King). Stanza is amazing, a fully customizable iPhone reading experience that feels natural and intuitive. I was never annoyed by the iPhone’s small size when I read. But even with Stanza I couldn’t deal with the LCD screen. I spend my whole day working in front of a computer screen; I don’t want to spend my evenings staring at another one in order to read a book. It’s straining on the eyes; it causes headaches. For quick reading experiences like websites or a 15-minute quick dip into your book on the subway or something it’s perfect, but I can’t curl up for eight hours with an LCD screen and charge through an entire book. The iPad, with its brightly backlit LCD screen, would feel the same.
The beautiful e-ink screen requires light and reads like paper.
Enter e-ink technology. Unlike backlit LCDs that shoot light at your eyes, e-ink requires the same soft light a book does. The way it works is that a screen is coated with tiny capsules of ink that can be oriented to show black or show nothing. A signal from the machine tells each capsule on the screen how to orient itself in one go. Dot by dot it forms a page. With a press of a button you get another page. It’s a disastrous technology for computers, because it takes a whole second to refresh one page (whereas typical LCDs refresh 80 times a second). It’s also grayscale. So you’re not going to get complex animations or vivid color with e-ink, although the tech is getting better and within a few years you’ll start to see those things. But for now, black and white static images is all e-ink is good for. That sucks if you want to quickly browse the web and scroll through the news, but it’s perfect for the kind of application that requires a new page every few seconds at the most, and if that new page doesn’t require color most of the time–like a book. Another advantage is that the only power e-ink uses is for the initial orientation of the ink every time you refresh–it takes zero power to keep the e-ink where it is, so you can keep a page on your reader for hours at a time without using power (whereas an LCD is constantly refreshing and constantly backlit, a power hog). This is why Kindle boasts a battery life in weeks, not hours. Nook’s is slightly worse because it does employ an LCD screen for navigation purposes (that shuts off after ten seconds of not using it so you can read in peace).
And let me tell you, after reading two and a half average length books on this technology, it’s so nice. It’s the opposite of working on an LCD screen. The issues with slow refresh are totally invisible, especially when you’re in a nice reading-centered mindset. It’s a patient and calm technology, the opposite of the hyperfast computer ethos. This is what I love most about the nook. It’s not meant for computer geeks and tech nerds, almost all of whom will prefer the multitasking and much faster and slicker iPad. The nook doesn’t multitask, it doesn’t overload your brain with jargon and info. It’s a technology that goes at the pace of readers who hate how fast everything else goes.
3) e-books aren’t like mp3s, they will never replace real books; why buy a technology that’s not going to last? This is a broader extension of argument 1, aimed more at the overall trends of technology and what makes reading pleasurable. On this argument I would say that I agree wholeheartedly. e-books will never replace real books. Real books are too efficient and too good at what they do. Plus you can mark things in them, lend them, borrow them, and they are far far more durable than any piece of technology is.
So why invest in an e-reader then? Why pay for e-books at all? The answer is because the reading space is not a zero sum game. e-books don’t have to replace real books because they don’t do the same things. I love real books. I don’t love buying a big fat book every time I want to read something. I don’t like lugging three books in a bag while traveling that will just weigh things down. And I don’t like having to own all these books. Unlike my aforementioned uncle, I’m not interested in gathering books and building a library in which to house my esoteric collection. I have maybe a dozen of my favorite books that I keep. For everything else, I’d much rather buy an e-book. I will pay for the convenience of not having to store and take care of a physical object.
nook vs. The Stand. Which would you rather take on the go?
A perfect example of this was The Stand, one of my all-time favorite books. I have it in hardcover. It’s one of the rare books I like physically owning. It’s massive, over 1000 pages. It weighs like ten pounds and it’s at least four inches thick. Carrying it around with me on my daily errands is impossible. It’s so big I can’t even really curl up with it on the couch or take it to bed because it’s so imbalanced, especially at the beginning and the end. Even the mass market paperback of The Stand is a pain; it’s small in length and height, but it’s still crazy thick, which makes it impossible to put in your pocket and leaves a bulge in your bag when you take it anywhere. But the e-version, which I read on my phone, fit in my pocket. A nook version would be the size and weight of any trade paperback. Why go through the trouble of lugging some thick-ass book, too unwieldy to carry anywhere or use in any elegant way, when you can read the same text on a tiny light form factor?
And on top of this, I can do this with hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of books. I can own the entire output of any author I want and barely make a dent in my nook’s internal memory. E-books are teeny, they take up a fraction of the data even the sparest MP3 takes. You can fit hundreds of them on a gigabyte. My nook will store the library of books I want to read but don’t want to physically own.
What I’m getting at is that e-books are a complement to real books. I’m far more likely to invest time and effort in an e-book that’s available to me through my nook’s store or on the Internet than to take the time to go to the bookstore, seek out a book, buy it, take it home, read it, then find a way to get rid of it. I’ll read a ton of things I would never have tried if my only option was purchasing a physical book. On more than one occasion I’ve read a book electronically and then opted to purchase the physical book to keep in my permanent collection. E-books spur the purchase of real books, and more importantly they spur the exploration of as many books as possible. They help people discover new authors (I would never have found my beloved Rudy Rucker without his free e-book release of Postsingular). They provide a low barrier to reading something that would otherwise be an expensive hassle. They’re devices for people who already love reading, and so far my nook has only magnified that love. People who say e-books won’t last miss the point of having e-books.
If you’re a lover of books, you owe it to yourself to at least research e-reader tech. In my mind, the nook has its competitors beat. As time goes by I might post a few more impressions as they come to me. But I might be too busy reading.
****
Marcelo’s journey through books began like most book lovers: childhood addiction. But a long drought of reading that lasted through college and into his mid-20s curbed his book passions. It wasn’t until his best friend dared him to read Ulysses with her that he became hooked all over again.
A self-identified info-hippie and free culture enthusiast, Marcelo’s favorite library is the Burbank Public Library within walking distance from his house. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his first novel, which will probably never be published because it isn’t Ulysses.
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2nd February, 2010 by Christina - 3 Comments
Most weekends I walk. It’s a form of meditation that clears the mind and opens my eyes to new things that have always been right before me. Some days I choose to meander around the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, an excursion that often ends up with me in the dirt trying to capture a moment with my camera or lugging home yet another plant and some soil. Other days I prefer Prospect Park with its many paths leading to new discoveries and the calm or chaos that comes with different weather, people, a zoo, and fences that get in my way.
It is surprising to find a book dedicated to the history of walking. No one talks about walking just as no one talks about breathing. Walking and breathing are simply things we do. Unless you are trying to become healthier by improving your stride or folding into a pose during a yoga class, walking and breathing just happen on the periphery.
I have walked (to the dismay of my mother) through a good portion of Brooklyn late at night. There comes a point when you realize that the amount of time you will wait for a bus and the ride stopping every two blocks to a transfer bus will take longer than to just walk home. What could take over an hour in vehicular travel ends up taking forty minutes on foot. That is forty minutes of free time with no obligations, free time to explore your surroundings without worrying about bumping into other pedestrians. The streets of the city, especially late at night, are scary because we imbue them with fear that festers after news reports. But we only hear of the occasional crime because it is more interesting than the many times crime does not happen. By refusing to give into the fear we are able to take back our walks and the night. That doesn’t mean one shouldn’t be alert at all times and judge which blocks or neighborhoods are safer to walk along.
Vehicular travel has changed our perception of space. A destination of a few blocks seems so much further when we debate the time it takes to get there by foot or by car. But what we are comparing is not two equal scenarios. What we are comparing is the worst of cases on foot to the best of cases in a car–no traffic, no lights, no one way streets. By foot we have more options and our time is controlled by our own pace and not by others on the road or city planners. Walking is freedom.
In college, I was laughed at for suggesting we walk to the grocery store rather than drive. A small town along a busy road from large place to large place, the walk would have taken approximately 15 minutes as campus and store were on the same side of the street. The trip by car took close to half an hour when you included the time it took to walk from the dorms to the student parking lot, maneuvering through the parking lot, waiting at the light to join the traffic on the busy road, passing the grocery store to get onto the other side of the median, and then finding a parking space and walking from car to store. On foot (a trip made alone), I would cut between two dorms, across the football field and a small side road up to the motion sensor activated doors of the grocery.
Solnit started her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking in the manner that is almost tradition amongst writers–with a walk. And walking isn’t just relegated to the process; it often finds its way into the pages of some of our most beloved authors as they use walks to showcase thoughts or social standing or environment. Even lyrics of music are littered with walking terms: life is a journey, not a destination–it’s also a highway, Otis Redding walked 2000 miles to make this dock his home, while others have gone walking after midnight. We’ve even destroyed our ability to walk by paving paradise and putting up a parking lot. Our language is filled with terms and metaphors of walking, and periodically Solnit lists them in relation to the chapter.
A great deal happens when we’re walking. Writers often explain that they aren’t wasting time staring out a window or taking the dog for a walk; that happens to be where the magic lies, not in front of a computer screen. Walking is where disparate ideas start to take shape into something tangible. Walking lets us think through problems, reaffirm faith (pilgrimages), return to nature (hiking), and share our opinions (protest marches).
There’s a reason we add the word “lust” to “wander.” Walking awakens new desires and passions in us. Reading a book, a good book, does much the same and becomes a mental walk. Looking at the social and cultural implications of walk, Solnit talks about the various taboos and world changing events that have come about due to walking such as the Million Man March or the first ascent of Mt. Everest. From a sign of poverty to an aristocratic pastime, walking has been a way to show off, to court, to be alone, to observe.
Walking is a way to analyze a culture–what does it say about past societies where women were restricted to walking around the living room, where blacks are afraid to leave urban centers, where minorities are licensed and restricted to where they are allowed to walk “for their own safety” only to be pushed further into crime and punishment for the unenforceability of the illogical laws, and tanks will run over walking students asking for change? All are things that have happened within the past two centuries.
Some of the chapters are fascinating, such as the look at why man came down out of the trees (one theory suggesting that it lead to the eventual quest for the booze), while others are horrific in describing the things achieved by walking and the atrocities along the way (civil rights movement, suffrage, revolutions) and eventually Solnit looks into the future of walking as more and more public space is lost to roads and unwalkable city planning. The reading is a bit dense and slow going, but well worth a look.
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26th January, 2010 by Christina - No Comments
It took me about two years of occasionally listening to Depeche Mode before I ever decided that I loved the band. Sometimes this happens with books; we want to read them, we may even start them–but for whatever reason the timing just isn’t right. Sometimes it takes a few starts and stops before we finally get past a certain page. There is a difference between not getting into a book because you don’t like it and not getting into a book because you have three others that are really piquing your interest at the moment and a busy work schedule. Some books need to be put down and never finished, others deserve a second chance.
The Postmistress was the first book I requested from a publisher’s catalog specifically to review. Every time I heard from my contact asking how I liked it I would feel horrible responding that I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet even though I had committed and agreed to read and review it. Lucky for me, the book isn’t due out until February 9th and my intention was always to post a review right before release to help pump up interest in the book. So I squeaked in just under the wire.
There are some books that don’t ring an emotional response from the reader in blatant ways. I, for example, am a crier and have been known to bawl in the park and on the subway because of various passages that struck my fancy. But there are some books, like The Postmistress that seem to deserve tears that never come. It’s not that they’re unemotional books; it’s that they are working their message deeper and in different ways. Instead of crying, I would put down the book and be antsy, restless–even aggravated that I could not go back in time to help the past wrongs of humanity.
Most books that deal with war–any war–from mankind’s past deal with the victims and soldiers. Only occasionally do you find a book from the point of those left behind wondering what is happening on the battlefields–anxious for news that comes in censored bits and pieces or never at all.
I’ve seen a number of reviews linked on Twitter regarding The Postmistress. In an effort not to influence my own opinion, I haven’t read any of them, but I am now curious as to how many draw parallels to Atonement. Both books take place during World War II and are set partially in London where main characters seek refuge from the Blitz in underground tunnels, people are lost to the ravages of war, and people seek to control an unpredictable world.
The plots are different enough to appreciate both books as completely separate entities, but the parallels are very close–particularly on the theme of control and trying to right a wrong. The difference is influence behind our choices–out of remorse, guilt, and shame in Atonement or out of a need to protect the people we care for and the order of our world as in The Postmistress.
There is no pattern to the chaos that happens in life. You cannot predict the outcome of events or the small ways in which a moment in time will reshape our entire lives. Even order within the chaos has the ability to be illogical and unfathomable–the rules in place to keep the post office running are the same rules that tore Jewish families apart during their exodus from Germany because of small typos.
The constant in it all is the despair, hurt, hope, and healing that allows life to move forward. Everything happens and plays out as it is supposed to, even if it does not make sense. And everything is connected and flows together even if we do not see the threads that bind it all together.
Blake does some really beautiful things with her writing that tie right back to that thread of life when a thought or a sight forms the transition from one character’s point of view to another’s. She picks the peaceful moments like a song of a bird–those quiet moments are the times when we are more connected than at any other. In a way, this transitioning reflects itself and life in the same manner as Frankie’s final recording; as much as we isolate ourselves and our personal stories, they are all overlapping, all the same, all connected, adding to the confusion and order of existence.
I could fault Blake with not making the book as heavy in some key parts, she does an excellent job of tapping on ones heart and making the reader question what they would have done in Will’s place after his world view is shattered, Frankie’s place on the train, or in Iris’s place at the post office.
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22nd January, 2010 by Christina - 1 Comment
After some trial and error with regards to being asked to review specific books, I finally found a policy that works for me. Basically, I’m willing to look at the book but there’s no guarantee that I’ll review it. It’s not that I’m against sharing bad reviews or feel obligated to only give good reviews in exchange for free books. What I’m hoping to do with posting a majority of positive reviews is to inspire readers to both pick up a book and to do something as a result of reading it that will enrich their lives. Neither negative nor blazé reviews do that very well.
The first book I stipulated this “no agreement until I can flip through it” arrangement with was The Army of the Republic. Reading the synopsis and background of the sales, it just didn’t seem like a book I would like.
Fascinated by the revolutionary impulse he witnessed during business trips to South America, Stuart began to wonder what similar movements would look like here in the United States. His research for THE ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC required numerous interviews with former revolutionaries in Argentina, Buenos Aires police who were active in the ’70s, CIA members, former ’60s radicals and present-day student activists to get an idea of how and why an insurgency forms, the course it can take, and the effects on the individuals within them.
Stuart Archer Cohen’s THE ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC (Picador Trade Paperback; October 2009) is set in a dark alternate America–one that we have seen actual glimmers of over the past few tumultuous years. It is run by a corrupt government with designs to privatize public resources, and to silence dissent with a ruthless secret security force. But as the plans of greedy politicians and their corporate cronies begin to see the light of day, and dissenters are abducted and silenced, the citizens can no longer ignore the writing on the wall.
While I wasn’t taken with the premise and the feeling of a John Grisham thriller, it didn’t sound bad–just not my thing. So I would take a look and not let assumptions guide my decision. A week after finishing and digesting the book, after almost blowing off social engagements to keep reading, and telling friends they HAD to read this book, I can say I’m glad I didn’t listen to the assumptions in my head.
My basic sales pitch to friends is that the book is like Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother…for adults. Or Watchmen in novel form without the superheros. The setting is a slightly different now or near future, but one that is believable because we see it beginning to take shape every day as eight-year-olds end up on airport watch lists and limitations on campaign financing are removed.
The book explores what it means to be a revolutionary versus a terrorist. Oscar Wilde is known for, among other things, having said, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” The truth about history is that it is written by the winners. A person can be a revolutionary and a terrorist–it just depends on which side of the struggle you are on. Case in point, the Boston Tea Party was, by modern standards, an act of terrorism.
It is also looking into who has the voice of the people, the majority? Minority? What if the people don’t use their voices? What if the media obscures their voices? What if vigilantes are just enforcing their own will? In the end, the message is to pay attention–don’t be blinded by branding and be aware that much of what is said in the media is crafted and manipulated to influence you. You have to make a decision and do something about it rather than hoping things will change or that someone will fight for you. Most importantly, don’t fall into a false sense of complacency.
It’s not easy to make those decisions and stand up for what you believe is right when you recognize that you could be hurt, tortured, or killed by the other side–especially when the other side has more power, more money, and more media influence than you. But people have done it to free nations and fight for equal rights even if it meant having fire hoses turned on them, getting trampled in riots, or going to war.
So remember, pay attention–gather facts from multiple sources and make your own conclusions. Don’t rely on other people to tell you what’s going on in the world or what side to take. And more importantly, don’t expect others to fight for you. As Pastor Niemöller said in his famous poem, “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out.”
Buy The Army of the Republic. It’s a predictable template with clear changes of voice and rationalized points of view for each narrator. But it is captivating. thought provoking, and a little fighting when you think about the changes and direction America has been taking. And it will make you pay attention.
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19th January, 2010 by Christina - 1 Comment
I’m sorry this “review” does not do justice to Peter and Max. I’ve spent my day fighting Wordpress and a crazy shredding machine while hoping to get out of work for a yoga workshop. So the below isn’t quite what I want it to be and is instead rather disjointed. But I really wanted to get something posted, and well, it is what it is I guess.
I like to refer to the Fablesas a gateway drug for women who are new to comics. Lately, I’ve seen more and more book bloggers talking about their new interest in comics as adults and women and Fablesseems to be the one comic to strike their fancy. The storyline is accessible in the universality of the characters and shows those not familiar with comics how not everything is a wham, bam, superhero story.
Traditional book or a comic, what’s important about both is that they’re about storytelling. The impression I get is that the nature of fairytales–the fact that we’ve grown up with them–makes them easily accessible in alternate forms. Last month, the LA Times stated that though, “There’s no reliable way to score the game…it’s at least arguable that the European fairy tale has been the source for more popular entertainments than any other narrative tradition.” How many novels and movies have been made as an alternative or modern version of Cinderella? Sleeping Beauty? Beauty and the Beast? There are also operas, ballets, plays, musicals, cartoons–the list goes on and on.
Vertigo and Willingham have taken this tradition of telling a story from an oral tradition, made it into a comic and now done something no comics house had done, published a book using characters and their stories who fit within the Fables world but have not been featured in the comics. The basic background of Fables is that all the beloved fairytale, folktale, and fantasy characters exist in a parallel ”universe” from which they have been driven out and into our world where they quietly exist. The series has focused on different characters from Little Boy Blue to Snow White, while two characters–fame-seeking, get-rich-quick Jack and Cinderella as double-oh-seven in a pair of glass slippers–have been given their own comics to continue their story lines. In the Fablesworld, characters of a certain name are the same in all stories–the wolf that tricked Red Riding Hood is the same one that blew down a few piggie houses. So all these stories merge and form a background around each other.
In the move to book, Peter and Max, the story of Peter (of pepper eating and wolf thwarting fame) has been alerted that his older–evil–brother Max has made his way from their original world and into ours where he most likely intends to wreak havoc. Coming from comics, Willingham has used the language that evokes imagery to allow us to see in our minds the way we see when reading comics. One can even hear the story as the writing, appropriately as the story is about a musician, captures a musical sound. A part of what this language does is help intertwine one Peter story to the next in an even flow rather than forcing the reader to stumble as they try to connect the dots.
By taking on a new character in a new format, Peter and Max doesn’t offend the fans of the original while still welcoming newcomers. The back-story of Fables is minimal focusing almost exclusively on the story of two brothers whose exploits have made it into the subconscious of storytelling without relying on the plot and story arc of the comics. Instead there is just enough with a character and a mention or two of other events to provide a solid story that might make readers whose first experience with this world in the book curious as to the story being told in the comics.
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15th January, 2010 by Christina - 9 Comments
This is actually a two book review, but if I included both titles as my header, it would be a really long header.
I don’t know if all kids have/had this at school, but when I was in elementary school, we occasionally had book sales where you’d take a little catalogue home and promptly throw it out or try and beg your parents to buy you books. Somehow, I ended up with copies of The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald.
And then I had no interest in reading them.
Which was a shame because for the past few months the books popped into my consciousness again and I decided that I needed to read them. While at my parents for Christmas, I went through the giant box of my childhood books and brought the copies home with me.
And proceeded to devour them in the course of an afternoon wishing they had struck my fancy as a child.
The whole shame of not reading them is only partly because I ended up enjoying them quite a bit, but also because the books can probably be qualified as early versions of the Fantasy genre. Similar to The Chronicles of Narnia, the books are high in religious (Christian) symbolism–more obviously so in The Princess and Curdie. Starting off almost fairytale-like, The Princess and the Goblin descends into something a little darker and weirder dealing with themes of faith and trust. These themes are reestablished in The Princess and Curdie.
When talking to people only loosely familiar with the genres and concepts, it seems many tend to assume Fantasy and Science Fiction are the same. While both can, and often do, take place in alternate versions of reality or strange worlds, Fantasy has more a touch of folk or fairytale with a bit of magic while Science Fiction should drawing on, well, science.*
For those of us who only lightly dabble with either genre, we don’t think of it as going back past The Lord of the Rings or War of the Worlds. Fantasy and Science Fiction are something we assume are products of the Twentieth Century. This may be true of Science Fiction (can anyone provide me with examples of pre-1900?), but both these books were published around 1872, so I’m now curious to find more early Fantasy to compare it to what is published today.
After finishing The Princess and the Goblin, I expected The Princess and Curdie to simply complete the story of the little eight-year-old Princess Irene and the the twelve-year-old miner boy Curdie. While the first book focuses on Irene and her beliefs, the second focuses more on Curdie and his learning to have faith. Irene is barely featured at all. Looking back, I realized that the title Princess wasn’t so much Irene, but her great-great-grandmother who is prominent in the background of events taking place in both books. This was surprising because I realised it is so easy to become engaged with the story at hand while reading without looking further into what the words really mean and the mutability of what is truth–a lesson that also happens to be a message of the books.
It only took me a few decades to finally read the books and I’m glad I did. Having done so has opened my eyes to the need not to just read the words on the page, but to understand the hidden meanings behind them as well as rekindled the desire to give books that held no interest for me before another chance.
* A former coworker of mine took a class on High Fantasy which focus more on books like The Lord of The Ringsand what makes a Fantasy novel or series more epic and less fairytale–I only have a rudimentary understanding of the differences between the various linked genres and am now interested in taking the class myself.
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