Zombies vs. Vampires

Last week I finished two books, each a hallmark of the vampire or zombie craze.  The vampire book was Breaking Dawn (book 4/4 in the Twilight series) by Stephanie Meyer.  Zombies were represented by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith (although Jane Austen gets first billing).

I've already discussed my thoughts on the Twilight series, and I don't want to give any spoilers.  I'll limit myself to saying that Breaking Dawn shared many of the same strengths and weaknesses as the first three books in the series, except that Book 4 did no tip-toeing around adult issues.  If anything, protagonist Bella grew up at lightning speed over the course of the final book in the series.  I was shocked that Meyer didn't spread Bella's journey to adulthood over a few more best-selling books.

As for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the idea of the sister warriors was comical, but entirely unbelievable.  Grahame-Smith made no attempt to offer readers a reason these young ladies had the raw material to be so suddenly transformed into effective zombie-killers.  But with a healthy dose of suspended disbelief, their training scenes were amusing.  The narrative was at its best when it was the most gruesome and gross.   Any time the storyline veered away from rotting carcasses it reminded me entirely too much of the original.  I think I might prefer having my brains eaten to spending an afternoon with Mary and Kitty.

Of the two books which did I prefer?  It's hardly fair for me to choose based on the merit of the books.  I'm all about vampires.  Zombie stories are okay, but they just don't hold the same appeal for me as vampires.

Vampire stories are psychological.  They touch on emotion, instinct, desire, hope, fear.  They touch on what it means to be human, but more than that, speculate on what it would be like to be more than human, to have great power, strength, and longevity, to see what man might be capable of if he were more. Zombie stories also explore the human condition.  Zombies show us what it is like to be dead, what it is like to be nothing more than a body, a shell, without any spark of consciousness.  Zombies get into the nitty gritty of mortality: rot, decomposing, loss of body parts.  Zombies often lose thumbs, shed limbs, eat their own tongues.  They shamble on, asking us how much we can lose and still claim to be ourselves.

Vampires let us experience immortality, zombies rub our noses in the reality of our mortality.  I guess between eternal life and putrid death, I find eternal life more fun.

Breaking Dawn ranks #59 in Books on Amazon.com.  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies ranks #540.  Both books are available in Kindle format.

Tinkers

On the rare occasions that Paul Harding tries to state in plain language the theme of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Tinkers, the sentences become complex, requiring the reader to wade through parentheses and vague pronouns to grasp at its elusive meaning.  Fortunately Harding has lots of other methods in his literary toolkit to help us understand what he is saying: metaphor, motif, character, description, mythology, plot.  His use of language as he employs these tools is mesmerizing.

Tinkers doesn't question the meaning of life; it asks, what is life and how does life feel?  The novel addresses how we experience our existence as human beings: how we perceive life in our own skin, how we sense a link to something greater than ourselves, and how we relate to that link.  It is a novel of direct experience, beautifully written so that the reader shares the experiences of the characters in a very visceral way.

In one of my favorite passages of the book, one of Harding's characters describes how the blind eat:

"That's how the blind know where the food is on their plates, like a clock, ham at six-thirty! biscuit at four! just like that, that's how Helen Keller did it, I bet, just like that, potatoes at high noon!"

Not only does this passage tie in with the clockwork motif that runs throughout the book, its chatty text defines the heart of the novel.  We all come into the world blind, told by religion, local culture, and the experience of those who come before us, to expect ham at six-thirty, biscuit at four.  The father and son protagonists of Tinkers are blind men engaged in direct experience of life.  They rely on no road maps, assumptions, or conventions.  Not only don't they know where the ham is on the plate, they aren't taking anyone's word on what ham is.  Their knowledge of ham comes from their groping contact with it- the smell, the slippery grease on their fingers, the salty taste, the resistance of the meat on their teeth.

For me this rendering of direct experience makes Tinkers more than worthy of the Pulitzer Prize it was awarded in April.  Literature is a rendering through the art of language of how we experience the human condition.  Solid grounding in the reality of our condition is the ironic ignition to transcendence, allowing us to touch something ethereal and magical that defines new planes of reality.

Tinkers is ranked #13 in Amazon's print literary category, and ranks #228 on the Kindle best seller list.

The Dark Mirror

A few weeks ago I wrote a post called Second Helpings in which I expressed my disappointment that some of my favorite authors are turning out "new" books that failed to say anything new. So I picked up The Dark Mirror by Juliet Marillier with a certain amount of trepidation. Marillier writes romantic fantasy series based on Celtic history and mythology. There are certain hallmarks I expect from a Marillier novel: I expect her protagonist to have a deep respect for nature, I expect druids and supernatural abilities, I expect Celtic folklore and mythology, I expect a conflict between nations, I expect a conflict between the native religion of the land and Christianity, I expect the protagonist to be socially exiled, and that some kind of romantic relationship will sustain her in the final struggle to achieve her goal.

In The Dark Mirror Marillier delivered all these trademarks, and at the same time managed to do something new. How did she make the familiar exciting and new? By developing minor themes from her previous work and making them the major themes of her new book.

For instance, toward the end of Marillier's first book, Daughter of the Forest, readers are introduced to the idea that a community may reject and be afraid of a nubile young outsider, tying this fear to stories of mermaids or other mythological creatures who lure young men from their communities, or simply drive them mad with their beauty. This theme, which did not appear until the final chapters of Daughter of the Forest, was central to The Dark Mirror. War and political intrigue, which played the role of setting in Daughter of the Forest, were crucial to the plot of The Dark Mirror. And, appropriate to the role of battle and political plotting, the primarily female perspective of Daughter of the Forest was replaced by evenly split scenes from the point of view of the hero and the heroine. The Dark Mirror did not have the fairytale quality that made me fall in love with Daughter of the Forest- it felt more like a history, rooted in court life with professional bodyguards, tasters, and men and women angling for power. Marillier changed the tone and character of her followup without losing her voice- and she remained consistent to her world, and made all the changes resonate with elements of her previous work.

The result was a novel that I was just as enthusiastic about at the end of the read as I was when I bought it.

On Amazon the paperback edition of The Dark Mirror ranks #51,413 in Books, and the Kindle edition ranks #9,328 in the Kindle Store.

Dandelion Wine

For longer than we've been married, my husband and I have been trying to finish Ray Bradbury's summertime classic, Dandelion Wine. We started reading the slender volume of summertime, Americana-drenched vignettes aloud together one summer, long ago, but never finished it. Several summers later we tried to read the book again, but didn't get past chapter three. Our third attempt was no more successful.

In the time it has taken us to *not* read Dandelion Wine, we have finished many sprawling series, such as The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, Harry Potter. We read the Iliad out loud, sitting side-by-side at the dining room table in Turin. We read fiction and non-fiction, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, and mainstream. We read newspapers, magazines, novels, instruction manuals, and poetry. We read books aloud together in English, Italian, and French. We read at least four other books by Ray Bradbury.

So why did we repeatedly fail to finish Dandelion Wine?

Dandelion Wine is the distilled essence of summer: sunshine and sneakers, hot kitchens, porches, lemonade, and ice cream parlors. It isn't best read cramped in a suffocating, miserable apartment, in a land where everyone flees from their hometown during the month of August, or in a bustling city. It's easier to see The Swan in a quiet, small town where people sit on their porches late into the evening. It's easier to sense the Lonely One behind you when the cicadas and crickets have worked their hypnotic song deep into your dreams.

But, no matter where you're living when Dandelion Wine slides between your hands, the magic won't leap off the pages until you can quietly follow the residents of Green Town through the summer of 1928 as June ripens to July, bakes into August, fades to September. It's time to read Dandelion Wine when the reader is ready to accept, along with the residents of Green Town, that what makes life so beautiful is the fact that it's all only temporary.

Throughout the book we say hello, only to say good-bye. As Mrs. Bentley cherishes childhood memories she comes to the realization that she was never a child. Miss Fern and Miss Roberts are thrilled by the the Green Machine, but soon vow never to drive it again. The trolley goes on its last ride. John Huff leaves Green Town for good. We say good-bye to Grandma.

Half of summer's glory is knowing that it fades, turns into back-to-school notebooks and ten-cent erasers. If the seasons never changed, if children never grew into withered old men and women, if even the people we loved never died, would any of our experience be so precious? Finding the summer where it was okay to love things and lose them all at the same time wasn't easy- at least, it wasn't easy for me.

This summer my husband and I began Dandelion Wine in June, and finished the last chapter during the last dusty days before September. We wanted to read the paperback copy we started all those summers ago, a copy which followed us from apartment to apartment and across the ocean (twice) to return to us when we were finally ready to read it. The book is also available in Kindle format, and ranks #38,084 in the Kindle Store.

Sag Harbor: Not Really A Novel

Sag Harbor: A Novel seemed an appropriate read for my first summer outside the city in a long time. I've always felt a special magic generated in seasonal communities, where residents own summer homes, come together for the beach days and the barbecues, then drift back to their fall-winter-spring residences and lives. Colson Whitehead did not disappoint in his ability to capture that summer vacation atmosphere, to invoke family life in the 80's, or to paint the bitter-sweetness of coming-of-age. What he did fail to do was write a novel.

I was about two-thirds of the way through the book when I turned back to the cover, in a moment of doubt, to discover that I was not reading Whitehead's memoir, but something he called a novel. I don't have any problem with the fact that Whitehead drew heavily from his own life experience when writing Sag Harbor. But to define the book as a novel, it would have to have a plot.

At the beginning of Sag Harbor, Whitehead hinted at some possible themes: there was the promising idea of duality (disidentification with his "false twin" brother, the duality of his summer life vs. his winter life, finding his place both in his racial community and in white-dominated private Manhattan schools). Unfortunately this duality theme fell away and was not revisited at the end of the novel. Whitehead brought up the coming-of-age theme and the meaning of family theme more consistently throughout the book- but all these themes, like the story line, meandered through the narrative, blending time, place, and situation in much the same way an elderly reminiscer wanders through his cannon of favorite memories- with no regard to dramatic effect or chronology.

I don't mean to sound too harsh about Sag Harbor. It was a pleasant read with a good sense of humor, had memorable and interesting characters, contained beautiful descriptive passages, showed a great command of the language, and created that nice, summer vacation ambiance I was seeking. But it falls into the "enjoy the ride, it's all gonna be ok" mainstream fiction category (although the plot of Sag Harbor was far less coherent than that of The Song Is You). I prefer a lot more drama in something advertised as a novel. I want to be addicted to my current read, anxious to find out what happens next.

On Amazon Sag Harbor is #1,595 in Books and is #1,094 in the Kindle store.

The Little Stranger

School is ending, summer vacation about to begin. This was always my favorite time of the year to relax with a sprawling Victorian-era novel, or better yet, a Victorian-era ghost story. Even though I'm no longer on a school schedule, my urge for that slowly unwinding, creepy tale remains. Fortunately Sarah Waters anticipated my need and published The Little Stranger on April 30, 2009.

It is one thing to read Jane Eyre, The Wyvern Mystery, or Dracula for a dose of Victorian-era gothic, but why would anyone want to read a Victorian-era ghost story published about a month before Apple announced the iPhone 3GS? The answer is that Sarah Waters writes with a modern perspective on the death of the Victorian era, and The Little Stranger is a love letter to the now extinct gothic novel.

Waters speaks to the modern reader's nostalgia for Victorian-era gothic by touching her hat to the conventions of these tales. Her protagonist is a family doctor, a man of science, reason, and compassion. Her setting is a magnificent, but crumbling, haunted house. The haunted descend into very Victorian-style madness. And, of course, there is plenty of unspoken sexual tension. With her established conventions creating a backdrop of nostalgia, Waters then writes about the decline of the Victorian era, the end of a way of life that brought us the Brontës, Le Fanu, Stoker. Her protagonist doctor is concerned about the end of his way of life, as events in the story take place on the eve of establishing nationalized health care in England. Her haunted manor house is crumbling a little more than necessary for traditional gothic ambiance. In fact, Hundreds Hall had been partially stripped and ravaged to house soldiers during the war. The family are struggling to hold onto the house, and selling off great tracts of surrounding land to pay the bills. And because the government won't pay for public utilities to run to its farm, even the dairy is failing. So of course the family, the haunted, are fading aristocrats, people with land and title living miserable, deprived, and desperate lives. The modern world has passed them by, and they are struggling, isolated and alone, knowing that one day their property will be converted into a smart new housing development. As for the sexual tension, even that takes an unconventional turn.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Little Stranger. It's a totally satisfying ghost story, tipping its hat to convention, then going beyond convention to describe an interesting historical transition that ended the age of one of my favorite genres. I also appreciated the way Waters treated the mystery of the ghost. Waters gives her own firm opinion on the strange events at Hundreds Hall, but leaves the reader to connect the dots, and even leaves a little space for the reader to come to his or her own conclusion.

On Amazon The Little Stranger is #144 in Books and #14 in genre fiction. It is #145 in the Kindle Store.

The Story Sisters

Thanks to my local library I was able to get my hands on Alice Hoffman's The Story Sisters almost a week before its June 2nd release on Amazon. In its current pre-order status on Amazon, The Story Sisters is #764 in Books. Kindle sales rank is not yet available, but the book will be sold in Kindle format.

I have read very little Alice Hoffman- just a few short stories from Blackbird House. I was impressed by Hoffman's skillful use of magical realism, her blend of fairytale and real-life family saga. She did an excellent job of returning again and again to key themes (heirloom tomatoes, the color of the light in Paris) and key story events, so that the tale felt pleasantly timeworn. Throughout, I had the comfortable feeling that the story had not been written, but passed down through many generations. Each fateful turn of events seemed preordained, unavoidable, and it was hard to imagine the story unfolding in any other way.

Hoffman wrote fantastic and complex female characters, and the story grew organically from their strengths and flaws. But her male characters were pale by comparison. In most cases the males were nothing more than plot catalysts. Some were antagonists, pushing the women into darker places, others seemed to exist only for the purpose of satisfying the needs and desires of the women who, after all they had been through, seemed to deserve the kind of quiet hero who shovels the snow, buries friends, and comes to the rescue whenever the women need him the most. The most interesting of the men, Lorry, combined aspects of the antagonist and hero, but even he was just an agglomeration of two stock characters, and was hardly a person in his own right.

These overly convenient male characters are harbingers of the only other flaw in the book. The Story Sisters is just a little too sentimental, its moral compass too conventional. A writer with Hoffman's skill could do more than just reaffirm the values of family bonds and love. That said, she pulled off this reaffirmation with great skill and beauty.

The Good Book

I just finished reading The Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible. I listened to the audiobook version, read by author, David Plotz.

What I found very interesting about this book was that it hinged on a lack of expertise. Plotz states that, although his Jewish religion has always been an important part of his life, he more or less had no idea what was written in the Old Testament. Plotz doesn't take any classes, consult Biblical scholars, or learn Biblical Hebrew. And on the rare occasion he admits to having consulted a reference to better understand a passage of the Bible, he apologizes for it- he calls his use of the reference "cheating."

The point of Plotz's book is not Biblical scholarship, nor are his insights backed up by Biblical scholarship. The point of the book is David Plotz- the author, how he reacted to this experience, and how it changed him.

I actually had a lot of fun listening to The Good Book. Where else will you hear the prophet Habakkuk called a gloomy Gus? Or hear the opinion that God favors the bald? The book also served as a good reminder to me that readers are just as interested in following the experience of an everyman as they are in becoming more informed about a topic of interest. For many readers ideas are interesting, but people are fascinating.

The Good Book ranks #3,843 in Books on Amazon and is #2,006 in the Kindle Store.

The Song Is You: Enjoy the ride, it's all gonna be okay

There's nothing wrong with Arthur Phillip's The Song is You. It was #11 on Amazon's Best Books of the Month for April 2009, and it received high praise from The New York Times. The book ranks #936 in Amazon's bestselling books, and is #612 in the Kindle store. Obviously people read the book and like it. I read the book, and didn't dislike it. Phillip writes well, the novel's setting celebrates technology as part of our daily experience, and the story centers around music- one of my life-long passions. But I felt no passion for The Song Is You. My first indication that my interest in the story was only lukewarm, was the unusually long time it took me to read the book. I needed about two weeks to get through 272 pages of The Song Is You, while I read all 608 pages of New Moon in three days.

Certainly some of the speed difference can be accounted for by the different processing speed needed to appreciate Phillip's beautiful prose. But the real reason it took me so long to read The Song Is You was that, about a quarter of the way through the story, I already knew how the book would end. How did I know? Well, it all comes down to Phillip's protagonist.

Arthur Phillips knows how to write very interesting and engaging characters. The protagonist's brother made me laugh every time he entered a scene. His would-be girlfriend was quirky, obsessive, and extremely interesting. The protagonist's alter-ego (the ex-musician/artist) always stirred up the story. But the protagonist, whose life history the reader learned in touching, intimate detail, was a very, very boring guy. Not only that, the protagonist was unsure of what he wanted, and as a result his attempts to make things happen in the story were half-hearted and lukewarm, much like my attachment to the book.

The Song Is You is a story meant to say: "enjoy the ride, it's all gonna be okay." I used to avoid reading mainstream literature, thinking this was always the message. However, I've come to enjoy many mainstream and literary authors (T.C. Boyle, David Wroblewski, Garrison Keillor, William Trevor, John Updike) who know how to write protagonists with unreasonable desires that they will fulfill at any cost. I've decided that "enjoy the ride, it's all gonna be okay" is just one genre out of many under the umbrella of mainstream and literary fiction. I'll bet "enjoy the ride, it's all gonna be okay" is a genre that's nice to read slowly, before bed, with the nightstand lamp lit. There's nothing wrong with the genre, it's just not my cup of tea.

New Moon - Twilight, Book 2

Today New Moon, the second in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, is the 5th bestselling Kindle book. Book 4 of the same series is the 2nd bestselling book, and Book 3 of the same series is the 4th bestselling book. In Amazon's paper bestsellers, New Moon ranks #11, behind books of the same series at #4, #7, and #8.

In other words, New Moon and the Twilight series are insanely popular.

As I read the first three-quarters of New Moon, I was on my way to becoming one more of Meyer's legion of fans. New Moon keeps all that was good about Book 1, and improves it. As I had been hoping, protagonist Bella begins to grow up and become an even stronger character.

Bella wants to become a vampire so she can be with her boyfriend, forever. Meyer thwarts Bella's desire in the most exciting way possible- by having the boyfriend dump Bella. This teenage tragedy may not have the literary substance of Ulysses- but Bella is a quintessential protagonist. Sincere and relentless in her drive to get what she wants, Bella is a protagonist who makes things happen- an ideal engine for the story. She forces fights between monsters, drives her boyfriend from the country, goes on wild motorcycle rides, jumps off cliffs, goes flying half-way around the world on a moment's notice. She is a person who does dangerous things to satisfy her desires, and her dramatic actions result in an equally dramatic story.

In Book 2 Bella is not only a stronger protagonist, but she is stronger physically and emotionally, too. She's a lot tougher in the first three-quarters of Book 2- no more fainting spells every other page. The experience of being dumped by her boyfriend, and living through it, makes her emotionally tougher, as well. This was exactly the sort of character growth I was looking for after Book 1 to justify the series as a good, if guilty-pleasure, read. I was even impressed by Meyer's technique of letting blank chapters scroll past as the time passes during which Bella is in shock after her romantic tragedy.

Unfortunately my praise of the book ends at the point in the story where the action drives toward the climax (at exactly the same point I lost interest in Book 1). Several things happen, all of which indicate a decline of quality in the narrative: 1. Bella leaves New Forks (the created world where she coexists with vampires and werewolves). 2. Action drama overtakes relationship drama (Meyer writes relationship drama better than action sequences). 3. Bella begins to faint, droop, swoon, or topple about so often that she is rarely on her own feet. 4. Tension comes from an outside danger instead of coming from the existing situation established in the first three-quarters of the book. 5. Meyer has to do an awful lot of explaining about why certain acts would be awful or terrible for one or more of the characters to live through- her readers should already know that in their guts if the threat is going to hit them where it hurts.

Toward the end of the story New Moon did reclaim a little of my interest by delving deeper into Twilight mythology. We learned more about the enmity between vampires and werewolves (Meyer did achieve the kind of set-up necessary to make the reader feel a visceral sorrow for the fact that Bella has dear friends of both species who are sworn enemies to each other). Meyer also does a little more explaining about what makes Bella so special in her mythological scheme, and adds further interest and complication to the subject of whether or not Bella will achieve her dream of becoming a vampire.

Kindle DX Announced

Amazon has just announced yet another new Kindle device, now available for pre-order. The Kindle DX is meant to make PDF documents, textbooks, reference books, and other graphic-intense materials easier to read. The Kindle DX has a screen two and a half times the size of the regular Kindle. Not only is the screen bigger, it has a wide screen mode, which allows you to tip the device 90 degrees to produce a larger, landscape view (like the iPhone). There is also a 5-way controller on the device which, so it seemed in the promotional video, should make it fast and easy to increase and decrease text size as needed when reading a cookbook, textbook, or professional document. Amother big advantage of the Kindle DX over the Kindle 2 is that the DX can natively download PDF files, no computer conversion needed.

I actually found out about the Kindle DX when I logged onto Amazon to buy a paper book. The book was a home reference, filled with pictures, diagrams, and useful sidebars. It wasn't available in Kindle format- but I avoid buying diagram-heavy reference books in Kindle even when they are available. The Kindle DX, with its large screen, sharp graphics, and ability to zoom in and out of diagrams and sidebars, should make books that include more than just straight narrative text feasible and useful in Kindle format. But my home reference still has one advantage over its future Kindle DX version: the hard copy has color (the Kindle DX graphics are sharp, but still grey scale).

There is little doubt, based on the promotional video presentation, that Amazon hopes to win a share of the college textbook market for the Kindle through the DX model. The promo also heavily targeted professionals.

Liberty: A Lake Wobegone Novel

Having been raised in the Midwest by a Lutheran family, I've always found that Garrison Keillor's tales of his created Lutheran town, Lake Wobegone, can really get under my skin and tickle. Keillor is willing to point out the contradictions and faults of his characters with gentle affection and, of course, humor. I also enjoy Keillor's skill in world building. Lake Wobegone is a town whose geography, history, and population are consistent, and become pleasantly familiar the more stories I hear. I was thrilled to learn that the protagonist of Liberty bought his house from the woman who had a giant snake living under her porch. I remember listening to her story on the radio, years ago. This kind of self-referential history makes Lake Wobegone feel convincingly real.

It has been some time since I listened to Keillor's "News From Lake Wobegon." I remember the Lake Wobegon stories as something I could sit down and listen to with a parent or grandparent- funny family entertainment I would not hesitate to leave playing if a kid came into the room. So when I began the audiobook of Keillor's most recent Lake Wobegon novel (hearing Keillor narrate is half the fun), I was shocked to discover that Lake Wobegon had become a darker, more adult town. Lutherans meet up online to talk dirty, and adultery is not only central to the plot, but described in anatomical detail.

Once the blood drained back out of my cheeks, and I got over the surprise of hearing Garrison Keillor read: "my nipples are getting hard for some reason," I really began to appreciate this modern-day, grown-up Lake Wobegone. There is an endearing honesty to Keillor's portrayal of his characters. Yes, they now cheat on their husbands and wives, vie for air time on CNN, and have DNA tests done to determine their heredity- but they also make mounds of potato salad, bake rhubarb pie, and march an ocarina band in the Fourth of July parade.

In Liberty, Keillor asks, what happens to small town folk who never leave the place where they were born? Their geographical situation may never change, but time still passes, the Internet and the television connect them to a larger world. Something in their individual character and social structure must shift, and Keillor paints this shift with the small details and little stories that make up our lives.

I was also extremely impressed by how Keillor treated the theme of his book. Liberty is the title of the novel, and key to the libertarian character of the protagonist. Liberty is the setting of the novel (A Fourth of July parade), and the conflict (will the protagonist ever get free of Lake Wobegone?). Miss Liberty also plays a crucial role in the story. I have rarely read a book so tightly and delightfully tied to one central concept- in this case, liberty.

Liberty ranks around #22,300 in Kindle books. On Amazon the hardcover is selling at about #153,300.

The Women

Growing up in the Midwest, the highlight of our third grade school year was a trip to Spring Green, Wisconsin. We traveled hours by bus to tour the dwarven homes of Welsh miners and eat delicious pasties. We also took a tour of Taliesin, the home and studio of architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. Little did I imagine, on that third grade tour, that Taliesin and its beautiful organic architecture had a history of scandal and brutal murder.

Appropriate to its subject of a great architect, The Women has a beautiful and unusual structure. The novel is divided into three sections, each describing the residence of Frank and one of his wives/mistresses at Taliesin. The reader encounters these sections in reverse historical order, first learning the tale of Olgiavanna, the woman of Wright's senior years, then moving back in time to learn of Miriam's reign at Taliesin, then going back to when Wright bought the property for, designed, and built Taliesin for its first mistress, Mamhah. The effect of the backwards storytelling is to form a portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright using negative space, defining the man through the progression of his love interests. As in an epic poem or tragic opera, the reader knows most of the plot before it unfolds. The interest isn't so much in what will happen next, as it is how it will take place, and why.

As I neared the end of the first section (Olgiavanna's section), I was eager to read the second (Miriam's) section, to learn what Wright could have done to twist Miriam so, to make her into the monster of their older age. Yet the first paragraph of Miriam's section, written at a time when Miriam and Frank had not yet met, makes it clear that Miriam was twisted from the very start. Her relationship with Wright did not change her even a little bit- for better or worse. So the question then became, what could have happened to Wright to bring him to a point where Miriam seemed a fit companion? And this question drew me into the third section.

In an interview with the New York Times, Boyle discusses why he was drawn to Frank Lloyd Wright (Boyle lives in Wright's first Californian house) and why he is drawn to similar historical figures. Boyle discusses the magnetism of men such as Wright, the way they draw a community of people around them, and the way they draft their own utopias founded on personal ideals. Taliesin, the builders, apprentice architects, house staff, and the women and family Wright gathered to his home, created just such a little utopia. The ideal upon which Wright founded the Taliesin community was this: that convention was for small men, with small minds, and that great men with great minds required a different set of rules, especially in the realm of love and marriage (and also in debt repayment). Throughout the book, Boyle seems to question this ideal, showing that not even Wright's beautiful retreat, or convenient way of ignoring abandoned wives and creditors, could shield him from the consequences of shedding convention.

My only (small) disappointment was with the end of the book, in which the deep probing of this question ceases, abruptly, and the focus of the novel shifts to tell the shocking and gruesome story of the murders at Taliesin. Boyle does give the murderer the motive of his conventional views of women and marriage clashing with the free love ideas of Taliesin. But the murderer is clearly insane, his violence not a consequence of differing world views, but of personal mental imbalance. The murders at Taliesin do not read like justice, or moral consequence, but as brutal and almost random acts of violence. Boyle's decision to end with the murders makes sense- they are the most sensational and exciting events in Wright's life story. And it could be argued that the ending paints the consequence of living in a closed, Utopian community, flaunting the rules of convention. But for me the sheer brutality and personal emotional imbalance of the murderer erases all sense, lets the important and difficult question of the book slide, and instead of concluding the discussion, abandons it to shock and horror.

Regardless, The Women was a pleasure to read. Boyle raised very poignant questions about men of greatness, and about what makes them large, and what makes them small. I had a fantastic time learning more about Frank Lloyd Wright and the home and studio I toured as a child. And I was thrilled by the way in which Boyle chose to write his story. His previous book, Talk Talk, used reference to explore the theme of communication. The Women used structure as its primary narrative device because it was a story about grand ideas, and the difficult reality of bringing those ideas into the world through structure. It is very exciting to follow a writer who has the skill set and flexibility to use the just the right tool to tell each new story.

The Women ranks #539 in Amazon's bestselling paper books, and #422 in Kindle books.

The Dressmaker's Child

For the second post in a row I'll be discussing a knighted author. Previously I wrote about Englishman, (Sir) Terry Pratchett, and his first Discworld book. Today I'll be discussing a haunting short story by the Irish (Sir) William Trevor.

I wonder what it would be like to live in a country where authors were knighted for service to literature...

Far from the glory of knighthood, "The Dressmaker's Child" is a story about ordinary folks . It is, in fact, the very ordinariness of Trevor's characters that makes the story so honest and strangely beautiful.

Just like The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, "The Dressmaker's Child" is mainstream literary fiction that takes on some speculative overtones. The child in the story is not a ghost, yet she haunts like one. The mother is an outcast woman, not a witch- yet her spell entrances, just the same. The story is not really supernatural fiction, but it certainly owes much of its ambiance to the ghost story genre.

I loved the way Trevor established the concrete, the familiar, the real, then blended it with subtle mysticism. "The Dressmaker's Child" makes the reader feel as though magic might brush past at any moment- particularly when it's least expected.

The story is part of a collection, Cheating at Canasta, which ranks at #34,288 in the Kindle store and #228,971 in Amazon's Bestselling Books.

Anathem a Modern-Day Number of the Beast

I was a big fan of Neal Stephenson during his cyber phase (Snow Crash, The Diamond Age). I completely skipped out on his historical phase (Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle), but wanted to catch up with his most recent book, Anathem, which I can only hope is the beginning of a new philosophical phase.

In my review below I've kept spoilers to a minimum, but it would be impossible to discuss such a lengthy book without delving past the initial mysteries. So be warned that there are some spoilers below.

I was particularly tickled by Anathem because of the way it treated alternate universes. That's not to discount the fact that I got a huge kick out of Stephenson's invented language. Of course Stephenson also wove physics, technology, and mathematics into his adventure- and he drew the plot together with a fascinating dose of philosophy and spirituality. This may sound like a lot of topics to cover while writing the story of an alien invasion- but Stephenson took 960 pages to draw all these subjects into an intriguing plot, and he made (nearly) every page exciting while doing it.

For years I cited Robert Heinlein as my favorite science fiction writer. He largely won that place through Number of the Beast, in which he explored the consequences of small party that learned to travel between the multitude of alternate universes. Heinlein leaned toward a fantasy aesthetic in his interpretation of alternate universes, having his party travel to worlds such as Oz, become real because his characters imagined them. I was enamoured by the idea that imaginary people could dream imaginary characters into existence- especially when those characters shared my own fictional references.

Stephenson does not fail to pull the heart strings of the familiar when writing a tale of alternate universe interaction. But first he extrapolates a carefully researched scientific and philosophical framework to explain how interaction between different universes becomes possible.

Another difference between Number of the Beast and Anathem- Heinlein starts his adventure from our universe, and travels to a multitude of others. In Anathem, the story begins in Arbre, a world hauntingly similar to ours- but which is clearly not Earth past, present, or future. Stephenson creates this sense of other-worldliness through the vocabulary of his created Arbran language. After spending months reading Anathem, "reticulum" seems a perfectly valid synonym for the Internet, and I might almost ask my husband if he felt like going to see a "speely" (movie). Continuing his manipulation of linguistics, Stephenson then cleverly creates a sense of pleasant notstalgia and connection when Earth words (in French) begin to seep into the Arbran vocabulary. Stephenson then deepens this sense of familiarity using the same trick Heinlein used- by tipping his hat to golden age spec fiction. Gets me every time.

Released in September 2008, Anathem is now 17th on Amazon's science fiction bestseller list. Interestingly, as of today, the Kindle edition of the book is not even in the top 100 of the Kindle's science fiction bestseller list. I, myself, read the book in print. The discrepancy may be explained by the fact that the Calcas (mathematical proofs) in the back of the book are more comfortable to flip to (and in some cases easier to view) in paper format. Perhaps readers were lured by the bundling of the book with companion CD (IOLET: Music from the World of Anathem) when the book was released. Perhaps there is simply more satisfaction weighing a huge, 960-page book in one's hands than comparing its storage space to other books saved to memory. At any rate, Anathem is selling much better in print than in Kindle format.

The Sharing Knife, Book 1

I just finished Book 1 of Lois McMaster Bujold's Sharing Knife fantasy series, of which the fourth (and series final) book was published in January 2009. Books 1, 2, and 4 are available in Kindle format. Book 4 ranks #31 in Kindle's "Epic Fantasy" category. Publisher, Eos, is proud to point out that Book 4 ranked #30 on the NY Times Extended Bestseller list (as of Feb 15th).

This gives a picture of The Sharing Knife as a current fantasy series which, while not topping the charts, is certainly selling.

The Sharing Knife series is a down-to-earth romantic fantasy. In Book 1 Bujold balances life and death, procreation and a grim fight to save the world- all with endearingly honest characters, and a sense of humor. She treats sexuality with a no-nonsense, mature attitude that addresses both its pleasures and social complications. This book is far too explicit for teens and those who blush easily, yet Bujold never crosses the line into vulgarity. The worst I can say of her love story is that it serves little purpose other than to entertain and confirm mainstream values of love, sexual union, and marriage. The conventional aspect of the story can be forgiven as these values are explored by a man and woman of conflicting cultures. Book 1 foreshadows dangers in which this special union may cause painful conflict, but may also offer hope in the battle against evil.

We have already seen the smash success series like Twilight have enjoyed by stirring together spec fiction and soft-core romance. It will be interesting to see how the popularity of different spec fiction genres, such as fantasy, react to the infusion of romance.

Kindle and iPhone make friends

Amazon has announced a free iPhone (or iPod Touch) application that allows the iPhone to read Kindle eBooks.

Wow.

This means iPhone and iPod Touch owners don't have to shell out the money for an expensive Kindle device in order to purchase and read Kindle books. No doubt Amazon hopes this will create a huge increase in the market for Kindle books. I certainly hope this development will lead to an increase in the already impressive number of titles available in Kindle format.

For those who do own Kindles, the new iPhone software can synchronize your place between the Kindle and the iPhone. So if you read a few chapters on your iPhone while on the train, you can pick up your Kindle when you get home and not have to waste a moment searching for where you left off in your reading. As a Kindle owner whose device is strictly used at home, this opens up exciting new possibilities for never being without my book!

Kindle 2

Amazon has announced that there are now over 230,000 titles available for the Kindle. My count today yielded 31 newspapers, 22 magazines, and 237,694 books. In books, Meyer's Twilight series still holds the top three bestseller slots, followed by Young's religious fiction, The Shack, in slots four and five.

The announcement was coupled with the news that the second generation Kindle is available for preorder on Amazon.com.

The form factor of the Kindle 2 has grown slimmer and lighter than its predecessor. Battery life is 25% longer (I do occasionally run out of juice while reading), page turns are 20% faster (although I'm totally used to the Kindle's current page turn speed), and of course it has more memory and can hold more titles. The most significant new features, in my opinion, are the 16 shade gray scale and the text-to-speech capability.

As I noted in my review of The Graveyard Book, art display quality- even on gray scale sketches- wasn't quite up to snuff on the Kindle 1. I'd be interested to see what a gray scale graphic novel looked like on the Kindle 2. Several years ago I had my hands on a Sony eBook reader at a Barnes and Nobles in Manhattan- and was shocked by how beautifully it displayed the art.

Now to discuss the text-to-speech feature. Text-to-speech takes the printed word and reads it aloud as audio. Readers can choose between male or female narrators, and can dial up and down how fast the narrator reads. The brief text-to-speech sample on Amazon's video demo reminded me of Hal from 2001- although, to be fair, the voice was a little less fluid than Hal, and a little less creepy. I'd be curious to hear how well the computerized narrator pronounces proper nouns and foreign words.

Beyond the quality of the narrator, I was wondering who, under the age of five, would want their print book read out loud to them? Then I realized text-to-speech is probably fantastic for commuters. If you're reading on the train, then want to continue your story driving from the park and ride back home- you can do so with no interruption of continuity, no searching for your place- and no second book to buy in audio format. All my life I've had the avid reader's nightmare illness- extreme car sickness whenever I attempt to read in motion. So I can definitely see the value of text-to-speech. On the other hand, I never buy an audio book without first listening to a sample of the narrator. The narrator can make or break the reading experience. So I'll be interested to see whether or not Kindle 2 readers actually use the text-to-speech feature.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Today when I checked the Amazon Kindle bestseller list, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle was at tenth place, below the first four books of the Twilight series (all in the top four slots), The Shack in English and Spanish, and three "New Year New You" self-help nonfiction. We know that the Twilight series is vampire fiction. The Shack is religious fiction. So what is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle?

Amazon categorizes Wroblewsi's book as "literary fiction" or "contemporary fiction." Fair enough- there's probably not space in their categorization system for thriller/espionage, coming of age story, historical, magical realism, ghost story, and murder mystery. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle was all this, and literature, too.

When I first downloaded a sample of this book onto my Kindle, I read part way through the sample, then decided to pass on it. At first I was entranced by the prose in this book. The scene Wroblewski described was so vivid- every word a color, a texture, a taste, a smell. The problem was, that the book was clearly a thriller set in South Korea during the Korean war. Of course there's nothing wrong with an historical espionage book- but that's just not the kind of book I wanted to read. And, far worse, I could see that the plot was heading toward cruelty to a dog. I'm a huge softy for animals. I decided not to buy the book.

A few months later I was browsing the Kindle bestsellers and came across The Story of Edgar Sawtelle once again. The synopsis made it sound like the coming of age story of a boy in Wisconsin. What? I went back to the sample on my Kindle, muscled through the horrible scene with the dog, and met Edgar.

Wroblewsi refused to pick a genre and stick with it when he wrote The Tale of Edgar Sawtelle. I was surprised again and again, as the book took turns into fantasy and thriller that seemed so at odds with the lives of the plain-folks dog trainers living on a family farm. But it wasn't only the genre that morphed to suit the needs of the story- Wroblewsi's language also transformed to meet every mood necessary to tell his tale. I could tell when something important was about to happen- the prose became crystal clear, detailed to the point of painfully beautiful. When it was time to get to know Edgar, things slowed down, we approached the world in a more plodding, plain prose. The chapters through the eyes of Edgar's best friend and dog captured the character of a devoted animal with more skill than I would have thought possible.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is selling well- it has Oprah's endorsement, and today rests at #10 on the Kindle bestseller list, and is Amazon's 26th overall best selling book. Yet the genre confusion at the opening nearly lost my sale. Maybe I just need to loosen up my genre expectations...but with the advent of the downloadable sample chapter, should writers be thinking more about how the first few pages set the tone of their book?

Twilight- Does it Suck?

A few weeks ago, when I saw Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga series books topping the Kindle bestseller list (including fiction and nonfiction!) with only the president elect's books as company, I decided I had to try the series. Today as I write, Meyer has four of the top five bestsellers on the Kindle's bestseller list. The author is also topping out Kindle bestsellers in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Children's Chapter books.

This last category is what I really want to focus on today. Young adult genre fiction has made a big splash in the adult market. As I read Book 1 of the Twilight series, I was watching to see how this young adult vampire romance would appeal to a more mature audience. Based on the sales ranks, it's hard to believe grown-ups aren't participating in the series' success.

I've rubbed die-hard fans the wrong way in the past when I don't emphasize where I'm coming from in a review about a much-loved author or series, so here are a couple of caveats:

1. The only book I have ever read by the author is Twilight Book 1. All my comments are related to this book, alone.
2. I haven't seen the movie.
3. If you're a young adult reader, please have tons of fun with this series, and don't bother reading further. This review deals with the book's appeal to adults.
4. There are some spoilers below.
   

When I downloaded the first chapter of Book 1, I was impressed. The beginning of the novel does a great job setting up the protagonist's situation and introducing character and setting, all the while keeping the reader intrigued with a sense of mystery as the protagonist is inducted into the world of the occult. I am embarrassed to say that despite being fluent in Italian, I skipped right over the obvious hint of the protagonists name (Bella, Italian for beautiful) and bought into the fact that she was a clumsy, pale, not particularly attractive teenage girl. The voice was so genuine, so down-to-earth, that I believed the unreliable narrator. That alone earns Meyer my genuine kudos.

But, of course, Bella is actually drop-dead gorgeous- and lives out the teenage girl's fantasy of discovering she is not ugly, but instead the boys at her new school are practically brawling for her affections. As an adult reader I was a little disappointed at this point. I was all set for a book in which the not-so-pretty heroine is swept off her feet by the handsome vamp because he's that attracted to her unique smell, and could care less about her physical charms. Meyer didn't choose to go this route, but she did keep beautiful Bella so clumsy as to make me feel like a ballerina. So I kept reading.

There followed some actual interesting mythology- the slow revelation of Meyer's take on vampire lore, and setting up a rivalry between the local vampires and the tribal clan of werewolves native to the region. Meyer had given enough seeds for a promising spec fiction world, and her writing style was holding up with a good balance of decently-crafted prose and narrative warmth.

Then the mystery between Bella and her vamp boyfriend dissolved, and with it, a lot of my interest. There is a portion in the middle of the book in which the only tension is a sort of virginal romantic anticipation of a relationship between Bella and her boyfriend. This section involves a lot of swooning, dizziness, and collapsing into vamp boyfriend's arms- and as readers, we had already been subjected to a lot of swooning and being carried to safety in previous chapters. All that fainting was getting a little repetitive. The only thing keeping this portion of the novel afloat for the adult reader is the ominous suggestion that Bella's "number is up," that she seems to be in constant danger of death, a danger from which only her vamp boyfriend can defend her. Of course, it is just as likely vamp boyfriend will lose control, and be the cause of Bella's death, himself. That conflict was just enough to carry me through the multiple swoons.

The final third of the book involves a prolonged action scene, in which we get to meet a bunch of other vampires, and Bella proves herself to be more than just a pretty face, but an excellent strategist, as well. Bella's character development by the end of the book shows promise for new adventure in the rest of the series, but if the book were simply a stand alone, her character arc would not have been completely satisfying.

Book 1 ends with a high school prom, Bella dancing with her vampire date. The scene mirrors one of my favorite scenes in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series. Comparing the two teenage vamp romances, there is no doubt that Twilight Book 1 offers less appeal for adults than Buffy. In the Buffyverse we get a lot of action and adventure, with corny moments of romance that are sweet in the context of the world and well-developed characters. Without the contrasting high stakes in both action-adventure and character conflict, Twilight's corny romantic moments come off, well, a little corny.

There is a definite kernel of promise in Twilight Book 1, characters and situations that could produce fun stories. I was impressed enough that I'd try Book 2. Whether or not I go on to Book 3 will all depend on Bella, where Meyer is willing to take her protagonist in this romantic, young adult series.