More quickies

Also recently finished 2 young adult books of note.

I read Cynthia Voight's Homecoming (New York: Athenium, 1981) with Littlehazel; finished it a week ago. Wow. Homecoming is the first book in Voight's seven-volume Tillerman cycle, and I can't believe I never came across the books before. It tells the story of four siblings, ranging in age from 13 to 6, who are abandoned in the parking lot of a shopping mall on the Rhode Island-Connecticut border by their poor and emotionally fragile mother. Their father walked out of their lives before the youngest child's birth, and they know no other friends or relatives to turn to, so Dicey, the eldest (with some input from brainy, 10 year old James), decides their only option is to walk to Bridgeport, where their mother had been taking them, in search of an elderly aunt they've never met. Book One follows their journey; Book Two chronicles what happens after they arrive, only to find Aunt Cilla dead, and her daughter, cousin Eunice, not quite what they'd expected.

Interesting to read this while Littlehazel's class was doing a project on survival stories. We've read Island of the Blue Dolphins and Julie of the Wolves, but a tale of survival in a mostly contemporary setting (cheaper food and fewer restrictions on unaccompanied kids notwithstanding) is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. We're partway through the sequel, Dicey's Song, as I speak. An excellent parent-and-child or teacher-and-student read-aloud (or read-together).

The second YA book was Here's to You, Rachel Robinson, by Judy Blume (New York: Orchard Books, 1993) -- and OK, I can't blame this on my daughter; this one was just me. Like most girls of a certain age, I loved Judy Blume's books as a grade-schooler, and can't resist picking 'em up when I stumble on them now -- especially ones like this that were published long after I'd outgrown the genre. This is a sequel to Just as Long as We're Together, which Littlehazel owns, and which both of us have read. Here, though, the protagonist isn't Stephanie, but her gifted best friend Rachel, who, in seventh grade, has more than enough on her plate. Older brother Charles has been kicked out of boarding school and seems to delight in making the family's life hell. And frankly, between mom's pending judicial appointment, big sister Jessica's cystic-acne-and-prom troubles, and cousin Tarren's single parenthood, there's not much room for Rachel to be anything less than perfect. Stephanie and Allison, the new girl from Just as Long, seem to spend more time together and have more in common than Rachel does with either of them. And if that's not enough, her teachers and friends are pushing her to join yet more school activities, from natural helpers to class president to ... argh! It's enough to make you want to scream. In short, Blume does indeed still have it, writing for grade schoolers and tweens in a way that's realistic without being preachy.

#24, sort of - Crazy Lady!

'K then, my 24th book of the year was Crazy Lady!, by Jane Leslie Conly. Some might call this cheating on two counts (one, I listened to rather than read it; two, it's a children's book), but this is a blog, dang it ... not a grad-level literary seminar. And this book was really a wonderful find, a forgotten children's book with realistic characters, an engaging plot, and an imperfect but fitting ending.

The narrator and main character is Vernon Dibbs, a boy of about 12 growing up in a working-class Baltimore neighborhood in the early 1980s. Three years after his mother's sudden death, Vernon is floundering. His father is kind but remote, and must work long hours to support 5 kids with only a fourth-grade education, so much of the day-to-day work of running the household falls to his 17 year old sister Steph; big brother Tony is smart, but too caught up in his own studies and aspirations to be much help to his family. This leaves Vern mostly on his own, failing in school, hanging out with the neighborhood guys, and getting into minor-level mischief on the order of swiping candy bars from Woolworth's and heckling Maxine, the neighborhood crazy lady, whenever they catch her out with her mentally disabled teenaged son, Ronald.

Things begin to change when he meets Maxine at the corner store, and she speaks kindly of his late mother. Caught off-guard, he blurts out the truth about his poor grades, and she introduces him to Miss Annie, a retired teacher who agrees to tutor him in English. In lieu of money, she asks Vern to pay her by working odd jobs, usually to help Maxine and Vernon. A surprising friendship develops, and Vern learns that Maxine's bouts of public "craziness" are, in fact, drunkenness -- she's an alcoholic. After meeting Ronald's teacher, Vern comes up with the idea of organizing a carnival to raise money for sneakers, so Ronald can compete in the Special Olympics. In the process, Vern, Ronald, and the entire neighborhood are transformed.

That's the climax rather than the end of the story, and I won't give the rest away -- but our whole family really enjoyed the story. The characters are compelling and mostly likeable, but very much human, with warts and all. The setting, at least for a children's book, is a realistic, working-class urban neighborhood, racially mixed, and with some rough and run-down parts. Even the plot has more to it than I'd initially expected; primarily, it's the story of Vern getting to know Maxine and Ronald as individuals, but it's also about the long, slow process Vern's family goes through to rebuild their lives after his mother's death, and about an ordinary neighborhood coming together to support and take care of its own. It's an excellent car book -- complicated enough to hold the whole family's interest, and interesting to think and talk about afterwards, to boot. (If you're so inclined, several others in the same category we've enjoyed over the years are A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Peck; Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry; Poppy and its sequels/ prequel, by Avi; and Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell.) It's also worth a read by older elementary, intermediate readers even if you're not in the car.

Coming soon, probably tomorrow: #25, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz. Finished this one today and really loved it -- it won the Pulitzer for a reason -- but that 5-hour car trip was a long one, and I'm 'bout ready for bed now.

Old Favorites

There's been a dearth of reading at Hazel House of late; I had a big job interview (yay me!) last week, and between prepping obsessively beforehand and needing to just plain vegetate afterwards, I didn't have much quality time with the books. (Amazing how I did manage some quality time with a few truly mindless flash games, but that's a whole 'nother blog.)

I did, however, reread an old favorite during the post-interview decompression period: #11 - I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe. If you're a fan of other Wolfe novels (i.e., Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full), and have somehow missed this one, please ... stop reading this blog Right Now and go get your hands on a copy. While the 2004 New York Times review didn't agree with me, I love this book; it's a brilliant and often excruciatingly-painful satire of life on an elite college campus in the 2000's.

As the novel begins, the title character arrives on the hallowed campus of Dupont University (fictitious, but reportedly based on Duke, with hints of Penn State and Stanford thrown in) fresh off the pickup from a sheltered upbringing in rural Sparta, North Carolina, eager to immerse herself in the life of the mind. Meanwhile, elsewhere on campus, smug frat boy Hoyt Thorpe stumbles on a prominent national political figure in a compromising position; campus basketball legend Jojo Johanssen struggles to stay on top of his game when Coach threatens to bench him for a promising new player; and aspiring Rhodes Scholar Adam Gellin juggles thankless part-time jobs delivering pizza and "tutoring" athletes with regular meetings of the Millenial Mutants, a campus salon of sorts for aspiring intellectuals.

In some ways, this is a typical coming-of-age novel; in others, it's a lot more than that. As is true of Wolfe's other books, themes of class and racial tension abound here. Charlotte's lofty expectations of academic life at Dupont are confounded when she finds herself in an upper-level French literature class where books are read in English, and that's just the beginning. She's also beyond shocked at the omnipresence of alcohol, casual sex, lewd dancing, and general decadence on the campus; her roommate, the snooty Groton-educated Beverly, does not help matters. She wavers between wanting to be true to herself -- to, as her mother advised her, say "I am Charlotte Simmons, and I don't hold with that" -- and wanting desparately to belong, to somehow alleviate her excruciating loneliness. When a good-looking BMOC like Hoyt starts inviting her to visit the Saint Ray house, and then invites her to an out-of-town fraternity formal, she thinks she's got it made, but little does she know.

This is mostly Charlotte's story, but our other 3 principals are also fish out of water at Dupont. In the brains department, Adam seems to have it all, but he's desparate not only to lose his virginity, but to make the world at large see him as a person of consequence. Jojo is beginning to question his status as a golden boy of basketball; do his coach and teammates really see him as One of Them, even though he's white? Does he really want to coast through Dupont taking classes like Frere Jocko and Stocks for Jocks? Hoyt looks every inch the quintessential Dupont Man, but in reality, comes from a working-class background, and has no idea what awaits him after graduation save a vague sense that he'll go into investment banking, because it pays well and That's What Saint Rays Do.

Without giving anything away, I can never decide how I feel about the ending. In some ways, it wraps things up too tidily; in others, it's too ambiguous. I'm not sure I fully buy the transformation in Jojo's character over the course of the book. Where Charlotte finds herself by the end makes a little more sense -- there are still a few loose ends hanging out there -- but I'm not completely convinced as to the road she took to get there. I also agree that Wolfe's female characters are rather crudely drawn; Charlotte is somewhat of an exception, but her over-the-top innocence and sheltered upbringing aren't completely believable. But it's Wolfe's nature to exaggerate to make a point -- to take most aspects of the world he creates just a step or 2 too far, so that it's both plausible and ridiculous at the same time. 4.5 out of 5 bookmarks.

I've also been reading #12 - These Happy Golden Years, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, with my daughter. I read the whole Little House series more times than I can remember as a child; people who know me IRL have probably heard my story of getting the whole series in paperback one Christmas from a relative who gave my sister a dollhouse, and being incredibly jealous and resentful that she'd gotten the better present. The dollhouse fell apart within a year; the paperbacks are probably still in my parents' basement somewhere. Anyway, tangent aside, I've been amazed at how many things in these books I notice and understand now, reading them as an adult, that just plain went by me when I read them the first or even the tenth time as a girl.

It's very hard for me to pick a favorite in the series. Growing up, I was partial to On the Banks of Plum Creek and Little Town on the Prairie, and By the Shores of Silver Lake was probably my least favorite (i.e., I only read it once or twice). I always liked THGY, but it's definitely grown on me over the years; it's a sweet, understated story of an 1880s pioneer courtship, and of Laura's conflict between remaining safe and comfortable in her parents' home, and moving forward with her own married, adult life. As the story begins, 15-year-old Laura is on her way to her first teaching job and her first experience living away from home. After a rocky first few weeks, she finds her footing as a teacher. However, the Brewsters, with whom she's boarding, are truly wretched, and she's painfully homesick. It comes as a delightful surprise when Almanzo Wilder begins making the 12-mile drive each Friday to bring Laura home for the weekend, and then again each Sunday to bring her back.

The rest, as they say, is history. Even allowing for the fact that the Little House books are all "inspired by actual events," rather than pure biography, it's interesting to see how much our notions of romance have changed, and how much they haven't. There are glimpses of jealousy on both Almanzo's and Laura's parts (Almanzo asking suspiciously about a strange male visitor to the Ingalls' home, who turns out to be Laura's uncle; Laura telling Almanzo not to call for her if he wants to take the obnoxious Nellie Oleson driving), and an amusing scene towards the beginning where Laura tries to make it clear that she's only accepting Almanzo's rides because she wants to go home for the weekend, and he shouldn't expect her to go driving with him once her teaching gig is over with. Perhaps my favorite, though, happens later, when on a spring buggy ride, Almanzo says, seemingly out of nowhere, "I was wondering if you would like an engagement ring." "That would depend on who offered it to me," replies Laura. "If I did?" "Then it would depend upon the ring."

It's probably even harder to rate a children's book than it is for me to pick a favorite in these series, but given how much I still like this one even after umpteen readings, and given how much Littlehazel is enjoying it, even though her history with the series is only secondhand, I'll give it 4 out of 5 bookmarks.

And for something completely different, I read #13 - Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen over the weekend -- but I think I need to wait till I'm home and have the book in hand to post a review for that one.

Coming soon: I'm usually a one-book-at-a-time gal, but somehow, I ended up in the middle of 3 at once: Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, by Kevin Phillips; One Person/ Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success, by Marci Alboher; and Ellington Boulevard: A Novel in A-Flat, by Adam Langer. Not so sure I'll get through Bad Money, though I want to, and I'm enjoying both of the others. Watch this space for details.

What can I get you to drink?

Hi, welcome to Cafe Hazelthyme! Come on in! Can I take your coat? What can I get you to drink?

Yep, I guess I've finally joined the blogosphere. Never mind that everyone this side of my mother-in-law has had a blog for aeons, or that I've kept a pen-and-paper journal (off and on, anyway) since the Carter administration. When it comes to technology, I'm not an early adapter. I'm no Luddite either, but eh, computers are a means, not an end. Organizing my bazillion photos? Reading those reams of journal articles I went through in grad school, without needing to run from one library and photocopier to the next tracking 'em down? E-mailing or Skype-ing overseas friends who I'd never get to talk to otherwise? I'm in. But whiling away the hours downloading, cataloguing, researching, and commenting on more iTunes than I'll ever have the chance to listen to (hi, Mrhazel!)? Compulsively updating my Facebook status? (Yes, I'm well aware that anyone old enough to remember the Carter administration is way too old to be loitering about on Facebook. Guess I'm the e-quivalent of the creepy old neighborhood guy everyone recognizes but no one knows, hanging around the playground.) Keeping a cyber-journal like Father McKenzie, "writing the words to a sermon that no one will hear"? Not so much my thing.

Yet here I am nonetheless. Mostly, I started the blog to keep track of my reading. I'm a voracious reader, and have issued a challenge of sorts -- though so far, only I know about it -- to see if I can read 100 books this year. Trouble is, I get most of my reading material from libraries, and the downside of churning through 'em as fast as I do (well, aside from not getting much else done) is that I don't always remember the details afterwards. (OK, sometimes I don't even remember the full title, or the author's name.) It's been ages since I've written a proper book review, and I don't know that's my intent anyway. At any rate, here's the 2009 tally so far:

1. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire. Meaning to read this one for a while, finally got around to it while visiting the 'rents over Christmas. (OK, I technically started it in '08, but as I finished it on the 1st, I think it counts.) Enjoyed it, though not as much as I'd expected to. Thought there was both more to it and less than I'd expected. More in that I guess I expected something fluffier, and the story has a lot to say about the roots and nature of good and evil, about family relationships, the significance of physical beauty, and so on. I'm usually a sucker for books that tell a familiar story from a different perspective; Mists of Avalon and The Red Tent are among my all-time favorites. Less in that somehow, I just couldn't connect with any of the characters the way I like to. Perhaps that's deliberate; Maguire lets us see just enough of Elphaba, Galinda, Nessarose, Dorothy, the wizard, et al. to suggest that there's much more to them -- to all of us -- than Baum's original series would ever admit, but we still don't and can't really know them. In the interest of full disclosure, I also admit that I read a good chunk of this while on vacation, with Mom's chatter, Dad's TV, and other distractions going in the background ... and in the time it took me to realize it was a bit weightier than the typical vacation book and needed more attention, I may well have missed stuff. I'll probably go back and re-read it at some point, and may read its sequels (Son of a Witch and A Lion Among Men) if I come across them ... but I don't think it'll make my all-time favorites list.
2. Little Men, by Louisa May Alcott. Started this one way back in 2008, reading a chapter here & there with Littlehazel at bedtime for God knows how many months. I'd read Little Women repeatedly as a child, but never either of its sequels. This one was first published in 1871, and it shows. By today's standards, the moralizing is a bit heavy-handed, the plot and characters rather predictable, and the constant marveling at the wonders Jo and Fritz work on their boys with their own brand of loving firmness gets a little repetitious, even sickening, at times. It's also hard not to chafe at some of what today would be horribly sexist -- especially if you were ever a little girl who adored and wanted to be Jo March. That said, there are some interesting characters, many parts that made me laugh ... and frankly, it's fun to catch up with the characters from Little Women and see what's become of them. There's far less to the story and I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as LW, but it was a good read, especially for a parent-child read-aloud, and we'll probably pick up Jo's Boys next time we have the chance.
3. American Therapy: The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States, by Jonathan Engel. I also read a good deal of non-fiction, though it usually takes me longer to slog through and I'm more likely to get to the point where I wonder if I'm reading something because I want to, or just think I should. This one wasn't quite like that as it was a pretty quick read, but I didn't find it all that interesting or new, either. The first 4 chapters are pretty much strict history, from Freud and his earliest followers, through the growth of psychiatry, psychology, and social work during and after WWII, to the advent of humanist, cognitive, and behavioral schools of thought. Interesting stuff, but really just a refresher for anyone who's had a college course or 2 in psychology, without much new insight or material. Liked the chapter on how American views and treatments of alcoholism have changed in the last half-century, and thought this was probably the strongest part of the book. From there, it almost seemed like Engel was either rushing to meet a deadline or struggling to flesh out what was really only half a book's worth of material, because the latter half of the book seems to have a lot less substance (the first part wasn't that meaty to begin with), and the writing is much weaker. The narcotics chapter spends too long digressing about the evils of marijuana and heroin and their impacts on society (I'm not sure I buy the former, but regardless, it's a different book), and the final chapter (titled "Biology," but "Psychopharmacology" would be more accurate) seems a little too glib about the wonders of modern pharmaceuticals, to the point that I wonder if the author has business dealings with one of the pharmaceutical companies. In a nutshell, it was an OK book -- I didn't dislike it enough not to finish -- but I'm glad I borrowed it from the library and don't think I'd bother recommending it to anyone else.
   
4. currently reading Peripheral Vision, by Patricia Ferguson. A novel of interconnected stories, set in and around London: in 1995, a successful opthamologist with a much-older husband who doesn't know what to make of her newborn daughter, and a single, unemployed 30-something man who lives a life of quiet desparation caring for his dying, elderly mother; in 1954, a kind nurse engaged to an upper-class med student whose mother disapproves of her working-class background, and a housewife guilty and shattered after an accident injures her young son's eyes and leaves him permanently disfigured. I'm only a quarter of the way through it, but so far, the characters are compelling and believable, and the individual stories interesting enough to make me want to keep reading and see what happens next and how they all end up tying together.
   

So much for a quick introductory first post. Let's see where this goes from here.