Where's Harry Potter?

I read the first Harry Potter long before it became such a phenomenon in the publishing world--Muggle or Wizard. Otherwise, I might never have started the series.  I often steer clear of books--or especially series--that seem trendy or faddish.  I'm glad, too, because I loved every one of the books.  I'll admit that I enjoyed all but the first two on audio, listening to the wonderfully talented Jim Dale creating all those different characters' voices.  More often than I like to admit, I sat in the carport waiting for a good stopping place.

When J. K. Rowlings' first "adult" book came out, I wanted to read it too, to see where she goes after Harry and Hogwarts.  I'm glad I read the book, and I think parts of it will stay in my head awhile, but I am so eager to talk to someone else who's read it too.

The book opens with the sudden death of Barry Fairbrother, suffering from an aneurysm as he and his wife were headed into the club for dinner on their anniversary.  As a member of a divided town council in the town of Pagford, his death leaves a "casual vacancy," requiring an election to fill his seat.  Rowling follows the lives in the town affected by Barry's death, most closely, the high school students one step removed, except for Crystal Weedon, a troubled teenage girl living the in controversial projects between Pagford and the larger neighboring town Yarvil.  Although she is first introduced as a brassy troublemaker at school, readers get to know her better in the home she shares with her mother, a recovering junkie, and the little brother Crystal protects and cares for.

Rowling takes readers inside the homes of the Walls, the principal and guidance counselor at the high school, and their adopted son Fats, bent on humiliating his father and living "an authentic life." His best friend Andrew Price, an acne ravaged teen, living with an abusive father, has developed a crush on Gaia, the beautiful new girl in town.  Gaia has moved, unwillingly, to Pagford with her mother, a social worker who came to live near her boyfriend Gavin--Barry Fairbrother's best friend--who is much less attracted to her once she moves to town. The threads connecting these and dozens more characters weave a tight web.

All the lives are intertwined, and Rowling's omniscient point-of-view moves fluidly among all the characters. No one, though, seems happy, even content.  Every character in the book seems to live in fear or to be plotting escape of some kind.

I was left with several questions:

First, did the book have to be so dark?  Honestly, the happy moments and the good relationships were so few.  In the end, I saw some hopeful glimpses, indications that at least some of the parent-child relationships (for those who were still alive, at least) might begin to improve.

Second, who was the protagonist?  I suppose I could envision the book as a Greek tragedy, since it ends in the classic scene of pity and woe, but I don't know that I truly identified with any of the characters.  I didn't even like some of them. Most of them.

All I need now, is someone else who's read the books so I can have an informed discussion.

Where's Harry Potter?

50 Shades of Book Snobs

     When the Wall Street Journal Online ran an excerpt from Joe Queenan's new book One for the Books, the story of his life as a voracious reader, he insisted I read it. Not enough that he send me a link, he waited as I located the story and watched as I read, certain it would strike a nerve.  He knows how I am about books. I love books. If I could find some career that required or allowed me to read all the time, I'd jump at it. Queenan is just as passionate.  He is also just as opinionated about his books as I am.  In fact, I notice that most people who love books are also strongly opinionated.

    Reading is such an odd pastime, one that is best enjoyed in solitude, but one requiring some kind of outlet or sharing.  I remember a column by a former Charlotte Observer book editor lamenting that her husband read but didn't want to discuss books with her afterwards. He did not, she declared "give good book." I heard Queenan interviewed about his book on NPR, and he was spouting his opinions--book clubs, he announced, are crap. (Okay, maybe I'm paraphrasing here.) He went on to point out specific authors whose works he considered beneath him.  Yet he admitted that he read lots of horrible books, many sent to him by self-publishing (therefore unedited) authors.  "I read those quickly," he said. 

Okay, then, I wanted to ask, which is worse, wasting time reading books you know in advance are not likely to be worth your time or reading a little airplane or beach fare? 

In a similar vein, I read one of those Ask.... columns in the New York Times magazine section. The question asked: whether or not one can count audiobooks when listing books read. His answer: No.  Again, I beg to differ.

Certainly when I started my teaching career, I felt the written page was sacred. Then I encountered a student whose learning disability--reading--had profoundly affected his education.  I suggested he try to listen as he read (insisting on the unabridged edition).  Afterwards, I realized that his comprehension and retention was far higher than many of the less encumbered students who had read thoroughly but only the print text.  Since then, I have become addicted to audiobooks, spending  almost an hour a day just driving to and from work. 

Since I'm also always reading a book as well, I sometimes can't remember a year later whether I listened or actually read a book.  I think I've always been an auditory reader.  In education classes, I learned that "subvocalization"--hearing the words aloud in my head--slows reading.  Well, guess what? I hear every word on the page (in the specific voices, usually).  That's the poetic effect of good writing.  I probably don't do the same when reading more expository texts. (Thank goodness, I don't hear the voice of the Maytag repairman when I read instruction manuals or Roger in India at the manual printing factory).

I won't even go into the ridiculous notion that reading electronic books is somehow less authentic than turning actual pages. I've licked my finger to try to turn the virtual page too many times before I remembered I was reading electronically.  I'll take my story fix, my word fix, any way I can get it.  But if Mr. Queenan can be persnickety about his books choices, so can I. And that's fine, as long as we don't impose our limits on one another.  Why, I'll probably read his book soon--not just the excerpts.

50 Shades of Book Snobs

Reading Lolita--in the Car

I felt like such a hypocrite. I'd read Reading Lolita in Tehran and I'd heard Azar Nafisi speak at NCTE. I'd read the other books--the ones by Austen, Fitzgerald, and James--mentioned in the work, but I had never actually read Lolita.  I had a general, fuzzy idea of  the novel's subject matter--creep pedophilia--but I honestly had no idea about specifics as Humbert Humbert and his stepdaughter Dolores travel across the U.S., presumably even through North Carolina. Who knew?

So when searching the library's audiobook shelves, my head atilt, I came across Nabokov's novel read by Jeremy Irons, a strong selling point, I checked it out.

I had no idea how clever, how darkly humorous the book would be. The voice of the narrator Nabokov creates is almost unintentionally self-revelatory.  Humbert Humbert is alternately self-loathing, apologetic, boastful, arrogant, analytical, spontaneous.  Lolita--Lo--Dolores is seen only through his eyes, but while she at first seems confident, even aggressive, Humbert unwittingly reveals a child, a victim plotting her own escape.

Because of the subject--the sexual abuse of a child--I would not recommend this novel to just anyone. In fact, there are some friends whom I would most decidedly tell, "Do not read this book." But after reading the novel--and yes, I do consider listening as reading--I completely understand why this clever, beautifully written, haunting book has earned its place in the literary canon.

Reading Lolita--in the Car

Statutory Reading

One of my facebook friends (one I actually know as a real person) posted a link to a blog essay decrying the way the joy of reading is destroyed in school in a kind of bait and switch move by educators who spend the first few years of school convincing students that "Reading Is Fun!" then assigning unappealing novels and dissecting them and over-testing. The author mentioned in particular, as I recall, two novels that often appear on high school required reading lists--The Scarlet Letter and Separate Peace, two novels I was also assigned to read in high school and two I have used in my classes as well.

On one hand, I believe there are so many wonderful novels from which to choose that it seems senseless not to pick the most appealing.  On the other hand, however, I know from personal experience that there will never be unanimous agreement on which books are appealing.  I know, too, that students--people in general--need to recognize the difference between reading for pleasure and reading to learn how to read critically, a life skill. Sometimes the only way to teach some reading skills --or at least the best way--is by using a common reading experience.

I remember author Ann Patchett speaking before the National Council of Teachers of English in support of teaching the classics--even instead of her own books. She said there are some books to which students should be exposed, even if you had to sit on their chests and cram them down there gagging throats.  (If I am paraphrasing here, I assure you I am close to her words.)  Former NC poet laureate Cathy Smith Bowers referred to teaching poetry in a similar manner as "Statutory Poetry," a term that made me smile.

In the opposite corner of this particular argument are those that say that when some of these classic novels are assigned to students too young or immature to appreciate them properly that we give them mistaken belief that they have actually read those works. With so many books are our disposal, even enthusiastic readers are sometimes reluctant to re-read a novel they loved, much less one they remember as boring or obscure.

I know some school systems prescribe the reading selections for students at different grade levels, but most teachers have at least some choice. I know those choices are often narrowed by book availability.  Gone is the day when students in most schools can be expected to buy their own books.  Teachers, too, have few discretionary funds for buying classroom sets of novels. Some get creative, writing grants to local or national donors. ( I recall turning to the excellent Donors Choose site when I was still teaching in the high school.)  Some spend their own money for books.  I know I built a decent classroom library in high school by handing out the Scholastic Tab book orders. Even seniors in high school bought books, letting me earn enough points to choose a few titles.

I believe teachers who bring our own enthusiasm about a work to the classroom, tempered by realism, allowing students to make valid criticisms even of the canon, can have a positive effect on readers. I think students should also have choice whenever possible.  By informing that choice, sharing a little about reading options, rather than relying on hearsay or a pretty cover, we can also lead students to books with the greatest potential to offer that most ideal of reading experiences--total immersion in a good book.

I know my own love of reading didn't come from multiple choice testing.  I think peer pressure to read had an early influence. After all, I even flew through those predictable stories about Alice and Jerry (our knock off version of Dick and Jane) back in the first grade,eager to see what books were next.

Statutory Reading

Should Have Read It Sooner

I understand my students' reluctance sometimes to read assigned books--at least some of them, the ones like me who have plenty to read without having to feel obliged to read someone else's selections as well.  I confess now that I didn't finish reading The Scarlet Letter in the eleventh grade until after the test. (I'm sorry, Mrs. Williams).

Often, I get my best recommendations from my reading friends.  I've tried to quit taking the actual book though.  Borrowed books too often become my own property by common law (considering that old dictum that possession is nine-tenths of the law). They also inspire guilt when I haven't read them yet (and the giver keeps asking) or dishonesty (when I feel obliged to claim I did.)

Often enough that I should have learned from it, I finally get around to a much recommended book and think, "What took me so long?" This was certainly the case with Watership Down, which was, I learned, so much more than "just a book about rabbits."  When the high praise comes from many quarters, I should pay even more attention. I know those readers who know me best.  I know whom I trust.

Why, then, am I just now reading A Prayer for Owen Meany?  I'm only half way through the book, and already, I am itching to talk about it with someone, anyone who's willing to discuss it.  The book defies description; Owen Meany defies description, and yet he is as real to me as any student sitting in my classes.  I've even seen the movie Simon Birch, based on the novel, and I still firmly believe that I cheated myself until I actually read it.

Interesting to me is that I know some of the main plot highlights (particularly the death of the narrator's mother, hit in the head--improbably--by a baseball hit by the strange and diminuative Owen.  That even not only isn't wrapped in suspense, but it is a recurring motif in the relationship between the two friends, Owen and Johnny--and everyone they know.

In many ways, the spiritual aspects of the book are most interesting, although they bear no likeness to any other book I have read that I considered a spiritual book.  I also find myself laughing out loud as I read more often than usual.  I want to stop and read certain passages to anyone who'll stop and listen. I may even harbor a secret urge to pick up Owen and pass him around the room, this boy who can play the Christ child and the Ghost of Christmases to come in the same holiday season.

Most importantly, I may have to revisit my shelves to see which books remain there on long-term loan from well-meaning friends, waiting for me to rediscover them--for the first time.
 

Should Have Read It Sooner

Starting with a True Story

Several years ago, I read Susan Vreeland's Girl in Hyacinth Blue and Tracy Chevalier's Girl with the Pearl Earring in the same year, making me a Vermeer fan ever since.  Vreeland's novel was based on a fictional painting, not an actual (or existing) work by the Dutch painter, tracing the ownership from the present time back to the painter himself.  Chevalier built her story around an actual painting (housed now in a museum in the Hague).  I've since sought out works by Vermeer whenever I had the good fortune to visit a museum where one or more were exhibited.

As much as I love fiction--and if I had to choose between fiction and nonfiction, I'd choose the former and never look back--I also love a good story that weaves in history and fact.  The best book is one that sends me off exploring, wanting to know more.  I finished Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures this week, a story told in two voices.  One is a London woman who has moved to the seaside Lyme Regis with her two sisters, destined for spinsterhood, when their brother in London marries.  Elizabeth Philpot develops a fascination with the fossils of the region, particularly fossilized fish.  She meets a young local girl Mary Anning, from a poor family, known around the town for having survived being struck by lightning as an infant.  Mary has "the eye":  she collects fossils she finds easily, selling them to help support her family, something she learned from her cabinetmaker father. Despite their social differences, Mary and Elizabeth strike up a friendship based on their mutual interest and spend much time together walking along the beach hunting for specimens.

Mary's life--and eventually Elizabeth's--changes with the discovery of a large specimen they at first believe is a crocodile.  Instead, it turns out to be a large animal from the lizard family no longer in existence.  The find brings people from everywhere, either interested in studying--or procuring--Mary's find or digging up specimens themselves. 

The beast causes no small amount of controversy, particularly among those who feel its existence poses questions about matters previously unquestioned, particularly by the church.  The idea of extinction, for some, raises questions about the infallibility of the creator.

As contemporaries with Jane Austen (mentioned, but not appearing in the story), the women in the story face insurmountable limits.  Through she has more resources that Mary, Elizabeth has to slip around to go anywhere unchaperoned by a man.  Both of the women find their marriage prospects dim--Elizabeth because of her angular features, Mary because of her low social status. Their culture even pits the two against one another for much of the story after Mary finds the first "monster."

Now that I've finished the novel, I'm gratified to learn that Elizabeth Philpot did live in Lyme where she befriended Mary Anning, the fossil-finding prodigy, and many of the characters in the novel are based on real people as well.  Once again, finishing a book is just a start.

Starting with a True Story

Fun with Flavia de Luce: Judging a Book by Its Cover

Despite the old axiom, I have bought books before simply because of  an appealing cover.  Some of them sit on my shelf awhile before I actually read them.  I've also nearly passed over books because of a dull, unattractive cover.  I should know better.  I fell in love with books that had those old blue or green library bindings. They all looked alike.  They all smelled alike.

I picked up my first of Alan Bradley's Flavia deLuce novels because it was, frankly, pretty.  The title Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie was cute too. Maybe too cute, I feared.  So it sat awhile. But when a friend whose reading tastes I trust said she was reading the books, I decided I'd give them a try.  Then I found the audiobooks at the library, and in no time, I was hooked.  The books are set shortly after WWII. The protagonist and narrator Flavia deLuce is an eleven-year-old girl,the youngest of three daughters who live in an English manor house that belonged to her mother, who was killed in Tibet on an adventure when Flavia was a baby.  The Colonel deLuce, Flavia's father, a philatelist, hasn't the income to cover the expenses of the house, which actually belonged to his late wife.

Flavia is a perfect narrator--she's clever enough to recognize (and cover for) her own naivete. Her oldest sister Ophelia, a young teen, is most fascinated with the mirror; the middle sister Daphne is a bookworm.  Flavia loves chemistry--especially poison.  She has taken over the lab that belonged to her late uncle Tarquin, and she uses her chemistry knowledge to try to solve murder cases in the vicinity, much to the chagrin of the police inspectors with whose work she often interferes.

In the fourth novel--the last so far--I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, her father is allowing a cinema company to use the home to film a movie in an attempt to remain solvent.  The movie stars one of the best known British actresses of the day, who agrees to put on a special Christmas Eve performance to help raise funds to re-roof the parish church. In short order, the group assembled in Buckshaw, the deLuce home, is dealing with a snow storm, a murder, the early appearance of a baby, and--of course--a murder.

As corny as it may sound, the books are just delightful.  Bradley weaves in chemistry, anatomy, and even Shakespeare.  Most intriguing, though, are the human dynamics.

I remember going to the library regularly when I was in junior high, always checking the shelves to see if they had anything new by Daphne du Maurier.  Face it, without Google, I had not easy way of knowing if she was alive or dead. (For the record: alive and still writing).  I suspect I'll be keeping an ear out for Bradley's next adventure with the young Miss de Luce.  I'm hooked.

Fun with Flavia de Luce: Judging a Book by Its Cover