R.I.P. Challenge Book One: The Expendable Man

Hughes, Dorothy. The Expendable Man. London: Persephone Books, 2006.

(This book was originally published in 1963. If you're unfamiliar with Persephone and are wondering what that odd design I've thrown in here up above is, Persephone covers all look exactly the same. The books are defined by the end papers, chosen to match the date and mood of each book, so I've put up the end paper here.)

It seems almost impossible to write about this book without giving spoilers, but I'm going to do my damnest to do so, because I know I won't read reviews that include spoilers, and I want you to read this review in the hopes that (more important than my review) it will inspire you to read the book. I want everyone to read it. Yes, it is that good. Even if you don't read mysteries/thrillers, you ought to read this one. The book is a prime example of why genre fiction shouldn't be "pooh-poohed" the way it so often is (not by you, I know, but by all those psuedo-intellectuals out there who take themselves so very seriously). Some pooh-poohing is okay (Mary Higgins Clark springs to mind, and maybe I'm being -- psuedointellectually -- unfair to her, but I read two of her books years ago and found them to be some of the most sloppily written and plotted works I've ever read), but please don't, as my sister Forsyth would say, throw the baby out and study the bath water.

I'd love to give you all the details that prove this book is much more than a mere thriller. Yet, if I give you too many, it will spoil an element of surprise that shouldn't be revealed to anyone until he or she has fallen into the book with no hope of escape before reaching the last page. Persephone, Class Act Publisher that it is, managed to provide enticing cover copy without any of those giveaway details, and so I (despite being anything but classy) will attempt to follow in Persphone's footsteps.

Let's begin this elusive discussion, then, with a quote from a friend of mine, who also just read the book: Promise me you'll NEVER PICK UP A HITCHHIKER. How appropriate it is to be reading a thriller for the R.I.P. challenge that involves a hitchhiker. After all, we ALL, even those who didn't, at age eleven, stay up all night telling hitchhiker ghost stories at slumber parties, know not to pick up hitchhikers. Dr. Hugh Densmore, intern at UCLA, certainly knows not to pick up hitchhikers. Nonetheless, the one he spots when he's driving from L.A. to Phoenix for his niece's wedding attracts his attention. He doesn't want to pick her up, knows he shouldn't, but she's so young. She reminds him of his own younger sisters, of how he wouldn't want them picked up by the wrong sort of driver, so he stops.

He stops, and his nightmare begins. I can't tell you why (put this book on your T.B.R. list, wait ten months, and maybe you'll forget why it's there and what I'm about to say), but this fateful "good deed" of his produces a brilliant commentary on race relations, class distinctions, and abortion rights. I'm not sure whether or not Hughes intended the latter, but it's there, and because she was writing in the U.S. in the 1960s, the punch she provides is more powerful than the one writers might provide after the fact (think John Irving and The Cider House Rules, especially since the abortionist in this book would make a great freshman English compare and contrast subject with Irving's Wilbur Larch).

I can tell you that Hugh's nightmare is typical of many a mystery (The Fugitive springs to mind here) when he finds himself accused of a murder he didn't commit. He makes many, many mistakes in trying to prove he's been framed, and I'm not quite sure why he makes some of the choices he does, but I suppose there wouldn't be much of a plot if he didn't. You could accuse Hughes of creating characters who suffer from being one dimensional, especially her cops, but no more so than many other brilliant authors of the genre. The point of these thrillers is plot, not knowing that the cops and bad guys go home and lovingly care for children or sick parents, thus proving how human and complicated they really are. What's important is how they are interacting with our protagonist and victim(s) to move the plot along. Hughes had a fine grasp of how that should work. One-dimensional characters are also useful when trying to make political points, which Hughes was clearly doing.

Although this book, on many levels, has a very masculine feel to it, one thing I liked about it that clearly distinguishes it from the male likes of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross Macdonald was the obligatory "beat up the protagonist" scene. If you're familiar with Chandler, Hammett, or Macdonald, you know perfectly well that Marlowe, Spade, and Archer can be beaten to a pulp (one eye swollen shut, a couple of fractured ribs, even be shot in the ankle or something) and still run 57 blocks, climbing a chain link fence to escape (or to catch) a bad guy. Here, we have a protagonist who gets beaten to a pulp and winds up in bed for a few days. When he does decide to pursue someone he thinks is a murderer, he needs drugs to pump himself up, and we are still reminded, throughout, that he's practically a cripple, wincing in pain with every opportunity. I call that a (feminine) realistic touch.

My one real gripe with the book is one that I often feel like writing a whole blog post about. When one of the Black characters wants to disguise the woman he's with and himself as shiftless and poor, he changes his own accent and asks her "Can you talk southern?" As if you have to be Southern in order to be shiftless and poor, and as if articulate, educated Blacks couldn't be found in the South. Yes, even in 1963, there were articulate, educated Blacks in the South (also articulate, educated Whites). Martin Luther King, Jr., after all, was Southern. The female character's response is even more absurd,

She shrugged. 'I've been told not too well, northern comes through. If I have to speak I'll stay with "Yes, suh: and "No, suh."' (p. 310)

As if some drunk white guy in Phoenix will be able to hear "northern coming through." Judging from what often passes as a Southern accent in Hollywood, I'd say most who aren't born and raised in the South can't hear that.

It's a testament to the book that this Southern stereotyping didn't annoy me as much as it often does. In fact, if you're not Southern, my guess is you won't even notice it when you read the book, and if you are, you may still be like me, ready to read more Hughes. And that's all I'm going to say. You'll have to read the book to find out whether or not he gets The Girl (yes, of course there's a Girl) and goes free to live happily ever after, or the Girl dumps him to go off with the lawyer who can't keep him from being thrown in jail.

Good stuff. Four stars.

Musings on Terror Reading

As I mentioned in my last post, Susan at You Can Never Have Too Many Books, asked some good questions recently about why those of us who read horror stories do so. I liked the questions and thought they'd be fun to answer, especially now that I've embarked on the R.I.P. Challenge, so I reached out a bony, skeletal hand over to her site and stole them to post on my own (with answers, of course). Here you go:

1. Why do I read horror/ghost stories?

I suppose one of the obvious answers to this question is that I'm a masochist? I mean, people like my mother and sisters have asked me since I was a teenager, "How can you read that stuff?" Obviously, many people don't enjoy being scared out of their wits, and to tell you the truth, I wouldn't paint myself out to be someone who does, because I'm such a chicken when it comes to so many things, but I can't remember a time when I didn't enjoy stories, books, television shows, and movies that sent shivers up and down my spine.

One of my favorite books when I was a kid was an old Scholastic Paperback called Strange But True. Most of the stories in it were quite forgettable, but there were two that really stood out for me. One was about a ghost ship that was sailing around with a frozen crew. The other was about a frightful man lugging a coffin on his back who later showed up on an elevator that the narrator chose not to take because "Coffin Man" was on it. The elevator malfunctioned, killing everyone on it. (That's how I remember it, anyway. That may not be what really happened. I haven't read the book since I was twelve or so, although I'd like to reread it).

About the same time I discovered that book, I also discovered Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators mystery series (which hardly anyone else has ever heard of). That series was to me what Nancy Drew was to almost every other girl I knew. I think I preferred it, because, like Scooby Doo (speaking of cartoons. I loved cartoons when they took on spooky themes. Anyone remember The Flintstones episode when that Addams Family type family moved in next door? That was my favorite!), these books tended to focus on mysteries that at first seemed to be supernatural in nature. Something ghoul-y-and-ghost-y-ish always spawned the three boys' investigations.

When I got older, I remember scaring myself to death reading The Amityville Horror, and then, of course, moving on to Stephen King. I always found the books scarier than the movies, because, as I'd say after seeing the movie, "That wasn't as scary as I imagined it when I read the book." In other words, I guess my imagination ran wilder while reading than it did while being presented with someone else's interpretation of events. The only exceptions here were the movies The Exorcist and The Shining, both of which pay excellent homage to the books and still scare the crap out of me.

Back in those days, it was very easy to send a chill up my spine while reading. These days, it's much much harder to do so. I read these books and stories now for two reasons: 1. I'm always hoping to come across something that does terrify me, that makes me feel the way I did when I was a kid reading Strange But True and 2. I like to write ghost stories myself, so I read them to see what others have written and for inspiration.

2. Do I like being thrilled?

Yes, I love to be thrilled. I'm a new-adventure-and-roller-coaster kind of gal. Or, at least, I like to think I am. Reality is that I love to be thrilled, unless I'm home all alone, it's late, and I've made the mistake of reading something like a collection of essays about serial killers. I hear a "thump" somewhere in the house (or was it on the front porch?), and then, well, I'm not too keen on being thrilled.

3. Do I like being scared, safely in the comfort of my own home?

Yes, but not when I'm alone. This is a bit of a problem for the sort of thrill-seeker I am, because I rarely ever get scared if I'm not alone. I might have a brief moment of chills up my spine while reading something macabre or thrilling, but all I have to do is go find someone else in another room (someone who's supposed to be there, I mean, not an intruder with a wicked grin and an ax raised above his skeletal face), and I'm fine. If I'm alone? Well, let's just say I've been known to lock doors and dive under covers hoping no one finds me.

4. Do I like the eerie frisson of chill running over my skin when I read a particularly scary line or scene?

Yes, I do like that sort of chill, as long as it doesn't last too long, and as long as it's only being inspired by reading/watching something and not by strange noises echoing throughout my house.

There you have it: I love to be scared out of my wits... maybe... sort of. Are any of the rest of you who read horror/thrillers as ambivalent as I apparently am?

R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril Challenge VI

This blog seems to be dead, I post so rarely on it these days, so why not bring it back from the dead with this very appropriate challenge? I've been reading about Carl's R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril Challenge every year since I started this blog (2006. God. Can you believe it? No wonder it's dead. How old is too old for a blog?), but I've never bothered to join it. I didn't feel I needed to, because every October and November, I fill my reading time with tales of mystery, suspense, and the supernatural, and the R.I.P. challenge runs from September 1 through Halloween. September, when we've still got bright sunshiny days with highs in the 80s has always seemed a little too soon for me to focus my reading on the weird and spooky. This year, however, I've changed my mind for three reasons:

1. I joined Carl's Once Upon a Time Challenge for the first time this past spring and enjoyed it immensely. Even more impressive, it's a challenge I started and actually managed to finish.

2. Although I used to save all my supernatural reading for October and November, recently I've begun reading throughout the year, which has made me enjoy it more, somehow. Thus, reading ghost stories when it's 84 degrees and sunny outside doesn't seem as odd as it used to. Besides, this time of year, we still get thunderstorms, and everyone knows ghosts and demons abound when the skies are streaked with lightning and the house shakes with thunderous reverberations.

3. Last weekend, we had a hurricane here on the east coast of the U.S. It knocked out our power for 48 hours. You don't realize how very, very dark it is at night until all the power in your neighborhood is gone, you have to take the dog out before going to bed, and there's a cemetery behind your house. It made me realize why Victorians wrote such good ghost stories. When you have very little light, all kinds of sights (and sounds) could easily be mistaken for ghosts. All these thoughts, of course, made me want to pull out some ghost stories and read them.

Carl always kindly provides us with varying levels for his challenges, and I'm going to take on Peril the First, reading these four books (plus one to grow on, because I couldn't resist):

Dark Fantasy: Murder of Angels by Caitlin R. Kiernan. This is one that's been sitting on my shelves forever, bought on a trip to the Delaware shore the first summer we lived in Pennsylvania. It's actually the second in the Silk series, and I haven't read the first (Silk), but I'm hoping that won't matter, because I'm trying to read from my own shelves rather than buying anything new for this challenge. Thanks to Ms. Musings, I discovered Kiernan's Threshold about four years ago, I think, and I've been meaning to read something else by her ever since.

Gothic: The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. I've read it, but it was so many, many years ago that I don't remember a thing about it, and I've been meaning to reread it, oh, for about five years now. If I'm going to read something Gothic for the challenge, why not read "the earliest and most influential of the Gothic novels." At least, that's what the back cover copy says. I have an old, old copy of this somewhere, but a few years ago, a friend of mine gave me a nice, shiny, new version published by O.U.P., so I'm going to read it.

Mystery: The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes, because not all horror has to be supernatural, and this one promises to be full of human horror. It's a Persephone book that's remained on my shelves unread for ages (Persephone books are so expensive for Americans that when one buys them, she has to save them for special occasions). It's another one that came highly recommended to me by Ms. Musings, so here it is.

Supernatural: The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Pierce edited by Michael Newton. My brother-in-law kindly picked this one up for me at Book Expo America back in 2010. I meant to read it last fall but never got around to it.

(One to Grow On) A Little Bit of Everything: A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I've been listening to the audiobook version of this one. It's a very, very long audiobook (3 parts at Audible.com), and I've been listening to it for over a month now, because I basically only listen when I'm walking or doing house work, neither of which I've done in abundance since I started it. I'm dying for an excuse to write my thoughts on it, but I didn't want to give up reading other titles for the R.I.P. challenge, and, well, you know, I never get around to writing about the books I read unless I have a reason like the mystery book club or a challenge, so I just decided to tack it onto this challenge. I've got something like five more hours of listening, which means I'll probably be done with it this week.

I will also be joining Carl's group read of Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things, because I've been meaning to read Fragile Things practically since it was published. I don't own it but can easily get it from the library, so I won't have to buy it.

And I'll probably spend a good deal of November reading other spooky fare. It's a month that tends to have superb weather for such reading, and nothing much else to recommend it except my brother's birthday and my second favorite holiday (Halloween, of course, being my favorite) Thanksgiving. I've got tons and tons more on my shelves that I can read. That reminds me that Susan, over at You Can Never Have Too Many Books, recently asked some really interesting questions regarding reading for terror. Since this blog has only just come back to life, I need to keep feeding it, so I plan to address those in my next blog post. Until then, it looks like I've got some reading to do.

Edgar Allan Poe

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, and The Purloined Letter from Poe: Poetry and Tales. New York: The Library of America, 1984.

(These stories were originally published from 1841-1844.)

I may have mentioned a time or two on this blog that I love Edgar Allan Poe. One of my favorite spots at The University of Virginia is the Edgar Allan Poe room (#13 on the West Range), which is supposedly the dorm room he occupied while a student there. It's glassed off for exhibit, and no one resides in it, except the stuffed raven I love.

I know there are many contemporary critics who love to knock Poe, but I choose to ignore them. I was hooked on him from the moment my sister Forsyth received some over-sized, illustrated "children's classic" version of The Gold-Bug as a gift. I'd received Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, and when I was done with that, despite having loved it, I read Forsyth's book and was horribly jealous (greedy child that I was) that it wasn't mine as well.

All that being said, I've not read everything Poe ever wrote, so I was very happy when the Connecticut mystery book club chose to read three of his stories, two of which I'd read and one of which I'd not. Why it is that of the three C. Auguste Dupin detective stories, I'd read the first,The Murders at the Rue Morgue and the third, The Purloined Letter, but not the second, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, is a mystery in and of itself. Perhaps Dupin would disdain me for chalking it up to bizarre high school and college curricula, coming up with some far more rational explanation, but if I chalk it up to English courses, I can then confidently say it's been about thirty years since I read the two.

That may explain why my brain was quite fuzzy on the details. What I remembered about The Murders in the Rue Morgue was that one of the victims was stuffed up a chimney. That's it, all I seem to have remembered. How I could possibly have forgotten the orangutan ("Ourang-Outang") is completely beyond me, but here's something weird about the way the brain works. I could have sworn that an orangutan features somewhere in a Sherlock Holmes story (I first read Arthur Conan Doyle about the same time I first read Poe). I've reread quite a bit of Sherlock Holmes in the past ten years or so and have yet to encounter an orangutan. Did I completely confuse the two? (Someone in the know, please let me know.)

Then again, the fact that I may have confused Dupin and Holmes leads me to the main point I want to make about these stories, which is that I find, now that I've been reading so many different mystery and detective stories, that the early ones, like those of Poe and Conan Doyle, credited with being the Founding Fathers of the genre, tend to be very matter-of-fact stories meant to highlight the genius of their detectives. Typically, these genius detectives are juxtaposed with earnest, but rather incompetent, policemen. Unlike contemporary authors of the genre who, yes, have genius detectives, but who also might have a setting that features as a character with a psychology almost as complicated as its human characters (Ian Rankin); or whose crime solver's story is so detailed and interesting that the mystery she's solving is almost unimportant (Jacqueline Winspear); or who may be using the genre as a means to express true literary talent (Tana French); here, what's important are the facts, the puzzle presented, and the amazing detective who's smart enough to see what most can't. He spots all the "clews" (when did a "clew" become a "clue"?) no one else has noticed. What the reader most wants to do is to outwit the detective, to pick up on all the clews, and to solve the puzzle just before he does. This reader rarely manages to do so.

I found this matter-of-fact writing style interesting coming from Poe, because I tend to think of his writing as flowery, especially since what I've read most recently of his is his collected poems. Not much poetry is in evidence here, which verifies my claims that Poe was a genius. He could write breath-taking poetry when he so desired, but when plot and puzzle-solving were the important components, he chose to be a little more pedestrian, which is not to say that he was dull or unimaginative, just, well ... prosaic. He may have left behind the flowery language, but he certainly didn't leave behind his own philosophizing, some of which left me with my own, ever-so-flowery response of "huh"? (For a prime example of this, see the beginning of The Murders in the Rue Morgue when Poe presents his theories about the analytical mind.) It's best to read these parts quickly, get through the plot, and then to reread them more slowly for real understanding. It's almost as though reading the story trains the brain to think the way Poe did.

All three of these tales are great fun in an "old-fashioned detective story" way, but of the three, although The Mystery of Marie Rogêt is very interesting in having been based on a true event that occurred in New York City and also includes my favorite quote from the three stories:

'And what are we to think,' I asked, 'of the article in Le Soleil?'

'That it is a pity its inditer was not born a parrot -- in which case he would have been the most illustrious parrot of his race. He has merely repeated the individual items of the already published opinion...' (p. 533)

(have you ever read a better example of a wonderfully disdainful detective?), my favorite, which you can probably tell by the number of times I've mentioned it, is The Murders in the Rue Morgue. What I love about it is that it's so absolutely improbable, absurd really. And yet, while reading it, it all makes perfect, logical sense. (In that regard, it reminds me of one of G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories.) That, in my book, is what good detective fiction is all about. Now, enough writing. I've got this whole collection of Poe stories to read and a hurricane supposedly on its way. What better weather for reading Poe than that?

Blog Tour: Pietro Grossi's The Break

Grossi, Pietro. The Break. London: Pushkin Press, 2011. (Translated from the Italian by Howard Curtis.)

If, in December 2010, you had told me that I would read a book in 2011 about a pool-obsessed man who laid stone roads for a living and that this book would definitely be on my list of favorites at the end of the year, I probably would have wondered what sort of head injury I was going to suffer in 2011 that so affected my personality and reading habits. Especially since the man doesn't even play the version of billiards that I know. He plays a completely foreign Italian version of the game. Nonetheless, the circumstances, feelings, and, ultimately, life of this man named Dino are anything but foreign.

Pietro Grossi has written a fabulously old-fashioned novel that has a very fresh feel to it. It's short, and he packs a punch, but he does so while giving us endearing characters about whom we care from the get-go. He does so without any 21st-century gimmicks (no alternating between first and third person narrative, no deciding not to use punctuation, no disconnected prose intentionally meant to prove how clever he is, etc.), and the result is, like the beautiful Van Gogh cover (in this instance, yes you can judge a book by its cover. Rarely have I encountered a cover that so effectively illustrates a novel), a masterpiece of literature.

The book begins and ends at the pool table. In between, we get a story so full of meaning and beautiful prose, it's hard to put down. Luckily, if you plan your reading schedule accordingly (which I didn't), you may not have to, as the novel isn't even 250 pages long. There were times when, despite wanting to read it slowly, to let the prose sink in, I found myself reading the way I often do when reading a thriller. I was practically skipping whole sentences to find out what was going to happen. Then I'd go back and reread them, because, really, you don't want to miss a word of what Grossi has to say. It would be like missing strokes of color in that Van Gogh painting.

You see, Dino has led quite an ordinary life up until now, and his only real excitement comes from playing pool with the man Cirillo, who's taught him since he was a boy. Dino doesn't believe in luck or circumstance, really. He believes in the orderliness, the mathematics even, that can be found by spending your evenings at the billiards table. Then, one day, he takes his eye off the ball, and everything he's ever known begins to fall apart. He becomes one of the two men (the other is his co-worker Saeed), so aptly described by Grossi, who,

...looked at each other for a moment in silence, thinking with some part of themselves that they really belonged in another story, but that this one wasn't too bad after all. (p. 153)

How many times do we feel like that in life, feel like asking, "How did this become my story?" So often, despite what you think you can do, that billiard ball really does have a mind of its own. Your hand slips accidentally, or you become caught up in some stranger's odd story, and you suddenly see the ball rolling somewhere you didn't expect.

Dino would tell you that all he was doing was laying stones to make roads, playing billiards, fantasizing about taking trips with his wife he'd never take. Then, one day, he found himself hiding a guy in a truck and driving him to the border, so the guy could escape prosecution. Grossi's genius is that this is what the story becomes, after seeming like it's going to be the story of a pool player's rise to fame and fortune. Then, just when you think it's going to be all about that man's escape at the border and Dino's role in it, it becomes something else, yet again. I was so sure this was going to be the story of a guy who came from nowhere and won or lost big in some huge pool tournament. I couldn't have been more wrong.

What it is is a real life story, the sort of story that makes your heart ache for the ways in which people misunderstand others, the ways they focus on the wrong sorts of questions, the wrong sets of priorities. Despite all that misunderstanding, the novel provides hope. This hope comes, not so much from what happens, but from the portrayal of the resilience of human beings and their desperate attempts to do what's right and to make meaning of this life. I like to believe in the good of human beings. While so many other contemporary authors seem to be determined to make us see the bad in humans, Grossi helps us to believe in that good.

The hope also comes from realizing we still have authors like Grossi, those who can turn a bunch of typeset pages into a beating heart, full of life and meaning. I'm very grateful to Pushkin Press for publishing such authors, even more grateful that I was asked by them to review this book, and am thrilled that I'm on the blog tour, which means I will soon be interviewing Grossi. Stay tuned for the post in which I try not to sound like a gushing idiot, and he answers my questions.

One I Promised for a Rainy Day

I first saw this at Ms. Musing's, but it can also be found at some of the other blogs I like to frequent like My Porch and Charlotte's Web. Anyway, I decided to save it for a rainy day, of which we've had something like a grand total of three here in Lancaster County this whole brutal summer. I was beginning to think I was going to have to do it on a non-rainy day, but then I hung up some laundry to dry today and lo and behold! it began to pour, so here you go.

The Sunday Times 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945

The idea for this meme is to note those I've read.

1. Philip Larkin -- not read, but I keep meaning to do so.

2. George Orwell -- read so long ago, for school, and I wasn't into him at the time, so I can't remember a damn thing, except things that have made it into the vernacular.

3. William Golding -- started to, but didn't get very far. Must try again.

4. Ted Hughes -- I've read at him, but never read an entire collection of his.

5. Doris Lessing -- another on the "meaning to read for ages" list. I think I did read something of hers in college, but I don't remember what it was.

6. J. R. R. Tolkien -- had The Hobbit read to me. That counts, right? Even if I wasn't paying a bit of attention.

7. V. S. Naipaul -- yes. Loved him and really ought to read more.

8. Muriel Spark -- yes. I love her, too.

9. Kingsley Amis -- only The Green Man, which I gather is quite different from what he typically writes, but it was great, despite it's "bit too much" ending. I have to admit I've got a bias against him, as he's always struck me as someone who thinks he's superior. Why I pick on him, lord knows, because you could probably say that about a good number of these authors.

10. Angela Carter -- no, but I want to read The Bloody Chamber.

11. C. S. Lewis -- yes. Am I the only person in the world who wasn't in love with the Narnia books when she was a kid? I read them all, faithfully, to see what all the fuss was about and never could.

12. Iris Murdoch -- nope.

13. Salman Rushdie -- nope. And I never planned to do so until I read a recent blog post of Litlove's that was quite convincing. But who am I kidding? I'm sure I never will.

14. Ian Fleming -- oh, how can anyone watch the movies without reading any of the books? (Oh yeah, and I read Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, too, when I was a kid. Of course, that was a movie, too...)

15. Jan Morris -- okay, my ignorance is on bright display: I've never even heard of Jan Morris.

16. Roald Dahl -- of course. How could you be a kid raised in the seventies and not read Dahl? I also love his Tales of the Unexpected for adults.

17. Anthony Burgess -- it's probably terribly old-fashioned of me, but I love him.

18. Mervyn Peake -- no, but I'm playing a game with the copy of The Gormanghast Novels which was still on the shelves at our liquidating Borders last time I checked. I'm convinced no one else in Lancaster County will want it and am waiting to see if it lasts until it goes to 50% off (right now, it's at 30%). If it does, I'll buy it.

19. Martin Amis -- no. The poor guy suffers from being associated in my mind with his dad.

20. Anthony Powell -- nope, but plenty of bloggers have convinced me I need to do so.

21. Alan Sillitoe -- who?

22. John LeCarré -- yep, thanks to the CT mystery book club.

23. Penelope Fitzgerald -- nope.

24. Phillipa Pearce -- nope.

25. Barbara Pym -- just seeing her name makes me want to pour a glass of sherry and pick up one of her books.

26. Beryl Bainbridge -- nope.

27. J.G. Ballard -- yet again: no.

28. Alan Garner -- a personal favorite.

29. Alasdar Gray -- nope.

30. John Fowles -- can you believe: no? Neither can I, but there you have it.

31. Derek Wolcott -- tried. Might try again. Might not.

32. Kazuo Ishiguro -- another personal favorite.

33. Anita Brookner -- not until this summer, when I read one book by her, but I will be reading more.

34. A. S. Byatt -- was dying to read her when she came out with Possession, but not dying enough, apparently, because I never did, and I eventually lost all interest.

35. Ian McEwan -- totally overrated, and I can't believe I feel that way and still have read three books by him.

36. Geoffrey Hill -- nope.

37. Hanif Kureishi -- no.

38. Iain Banks -- nope.

39. George Mackay Brown -- nope.

40. A. J. P. Taylor -- nope.

41. Isaiah Berlin -- nope.

42. J. K. Rowling -- how embarrassing that I break all those "nopes" with a "yes" to this one.

43. Philip Pullman -- like him much better than Rowling.

44. Julian Barnes -- I have a reader's crush on the man. Still remember the first time we met: History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. There was no hope for me. I was smitten from the get-go.

45. Colin Thubron -- back to "nope" again.

46. Bruce Chatwin -- should have by now, but I haven't.

47. Alice Oswald -- nope.

48. Benjamin Zephaniah -- who?

49. Rosemary Sutcliff -- finally, another one I've read.

50. Michael Moorcock -- and another one I haven't.

Okay, everyone, please tell me: of those I haven't read, which ones should I? Meanwhile, I can't believe J. K. Rowling made the list. I mean, if she can make it, where's James Herbert?

Mistakes the Publishing Industry Has Made in Recent Years

1. Assuming for way too long that e-books wouldn't catch on. Then, assuming that they were like paperbacks, charging way too little for them, instead of thinking of them as something that might eventually replace hardcovers and acting accordingly.

2. Forgetting that they have always catered to a tiny market and trying to expand their market in ridiculous ways. Readers are rarities. Publishers have forgotten about us in their greedy efforts to make more money and have tried, unsuccessfully and at great expense, to do things like create hybrid print and digital books in order to cater to nonreaders. People came up with the damnest ideas: "Let's have web sites associated with our books." This is a better idea with the advent of the tablet, but really, back in 2005, did any reader want to get up from a cozy seat by the fire to have to go boot up the computer and look up something on some book's associated web page? I hate print books that refer me to web sites. Or how about: "Let's let the reader create his or her own ending." If I want to create my own ending, I'll write my own beginning as well, thank you. Finally, there's "Let's create series in which readers get a cliff hanger at the end of a book." Cliff hangers are fine for weekly T.V. shows. They're a horrible idea when one has to wait 2 or 3 years for the next book to be published (and they create shoddy writing, because the pressure is just to get the book out, no matter how badly written it might be).

3. Ignoring the midlist. Do I even need to elaborate here? I'll just say that the publishing industry seems to have adopted the mentality of a fifteen-year-old basketball player who thinks he's going to be the next Michael Jordan without having to practice at all, and he's basing all his potential future wealth on this assumption.

4. Putting "book club guides" in the backs of books that feature the sorts of questions that made life-long readers like me hate English classes when they were in high school. It might come as a shock to publishing consultants (do they ever talk to real readers?), but those of us who love to read enough to have formed a book club in order to discuss books with others who also love to read, are quite capable of coming up with our own -- far better and more insightful -- topics for discussion.

5. Speaking of consultants: cutting staff and paying authors less money in order to hire consultants who come up with brilliant ideas for "branding" the company. Books aren't soda or cars or jeans. Readers don't find one brand and stick with it. The authors are the brands. Have you ever heard anyone ask, "Did you read the latest from Random House?" Of course not. And ask your average reader who publishes his or her favorite author. My guess is the reader quite likely won't know. Forget branding the company. Pay the authors to stick around. And keep the editors they love to work with, so there's the possibility they might stick around even when other publishers offer them more money.

6. Hiring CEOs from other industries who aren't biblioholics. What happened to the days of publishing CEOs who could read, write, and run publishing companies? Those are the people who know a little something about their market, and knowing your market is more than half the battle when it comes to staying alive.

7. Worrying more about profit than giving your audience what it wants. I want a good book to read. I want it to be well-written. I want evidence that it's been edited and proofread. In other words, I don't want to read some unoriginal, newest fad based on someone else's odd, once-in-a-lifetime success (wizards! vampires! wizards in love with vampires!) that some unknown author has rushed off in six months. I don't want a book that is chock full of awkward, run-on sentences and typos, just because you, Mr. Publisher, have decided to cut your staff and have shipped all production functions overseas. You know what that sort of book does? It leads me to buy used books, written back when plots were original, and copyeditors and proofreaders were people you, (again) Mr. Publisher, might actually have known, people who possibly even had on-site, full-time jobs inside your building. Losing sales from the likes of me hurts profits, too, you know.

Anyone want to add some more mistakes to the list? I'd be happy to hear them. Meanwhile, I'm heading back to continue reading Pushkin Press's wonderful book The Break, which has an original plot and not a single typo so far (despite being a translation). Thank God for small, independent presses!

A Visit

This past weekend, we were honored with a visit from Zoë's Mom (ZM) and Zoë. They arrived late Thursday, after getting stuck in traffic (of course. Is it at all possible to go from Fairfield County, CT to Lancaster County, PA without getting stuck in traffic?). Getting stuck in traffic would become a bit of a theme for the weekend, but it really didn't matter, because we had such great company while sitting in a car, moving a mere few inches at a time.

The minute they arrived, it was instant love between Zoë and Clare the dachshund. In fact, I'm pretty sure Zoë would've been perfectly content just to spend the whole weekend doing nothing but playing with Clare. For Clare, I think it was a bit more like those older cousins you used to visit when you were a kid. You loved them, couldn't wait to see them, but you were also a little bit in awe of them and afraid (though you would never admit it), because they were so much bigger than you. It was wonderful for Clare's "mom" and "dad" to have someone around who never tired of playing with her and giving her all the attention she wants so badly.

ZM and I share a mutual love of ice cream, so I had decided that when she next came to visit, we'd go to Franklin Fountain in Philadelphia, an old fashioned soda fountain I'd read about in The New York Times last month. I'm too young to remember the days of such soda fountains, and I've always felt cheated that they've been replaced by fast food franchises (not that ZM and I haven't been known to go in search of the nearest DQ). I like the idea of homemade sodas, ice cream sundaes, and egg creams (although I've never had one of those) served to me by a soda jerk while I'm perched up on a diner-type bar stool. It always makes me think of It's a Wonderful Life, although I always imagine I'm actually in New York City, not small town America, when I visit one. ZM is the kind of friend who didn't think it was at all absurd that we drive to Philly on Friday specifically to visit Franklin Fountain. Zoë, of course, came along for the ride. (Poor Bob was left at home to work, although he did sneak off for a little bit to the Board Game Association's convention, which is held in Lancaster every summer.)

Of course, we did more than just go to the soda fountain (for instance, you know, even though it's tempting, you can't really have nothing but ice cream for lunch, so we stopped off for a slice of pizza first), but I have to tell you it didn't disappoint. It was exactly as I'd imagined: bottles of every sort of soda flavor imaginable, old-fashioned candy and gum for sale, all kinds of ice cream concoctions, and a small bar with bar stools. The wait staff even dresses in outfits straight out of the 1940s.

It was nearly impossible to choose what to order. The banana split sounded good, but like a bit too much. They had specialties with such names as the "volcano" that were tantalizing. I really ought to try an egg cream sometime, but this just didn't seem like the time. I was also tempted by milkshakes and the root beer float. Finally, though, I did what I typically do: after browsing through it all, I ordered a plain old hot fudge sundae. It was superb. I haven't had hot fudge like that in I don't know how long, the sort of deep, dark, chocolate-y hot fudge people seem to have forgotten how to make, whose purpose is to enhance the sugary sweetness of the vanilla ice cream, not to make it more sugary. And you could taste the vanilla beans in the ice cream. On our way out, we decided we had to sample some of the sodas, so we bought one grape and one strawberry to share. They were good, but by then, we were really too full to enjoy them.

After all that decadence, it was on to shopping. ZM and I had had a superb shopping trip about a year and a half ago with Ms. Musings, and we decided to go back to Rittenhouse Square where the three of us had been to look around in Lucky Jeans and whatever else struck our fancy. In typical ZM and Emily fashion, we had a cab take us to Lucky Jeans (after realizing the trolly, which Zoë had really wanted to do would take way too long), only to miss it and to go wandering up the street after the driver let us off, unable to find it (turns out, we'd driven right by it, and he'd dropped us off about two doors up from it). Never mind, it gave us the excuse to go into Barnes and Noble, where Zoë got some teen magazines that kept her occupied while we did things like tried on jeans and shoes (yes, of course, shoes. And, yes, I did buy a pair). Then it was time to head home for the community picnic (and to sit in traffic trying to do so).

My town has a community-wide picnic every summer, and I was so glad ZM and Zoë chose to come the weekend of this big event. The town provides barbecue chicken and corn, and everyone brings side dishes and desserts, enough to feed an army (which is a good thing, because, you know, we hadn't eaten enough all day). The night ends with a huge fireworks display, and the Amish all turn out for the big event, so I thought it would be a fun thing for out-of-town visitors. We introduced Zoë to some of our young friends from church, and they became instant friends, deserting us all to go do things like bug the balloon man and scramble for candy in the candy scramble. Eventually, it got dark, and we all got a little worried when the three kids didn't come back, even more worried when each of them seemed to straggle back alone (we'd thought they were all together). Zoë was the last one to be found, but we did eventually find her, and all was well for the fireworks display.

On Saturday, we headed off to Lititz, the home of Wilbur Chocolates. Wilbur chocolate is better than Hershey's, and they have a wonderful, huge candy store, a must visit if you like candy and ever find yourself in Lancaster County. Lititz is also home to the only independent bookstore in Lancaster County, so Lititz is a dream town for ZM and me, who both like to read while eating candy. You visit Aaron's Books first to buy your book; then go buy yourself some candy at Wilbur; and then go home and read (and get fat eating candy) all afternoon. Inbetween the bookstore and Wilbur, we had to stop and get some lunch. This is where I exhibited how fantastically coordinated I am by dumping my lunch all over the booth and floor before I'd even had one bite. Luckily, they gave me another one at no charge. After Wilbur, we headed home, and sat in traffic, yet again.

Bob and I had a party to attend Saturday afternoon, so we left ZM and Zoë who went off to get pedicures and good things to eat at Kitchen Kettle. We were all happily exhausted by the evening, so we just ordered dinner in and had a lazy evening talking (well, ZM and I did. Bob is always prepping for Sunday morning on Saturday evenings, and Zoë was either reading or playing with Clare most of the time). We hit the hay a little earlier than we had on Thursday and Friday.

Sunday morning, it was the Sunday morning rush for church. ZM and Zoë had decided to attend with us (not something we require of our house guests), and it was nice to have the company. Bob did his best to embarrass them by announcing their presence, but the highlight of the morning was, after the service when Bob took off his robe, and Zoë and one of her new-found friends decided to zip themselves up in it. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of that (but I'm happy to have gotten the one above of Zoë reading to Clare. They were reading The Totally Lame Vampire). All too soon (as always), it was time for them to leave. But they had a little better luck with the traffic on the way home.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences. New York: Vintage, 1993 (1965).

When I was a kid, I somehow managed to confuse and equate Al Capone with Truman Capote (I guess those two last names were similar enough to a child listening in on adult conversation that I never distinguished them). It was years before I discovered that Capote was an author, but by then, the connection in my mind was so strong, I couldn't shake the notion that In Cold Blood was some sort of story about the mob. It makes perfect sense, right? If Truman Capote wasn't Al Capone, then he must have been writing about him.

I, basically, had completely forgotten this case of mistaken identities on my part until I began to read In Cold Blood. When I was in my teens and twenties, I was a frequent visitor to the 364 (true crime) shelves of the libraries I frequented. I always avoided In Cold Blood, because of those mob associations I had with it. Even, once I was working in a library and one of my colleagues told me he was finally reading this classic (if something that was barely 25 years old at the time can be considered a "classic"), and how good it was, I avoided it. I still didn't know much about Capote, and the copy our library owned was old, had no dust jacket, and no cover copy. I couldn't imagine such an "old" book possibly being as exciting as all the new true crime my friends and I passed around, extolling to each other the virtues and scare factors of each new discovery. Funny. I barely remember a single one of those books (except that one Joe McGinnis wrote about the D&D freak who killed his stepfather).

Fast forward 20 years. I've long since seen Tru (great one-man play based on the end of Capote's life); have realized Capote wrote another very famous work, Breakfast at Tiffany's; and have read a number of articles about him, which inspired me to buy some of his works, including In Cold Blood. The movie Capote, which I haven't seen, was a huge hit not too long ago and brought attention to him again. It would be impossible not to know who he is and what In Cold Blood is about, unless you are a complete nonreader or someone who avoids all reviews. Still, I haven't actually read the book.

Litlove suggested we read it together this summer, and we decided to read it in July. That's when I found myself asking the question, "How come I never read this book before?" and was reminded, as though some hypnotist had dredged it up from the depths of my brain, why: I spent the early part of my life thinking it was about something completely different. It's too bad, because the book was so right up my twenty-something alley, you could have found it lying dead there, bullet hole through its head, empty liquor bottle by its side, and I'm quite sure I would have remembered it better than all the others I read.

One night, in November 1959, the community of Holcomb, KS was rocked by the brutal murders of four members of the wholesome Clutter family. With the exception of the fact that Bonnie, the poor wife and mother, suffered from debilitating mental illness that kept her in bed most of the time, they were an "All-American Family," respected and beloved by the members of their community. The father Herb was an ambitious, ethical, disciplined, but, apparently, very likable man whose farm was extremely successful and profitable. Two older daughters had moved out and begun fruitful lives of their own. Nancy, the daughter who, at age 16, still lived at home, was every parent's dream: smart, organized, hard-working, pretty, and the sort who loved her father so much she didn't want to do anything to disappoint him (even to the point of agreeing not to spend so much time with the boy she'd been in love with for four years). The son Kenyon, at age fifteen, was also a very hard worker and what many described as a genius.

If this were fiction, especially in the hands of someone like Ross Macdonald, we would soon have discovered that not all was what it seemed in the Clutter household, that there was a very good reason (well, if there's ever really a "good" reason for murder) these four victims were found bound and shot to death in their home. Perhaps Herb would've proved to be a child-molester involved in some sort of shady dealings. Maybe one of the older sisters, someone who never felt loved by her father, had married a man who didn't love her and who had his sights set on inheriting the family fortune. There might even have been a little sibling incest and some jealous spurned lover. But not here. The family really was pure and innocent (at least, according to Capote's assessment, and why argue with that? He spent six years researching and writing the book). Even the mother's mental illness was far from the "kill-your-family-and-then-shoot-yourself" sort.

Talk about six degrees of separation. These family members were truly victims of less than six degrees of separation. Herb just so happened to have briefly employed a man who happened to meet one of the killers in prison. That killer had befriended the other killer. Believing, based on the testimony of the man who'd worked for Herb and who remained incarcerated, that the Clutter family had a safe full of cash, the two (Dick Hickock and Perry Smith), once out on parole, went in deadly pursuit of that safe and its contents. Capote gives us details of the murder, details of the killers' lives on the run, details of the investigation, and details of the trial and execution of the two men.

Here's what truly surprised me about the book: it terrified me. Me. The one who's read all kinds of true crime accounts. The one who reads and writes ghost stories for fun. The one who's been constantly disappointed by horror movie after horror movie. I didn't even realize I was afraid. The terror sort of sneaked up on me. It wasn't until it was getting close to 10 p.m., and I was engrossed in the book, and Clare the dachshund, who rarely ever barks at anything, suddenly started barking frantically at our back door, that I realized my heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest. Needless to say, I was not too keen on walking the dog before bed that night.

At first, I credited my terror to Capote's writing ability. His attention to detail is remarkable and enviable (floor boards creak, coyotes howl, tumbleweeds scuttle). But, since he alternates between telling us what's going on in Holcomb and what the two murderers are up to, I soon dismissed his writing as the major factor. If you want to terrify me, that's not the way to do it. I need complete mystery and surprise, people lurking in corners when others don't know they're there, bad guys we don't know. Introducing me to the murderers and making them human doesn't typically do it.

I think, ultimately, what got me were two things: one was the setting. I live in a small farming community that sounds quite similar to Holcomb. The other was the whole six degrees of separation factor. It's what got me when I read Thomas Harris's Red Dragon -- how easily a family can be randomly targeted by some lunatic or lunatics. If it was that easy in 1959, with no computers, no Internet, no Facebook, think how incredibly easy it is today. If someone really wants to find and kill you, he or she can, and there's not much you can do about it.

It's ironic, really, that I always skipped over this one when browsing the 364 shelves, not only because I was always looking for something this scary, but also because its biggest claim to fame is that it was a pioneering work of the true crime genre. To be a fan of the genre and not to read it is like being a mystery fan and never reading Poe or Conan-Doyle. The copy I have classifies it as nonfiction/literature. Yet, I've also seen it described as the "original nonfiction novel." It seems Capote liked to mix and match genres. The only other works I've read of his are the "fictionalized memoirs" -- short stories that revolve around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays of his youth.

It's been a number of years since I read those holiday memoirs, and although I remember being impressed by them, I don't remember that much about the writing style. Now that I've read In Cold Blood, I'd say that Capote was much more of a nonfiction writer than a novelist. Although the work's been praised for its novelistic approach to the topic, and yes, I did find novelistic aspects, I'd never mistake him for, say, Patricia Highsmith. He's far more matter-of-fact. No matter how sympathetic all the critics claim he made his characters (and, yes, we do learn the whole sad life stories of the two murderers), I never really felt I was getting much more than the facts. He tried to get us inside their heads, wanted us to explore the psychology, but he didn't really succeed. For instance, he certainly made me think quite a lot about what happens when a highly sensitive child like Perry is exposed to brutal abuse time and again in his childhood, but his dots were connected by very faint, broken lines. He gave us a whole town full of people rocked by the murders, hinted at their terror, their sudden mistrust of each other, but he didn't go far enough with it to illuminate it in any original way.

What he did do was provide me with a riveting news story. I would eagerly have been buying each edition of a daily newspaper with articles written by him that followed the case. In fact, he provided the sort of detailed reporting that seems to be long gone from journalism -- less sensational than today, despite the fact that the story was far more sensational than much of what's reported these days.

Am I going to race out and tell everyone I know to read this book? Highly unlikely. Am I extremely glad I read it? Yes. For someone who writes ghost stories and wants to tap into human fears and abnormalities, it's a must read. Will I ever read more Capote in the future? Absolutely. I'm dying to know if his novels have less of a "reporter-ly" feel to them. (And now I'm off to read what Litlove had to say. You should go there, too, if you haven't already.)

Maine By the Numbers: July 4 - July 19, 2011

Oh, how hard it is every time we go up to Maine to come back, but it is especially hard when I come back to a miserable heat wave in Pennsylvania. And, yes, the heat wave has hit Maine, too, but it's a little different there. For instance, at 7:00 p.m. last night, it was 93 degrees here. In Maine, it was 75 degrees. One good thing about the heat wave, though, is that it's given me an excuse to sit inside (can't risk sun burn and heat stroke, you know) and read such taxing fare as Lisa Jewell.

Despite the heat, I'm settling back in here, now that it will soon be a week since we left, and I'm happy to be back in the Land of the Best Corn Ever, as well as to be able to do things like buy my milk and eggs right off neighboring farms. I'm also looking forward to dinner with friends this evening and (I'm hoping), a "girls' night out" soon. Having just spent two weeks with nothing but the boy, a dachshund, and a cat (BTW, the latter two love Maine as much as we do, it seems), I need a little feminine companionship. I do wish, though, that the girls and I could go to Joe's Smoke Shop in Bar Harbor together (maybe, one day...).

Still, I'm reminiscing about the lovely time we had and thought I'd share some numbers with you:

# of blog posts that successfully posted themselves while I was away: 4. We don't have Internet access in Maine, and I'm no good at using the Blogger app for posting blog posts. I didn't, however, want to leave you, my faithful readers, with nothing to read for 2 weeks, so I scheduled things to post while I was away. Happy to say that it worked.

# of magnificent 4th of July fireworks displays I saw: 1. Bar Harbor shoots them off right over Frenchman Bay, and it was stunning (even when mist began to roll in towards the end. It gave the lights a certain sort of mysterious glow).

# of miles hiked: 33.88. This would have been closer to 50 if I hadn't been quite lazy a good deal of the time.

# of Scorned Woman martinis drunk at Joe's Smoke Shop in Bar Harbor: 3 (not all in one night).

# of blueberry martinis drunk at Joe's Smoke Shop: 1. Then I discovered the Scorned Woman martinis (not for those who can't handle spicy, spicy hot, but Bob and I loved them).

# of books finished: 1. "Only 1?" you very well may be asking. Yes, only one (A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler, for those who are curious). You see, just before we left, Bob convinced me to bring George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, which is well over 700 pages long, and I'm a slow reader. It's a book I'd highly recommend reading a. right after reading Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time and b. in between long hikes over mountains and through forests.

# of times I went to Beech Hill Organic Farm to buy delicious produce and yogurt: 3

# of fabulous blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes I made by stepping out the door and picking wild blueberries: 12

# of times I planned to go swimming in Long Pond: about 12?

# of times I actually swam in Long Pond: 1. I don't know why I didn't swim more, maybe because I was too busy reading A Game of Thrones.

# of chapters revised and edited in my novel: 3. We're getting there. I hope to have a readable draft by early fall for anyone who's interested in reading it.

# of new novels begun: 1. This was a complete surprise to me. I planned to work on the second draft of the already-written novel and some ghost stories, but one day, I was hiking a trail, and this whole new novel (not related to anything I've written or thought about until then) started demanding my attention, so I sketched it out a bit and even began writing the first chapter.

# of cigars smoked: 2. This is something I only do when on vacation, and I typically smoke the little, thinner, more "feminine" types of cigars like Acids.

# of pink flamingos spotted: countless. It was "flamingo days" in Southwest Harbor (apparently, the guy who invented the plastic pink flamingo is from Southwest Harbor), and we went to the parade.

# of loons spotted: 5.

# of snakes spotted: 2.

# of beaver dams spotted: 1.

# of porcupines spotted: 0. I'm convinced I'll never see a porcupine.

# of moose spotted: 0. I'm convinced moose are just legendary figures, like Big Foot.

# of months till we go back: 3. I think I can survive 3 months without a fix. We'll see...

IABD: The Rules of Engagement

Brookner, Anita. The Rules of Engagement. New York: Vintage, 2003.

Thanks to Thomas over at My Porch, I am now a huge Anita Brookner fan. Today is Anita Brookner's 83rd birthday, and in honor of her, he has declared it to be International Anita Brookner Day (IABD). He challenged all of us to read one book by Brookner and to post on it today. He also offered some of her books up in a drawing, and I was a lucky winner of The Rules of Engagement. Easy decision, then, as to what I'd read for the challenge.

I had no idea what to expect, but Thomas and I seem to have quite similar tastes in books a good deal of the time (he's a huge Persephone and Virago fan, like I am), so I came to this book thinking I'd probably like it. What I didn't expect was that I'd sit down one afternoon just to read the first 20 or so pages to see what it was like and still be sitting there 130 pages later, all other plans for the afternoon forgotten. In fact, the only reason I put it down at that point was that I was starving and thought it might be a good idea to get a little food in my stomach.

Brookner is the sort of mesmerizing writer I love, one who pulls you into a story gently, so you don't realize what a firm grip she has on you until you are suddenly aware that there's no getting away. This book was a real page-turner, although not in the sense that expression is typically used. It wasn't action-packed or nail-bitingly suspenseful. It just was so incredibly real, and she made you care so much about her characters that you really wanted to know what was going to happen.

Back when I was in my mid-twenties, I remember sadly coming to the conclusion that making friends as an adult was so difficult, that it was very hard to make the sort of friends I'd had in school and college. When you're an adult, you just don't have hours and hours to talk on the phone and to stay up all night solving all the world's problems together. People are more guarded as adults, more afraid of betrayal. It's probably because we've learned from past mistakes and know that not everyone we consider a friend really is one. I remember thinking how rare it was to find someone with whom I clicked the way I seemed to do with people in college.

When Facebook first became all the rage, I was fascinated by the idea of re-connecting with some of the people I'd known in grade school and high school. I wondered if we could pick up where we'd left off after so many years. What I discovered, is that I couldn't. We've all led completely different lives, and it was soon clear to me that we just didn't have that much in common after so many years apart. The fact that we'd gone to school together, had slumber parties with each other, and enjoyed roller skating at the rink on Saturday nights meant nothing at this point in our lives. Maybe, it would, if I didn't live too far away from any of them to get together on any sort of regular basis, to see if we had more in common, but I didn't. Sad to say, I don't pay that much attention to their FB pages anymore.

I'm reminded of that line from The Big Chill, that William Hurt says (to Kevin Klein, I think. It's been quite a while since I've seen that movie), something to the effect of, "We knew each other for a short period a long time ago. You don't know anything about me now." It was a line that appalled me when I saw the movie for the first time, in the midst of my college career, convinced my friends and I would be as close as we all were forever. I now understand it much better than I did back then.

Brookner's book is all about such friendships. Elizabeth and Betsy (interesting that they both have the same name. Elizabeth is definitely the sort who would never have shortened it to the more playful "Betsy," and Betsy is the sort who would) are school friends, the kind who seem to have been drawn to each other, basically, because they didn't really have any other friends. They meet and become friends in the 1950s and both come of age in the sixties, a little shocked and taken by surprise by such things as the feminist movement. Elizabeth retreats in "good girl" fashion, marrying as her parents expect her to do. The man she marries is much older, and she quickly finds herself in the role of bored housewife. Betsy traipses off to Europe and falls in love with a Communist.

Later, they find each other again, two completely different women who've chosen very different paths in life, struggling to remain friends because, well, they've been friends for so long. They do have something in common, though, which is a desire to escape the lives they find themselves living. Although Elizabeth seems like she would be the more naïve of the two, she (who narrates the story) actually seems to be far more perceptive than Betsy, far more aware of the fact that they're trying to escape their lives. Betsy still seems to have the heart of a school girl: eager to be loved, eager to love, wanting others to like her. Nonetheless, Elizabeth isn't as immune to her emotions as she would like us to believe, and, just as it seemed in their schoolgirls days, these two don't really seem to have any other friends but each other.

I won't say anymore about the plot, because, really, half the fun of the book is not knowing what's going to happen. I will say, though, that one of the aspects of this book I really enjoyed was how it made me think about the women's movement when it was young and the effects it had on women who were not quite sure what to do with it. Elizabeth mentions "feminists" time and again, and she seems not quite sure what to make of the new roles being defined for women, while also seeming to feel she's missed out on something by taking a more traditional path. I've never thought that much about how hard it must have been for women who were raised with certain expectations and in certain social classes to be given the freedom they so deserved. Elizabeth's reaction, I'm quite convinced, although secretive and not admirable, was probably quite common. Broken hearts were also, I'm sure, quite common.

I'm certainly eager to read more Brookner now. I'm in luck: she's written so much. Meanwhile, I'd love to introduce her to someone else, so I'm going to pass on this book that was given to me. If you've never read her and would like to give her a try, please leave a comment. I will draw a name on July 21st and send it on to the lucky winner.

Music Monday/Lyric Lundi

I was fourteen the summer Grease came out. I can't think of a better age to be for the release of that movie. I saw it something like six times in the theater, and my friends and I danced to the album at every party we had. Even when I moved to England later in the year, my friends over there and I danced to it at every party. I was admired then for being able to sing it all with a real American accent. It's summer, what better time to watch it again and to reminisce about those teenage summer nights? Here you go.

Yeas and Nays January through June 2011

Every six months, I try to give you my six favorite reads and my six least favorite reads, for a total of twelve books you may want to read (or avoid) yourself. Inevitably, I have many more favorites than I do least favorites, and so I steal slots from least favorites and add them to most favorites, to keep the total at twelve. This time is no exception. I have nine favorites and only three least favorites. Here you go:

YEAS

Couching at the Door by D.K. Broster. One of the best little collections of ghost/horror stories I've read in ages.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. Probably the most original mystery I've ever read.

The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit. A go-to comfort read, as enchanting as an adult (maybe even more so, since I marvel at Nesbit's talent) as it was as a child.

Faithful Place by Tana French. French can do no wrong in my book. This one was more Irish family saga than mystery, but still a masterful page-turner. Can't wait for her next.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Oh. My. God. My hope is that one day I will write a blog post on this one, but I want to wait until it will be more than just gushing "great book, great book" over and over.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson. This book proves that there are contemporary novelists who can put a fresh spin on English village life and succeed beyond my hopes.

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. A perfect fairy tale.

My Reading Life by Pat Conroy. I've loved Conroy for over 25 years now. This book was like getting to sit on his front porch with him and listen to him tell stories. Great fun.

Transformations by Anne Sexton. Fairy tales made more perfect.

NAYS

Jane Austen's Guide to Dating by Lauren Henderson. Not that I needed a guide to dating, but I like Jane Austen. I like Henderson's "tart noir" mysteries featuring Sam Jones, so I thought this might be a fun read. Wrong. Do not combine Henderson and Austen. I couldn't get through it.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. Just read Hamlet and be done with it.

University Ghost Story by Nick Dimartino. Chock full of all the clichés I'm terrified haunt my own efforts at writing ghost stories.

Making Way

I was suffering that Sunday afternoon in the second of the heat waves that have marked late spring and early summer this year in Lancaster County. I'd just settled down to try to move as little as possible when Bob came home from church and announced that we had a problem. Great. Just what I needed: a problem. I was sure it would probably be one that would require my going outside into the midday heat, and I was right. He told me to follow him and led me out the door, across the parking lot, and around to the back of the church where it borders on the cemetery behind it. There, he showed me a box that had eleven little Mallard ducklings in it. They were sharing the box with a shallow tray of water, but they were going nowhere near it, all huddled in the opposite corner.

"The mother laid them in one of the window wells in the memorial garden, and Carol S. found them there," he told me.

Carol is a member of the congregation who was busy cleaning up stuff from our weekly after church reception when she heard peeping in one of the windows down there. Our kitchen is located in the basement of the church, and some of the basement windows are immersed in window wells in the memorial garden upstairs. The memorial garden is in the center of the church and is completely walled in. It can only be entered by two doors, one off the church's narthex and the other off the opposite end of the sanctuary. Carol went up to the memorial garden and found ten ducklings in one window well and one lonely duckling in another.

This was a brilliant place for Mrs. Mallard to lay her eggs, as far as protecting eggs go, since very few predators (barring one little dachshund who's been in there a number of times) could get in. Once the eggs were hatched, though, it proved to be a very bad place, which frantic Mrs. Mallard eventually discovered, because she couldn't lead them out to water. All she could do was fly in and out of the garden, quacking loudly.

Carol's husband (who doesn't attend church, and so, wasn't there) happens to be a birder, so she called him to ask him what to do. He was the one who suggested the box with the tray of water and to bring them to the back of the church where the mother could get them. He said someone probably ought to sit with them and tip them over and out of the box when the mother came along. Carol had to leave, so she showed Bob, which is when he came running to get me. Okay, so desperate ducklings are a priority over Emily's beating the heat. I was instantly ready to do whatever we needed to do to reunite them with their mother. I now completely understood why, as we were walking across the parking lot, Bob had asked me if I saw or heard anything in the sky (not "ducks" but "anything." Well, yes, of course. There are always things in the sky around here).

"What should we do?" Bob asked, while I realized that my answer to his previous question should have been "no." I'd seen and heard no ducks in the sky.

I didn't know how to answer him. I did know, however, that I was beginning to understand the words "sitting duck" in a way I never before had. We had a whole box of "sitting ducks" just waiting to be snatched up by a feral cat or an eagle or a hawk (or some other "anything in the sky"). Finally, my brain quit idling and kicked into action,

"Call the humane society," I said.

We went back inside to do so. I didn't have much hope of Bob actually reaching anyone on a Sunday, but, much to our astonishment, he did. I think Bob's first words were, "Oh, thank God you're there."

The humane society couldn't help, though (they only deal with domesticated animals). They told him to call ORCA (I don't happen to know what that stands for) where he got a woman who was very helpful. She explained that, yes, we did need to go sit with them for protection and wait for Mrs. Mallard to find them, so while Bob changed from his Sunday suit into something more appropriate, I took one of our folding chairs back out into the sweltering heat to "duck sit" the "sitting ducks." By now, they'd discovered the tray of water and had all happily climbed into it (who could blame them in that heat?). I was happy, too, because on the trip across the parking lot, I had definitely heard a quacking duck flying by.

Shortly thereafter, Bob came out to join me. He took one look in the box, and his reaction could've rivaled frantic Mrs. Mallard's in the memorial garden.

"No, no! They're not supposed to be in water. The woman said not to give them any water. They can't shed it and can hyperventilate if their mother isn't here to supervise." (Hyperventilate when it was 90+ degrees? Whatever.) He immediately began picking up ducklings to get them out of the water and got rid of the tray of water altogether.

"Now, what we're supposed to do is pick one up and hold it to make it peep. After a few minutes, we should put it down and pick up another one to make it peep. The mother will hear them peeping and come, so she can lead them to the creek. When she comes, we need to let one follow her and then carry the box of the others down to the creek with them.

He sat down and held a duckling who peeped beautifully. He put it back and picked up another one who also obliged with plenty of peeps. Meanwhile, all the siblings in the box, hearing the distress of those being held, struck up an arousing chorus of peeps themselves. Lots and lots of peeping. It was the sort of noise that should have sent a mother flying. But no. No Mrs. Mallard. I started picking up ducklings myself, so we'd have two peeping soloists backed up by the chorus. Still no Mrs. Mallard.

Finally, I said to Bob,

"I think I'll go look in the memorial garden."

Sure enough. I went into the church and out to the memorial garden where I terrified Mrs. Mallard, whom I surmised had been wandering around, quacking away, dismayed that her brood had seemingly disappeared into thin air. Good thing I frightened her. She flew up and out of the garden, and I went back to Bob and the ducklings.

Mrs. Mallard now came flying around behind the church and in the cemetery. She was quacking away, which was apparently the cue for all the ducklings (obviously safe and sound now that mama was around) to shut up -- not a peep from that box that had supplied the rousing chorus a few moments before. Meanwhile, Mrs. Mallard went wandering off down to one end of the cemetery, still quacking, and completely ignoring us.

We tried following Mrs. Mallard with the box of ducklings after releasing one to her, but she was terrified of us. She half-flew/half-ran off, going back to the wrong end of the cemetery. Again, all the ducklings shut up, and she went quacking around in all the wrong directions, while we stood amongst all the tombstones holding the box with her babies.

Finally, I said to Bob, "Let's go back to where we were sitting and hold up the ducklings one-by-one again, " because I noticed that she kept heading back to that spot. This we did, and she eventually waddled up close to where we were. By now, I'd decided that following her with the whole box again might not work. We began taking one duckling at time out of the box to follow her. We took out three, at which point she decided this was her full brood and proudly began marching them off in the direction of the Pequea Creek. The three others we'd got out of the box scattered, and we began trying to catch them (no easy task. Ducklings run fast!). Bob then said to me,

"I'll catch them. You try taking the box and going after the mother before she gets too far."

so I picked up the box with the remaining ducklings and went racing after the mother. I'm afraid that as soon as I got near her, I just dumped them rather unceremoniously on the grass. They followed the quacks of their mother, though, and were soon off to make a train behind her. By now, Bob had rounded up the other three, who were already beginning to imprint themselves on him, but then they heard mother and took off with the others.

The little family marched through the cemetery and disappeared into the trees at its border. We assume they all made it safely down to the creek. The woman at ORCA had told us to check the next day at the railroad tracks, because if the mother had tried to take them over the tracks behind the cemetery instead of down the road (her two possible routes), the ducklings would probably have gotten stuck, and she'd, once again, be flying around frantically. We checked: no ducklings stuck on the railroad tracks and no frantic mom. Last week, on one of my walks, I came across a mother duck with a family of adolescent ducklings floating around in the creek. I'm pretending that's the family we saved (and, no, I didn't count to see if all eleven of them were still there).

50 Best Contemporary Novelists

I stole this one from Litlove. It was a bit harder than I'd thought it might be, mainly because I discovered when browsing our shelves, my "books read" list on Goodreads, and my book journals that most of the contemporary works I read are either nonfiction or genre fiction. Apparently, I just don't read many contemporary novels, which probably makes me a very poor judge.

I had a hard time defining some of these when it came to "genre." Much of what others would call genre fiction, I happen to think is quite literary or more "general fiction," so feel free to disagree with my categories. I think I sort of relied on Litlove's definition of literary, which is that these are authors whose novels I'd prefer to read when not tired or distracted.

Many of my choices are based on only having read one novel and/or some short stories by the author. When that's the case, I note which novel, or that I've only read short stories. The short stories are ones that have made me put the authors' novels in my TBR tome or that have led me to buy novels by the author that I have yet to read. I could be wrong about one-novel-only authors, because I know of authors (Audrey Niffennegger and Alice Sebold spring to mind) who would be here if I'd loved the second novels of theirs I read as much as I loved the first.

Litlove's criteria were that an author has to be alive and has to still be writing (I defined the latter very loosely. Basically, if the person has published something fictional in the past 30 years, he/she counts). That means no Harper Lee, sadly, since she doesn't fit that "still writing" category, and no David Markson, who would surely be here if he hadn't died last year.

Literary Fiction

1. Richard Adams

2. Margaret Atwood

3. Russell Banks

4. Kevin Baker (only read Dreamland)

5. Julian Barnes

6. Ray Bradbury

7. Anita Brookner (only read The Rules of Engagement)

8. Susanna Clarke (only read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell)

9. Michael Cunningham (only read The Hours)

10. E.L. Doctorow

11. Jennifer Egan (only read short stories)

12. Jane Hamilton

13. John Irving

14. Kazuo Ishiguro

15. Jeffrey Lent (only read In the Fall)

16. Yann Martel (only read Life of Pi)

17. Marilynne Robinson (only read Gilead)

18. Philip Roth (only read American Pastoral)

19. Jeanette Winterson

General Fiction

20. Sarah Blake

21. Pat Conroy

22. Kaye Gibbons

23. Alice Hoffman

24. Nick Hornby

25. Armistead Maupin

26. Richard Russo

27. Helen Simonson (only read Major Pettigrew's Last Stand)

28. Lee Smith

29. Kathryn Stockett (only read The Help)

30. Amy Tan

31. Anne Tyler

32. Connie Willis (hemmed and hawed about sticking her in "genre." What do others think?)

Genre

33. John Connolly (mystery/horror)

34. Jasper Fforde (mystery)

35. Tana French (mystery)

36. Neil Gaiman (sci fi/fantasy)

37. Jane Green (chick lit)

38. P.D. James (mystery)

39. Lisa Jewell (chick lit)

40. Marian Keyes (chick lit)

41. Stephen King (horror)

42. Ursula K. LeGuin (sci fi/fantasy. Some of her stuff is probably more literary fiction)

43. Philip Pullman (sci fi/fantasy)

44. Terry Pratchett (sci fi/fantasy, but as you may know, I argue he's much more than that)

45. Ian Rankin (mystery)

46. John Sandford (mystery/thriller)

Fiction in Translation

47. Gabriel García Márquez

48. Muriel Barbury (only read The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

49. Mario Vargas Llosa

50. Isabel Allende (only read House of the Spirits)

The Preacher's Wife Preaches

I'm not particularly comfortable with the word "sin." Bob likes to use the term "broken" to indicate what imperfect creatures we humans are -- given to selfishness and greed, and I like that better. However, there's no getting around the fact that many Christians believe fervently in the notion of sin and that we need to repent and to be forgiven. They also seem to believe that they're the arbiters of who needs to be forgiven for what, as well as which sins are worse than others. I don't have that personal pipeline to God's brain, so I interpret sin as any act that takes us away from God and God's love. Dividing ourselves from others divides us from God, because God is in everybody.

This year, the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) has been in the throes of the issue that has been dividing many mainline Christian denominations in recent years. The national body (based on regional body votes) has recently opted to get rid of the language in our bylaws that prohibited ordination of LGBTs. In the Presbyterian church, all our leaders are ordained (not just ministers). This means that deacons and elders in the churches (lay people), as well as ministers, are, theoretically, no longer going to be judged by their sexual orientation. This is a huge, huge step for the denomination, and believe me, there are many who are very unhappy, many churches who've chosen to leave the PCUSA.

If you interpret sin the way I do, we are to do our best not to hurt any of God's creation (a difficult task, because, basically, almost all life has to kill something in order to survive, but we can try to lessen the damage we do, and we can certainly focus on trying to keep suffering at a minimum, even when we have to kill to eat). Most of us can't live up to that tall order, which is why we've been given grace (but that's a topic for a different sermon from the preacher's wife). It's basically impossible to make it through even one day without hurting someone, but we should try.

When we were first married, I once said to Bob, "Hate the act, not the person committing it." (I'm very good at giving him advice that's difficult for me to follow.) He quotes me all the time, even though that quote was not original to me. You've probably also heard, "Hate the sin, not the sinner." Today, we seem to live in a world in which we do nothing but hate the person instead of the act. Not only do we "hate the sinner," but we decide who is sinning the most, and we punish, through exclusion, those we think are doing so.

The day that I can stand up and say that LGBTs are sinners, purely because they happen to be LGBTs will be the day I can stand up and say that all those over six feet tall are sinners, or all those who have fair skin. We're not sinners because we're born with certain God-given traits. We're sinners because we act in ways that hurt others.

Because we are all broken, we have absolutely no right to decide someone can't be a church leader just because he or she is a "sinner." That would automatically disqualify all of us. I need much better reasoning than that. When I was first chosen to be a deacon at the church we used to attend in Connecticut, I went through an orientation process in which we were taught what holding this position in our church meant. At the time, one of our leaders was stressing how important it is to carefully choose the leaders of the church and how she'd once belonged to a church in which they'd had a very difficult decision to make about someone who'd expressed an interest in becoming a deacon. Finally, she said, they'd had to turn to the Scriptures, and based on what they'd found, had decided this person wasn't fit for the position (of course, she had completely ignored the fact that for hundreds and hundreds of years, the Church turned to Scripture to keep women from being leaders).

I remember thinking at the time, "Well, boy, if you're going to turn to Scripture to make such decisions, then I don't know of a single middle class American who could be a church leader." For instance, not one person sitting around that table had sold everything they had in order to follow Christ, which is exactly what Jesus told us to do. Judging by most of our physiques, we're obviously all eating way more than our share of the food on this planet, rather than taking only what we need and sharing with those who have none, something else Scripture teaches us to do. Just by nature of being middle class Americans, we're all far more privileged than the majority of other humans on the planet. We're part of the world hunger problem, because we all go on living our comfortable lives, choosing to eat whatever we want whenever we want, very concerned about how it looks and tastes. We don't have a clue what it's like to eat whatever comes our way, regardless of taste, because who knows when we might get the chance to eat again. Nonetheless, there are those who will tell you that our "sins" aren't as bad as others' "sins."

One of the most disturbing aspects of our society's judging the sinner is that the judgers, for all intents and purposes, are basically saying, "Okay, if you're open and honest and tell us you're living in a loving, homosexual relationship, then you can't be one of us." (Not much has changed, really, since the days when lepers, who might contaminate the healthy, were sent off to live outside the community. We just have different ways of doing the same thing.) Yet, with the exception of the ways all couples hurt each other when they live together day after day, who are these people hurting? If we're going to go around judging sinners, I'd far prefer to judge the man who serially cheats on his spouse, breaking hearts left and right, over the one who is loving and kind to his life partner.

Those judgers also seem to be saying, "We don't want you if we can tell you're a sinner. However, if you sin, and we don't know about it, well, that's okay." Therefore, a heterosexual leader of the church who beats his wife, or one who beats her children, is okay. A man who discreetly sells drugs to teenagers or who cheats his employees, so he can take home a bigger bonus this year (especially if he's giving plenty of money to the church) is fine. But the woman who lives down the street with her partner and the two crack-addicted babies they adopted, the same one who volunteers at the soup kitchen, isn't.

I (because I don't have that aforementioned pipeline) can't say for a fact, but I'm pretty sure that if Jesus were to come back today, he'd be quite appalled. My guess is that this time his question would be, "Did you not listen to anything I taught you about love and acceptance?"