R.I.P. Group Read: Fragile Things 4

Good Boys Deserve Favors

The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch

Strange Little Girls

Harlequin Valentine

from: Gaiman, Neil. Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders. New York: William Morrow, 1006.

(Before I begin, I must say that you-all are a polite bunch for not pointing out to me that, in my previous Fragile Things post, I'd magically turned Kingsley Amis into a Pennsylvania Dutchman by adding an "h" to the end of his last name.)

Ahh, this week, for the R.I.P. group read of Fragile Things, we returned to Neil Gaiman stories that I can honestly say I loved, nothing in this week's readings repulsing or disgusting me. Instead of searching for redeeming qualities in stories that unsettled me, I could just sink into my chair and enjoy the brilliance of Gaiman's imagination.

Good Boys Deserve Favors

Okay, so now I know why this one was paired with The Flints of Memory Lane in Gaiman's Introduction. Like that one, it appears to be based on something that happened to Gaiman when he was a kid. Apparently, he chose to play the double bass in school. Read this story if you want to discover what a brilliant writer Gaiman is without having to worry about being spooked or disturbed. He does a masterful job of weaving the ways in which a love affair might manifest itself in a boy before he's old enough to have a love affair with a girl (or a boy, if that's the way he happens to be made). It's not the sort of thing one would expect from a story about a boy learning to play a musical instrument, which is exactly what makes it so magical and endearing. Nonetheless, there it is, a pre-adolescent love story, in its full glory: the fact that his teacher refers to the instrument as "she;" his not realizing, at first, how attached he is to his Object of Affection; his OoA helping him reach new heights in a dizzying performance; and his losing his OoA through his own clumsiness, never to find another who could replace her. I loved it; I could gush about it forever, but then it might be overwhelmed by my clumsy affection and dump me, so I'll stop here and try to keep it guessing, for a little while longer, how I feel about it.

The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch

I love any story that uses a circus, a carnival, or an amusement park as a setting for the weird, fantastic, and the supernatural. Such human forms of entertainment are, to me, the most likely places for dark magic to hide and manifest itself. I love the humor in this story. I laughed out loud when we encountered the man dressed as a giant fish riding his bicycle. The idea of the hunchback and the topless nun racing to rescue him is priceless, punctuated by the girl asking if that was meant to happen. Even more than the humor, though, I like the mystery that surrounds Gaiman's very dark circus (hidden, of course, underground). Miss Finch is a flawless character, exactly what she should be, in every way. Oh, and wouldn't that stocky woman be the one you'd want to scare to death? It's all so perfect.

Strange Little Girls

I suppose I liked this one so much because I'm a huge fan of characterization. This little collection of character sketches proves that, in the right hands, merely describing key elements of a character can tell an extremely powerful story. I also loved the way it ended, basically telling us to change our points of view, see things from different angles.

Harlequin Valentine

Okay, so I should be disturbed by a "human" heart being nailed to someone's door, but I'm not. I should also be disturbed by what ultimately happens to that heart (yes, I'm still attempting to avoid spoilers, although I know I haven't always done a very good job in writing my posts for this group read). I'm not, though, and I absolutely loved this story about love and trickery and broken hearts and power in relationships. Again, we had a great ending: a little ray of hope to prove what a romantic Gaiman actually is.

I'm realizing, as I write this, that one of the key factors in this week's collection is that all the stories provided learning opportunities for me as a writer. The first one is all about including the unexpected, using what might be nothing more than a mere fact (e.g. for a time, as a boy, I played the double bass) and giving it meaning. The second one was all about setting, although I also learned from it ways that details can be omitted, encouraging the brain to come up with its own details. The third one was a study in characterization. The last one demonstrates the way hope can keep romance alive in a story. Were I teaching a creative writing class, I think I'd have my students read these four stories.

An October 1 "Gift": Whose Story? by Emily Barton

Happy October 1st, everyone! In honor of my favorite month of the year, I give you a short ghost story I've written. Any feedback you'd like to share will be gratefully received.

Whose Story?

Emily Barton

March 18, 1978

This isn't my story to tell. My creative writing teacher would write "cliché" above that, but, then again, it's a cliché for a sixteen-year-old girl to keep a diary. Besides, who else is going to tell it? Jenny and Van don't want to talk about it. Tony’ll forgive me for telling. He was that kind of guy. The thing is, I'm just not sure who to tell, who would believe me.

I won’t waste time with long, descriptive passages. The story's plot is this: Tony didn't kill himself. I know he didn't. He never would've killed himself. He loved life too much, everything about it. Well, almost everything. He hated school. Not the classes. He was always reading ahead in his textbooks. He liked most of the teachers, too. What he hated were the other kids, the cliques, their mob mentality, their cruelty.

He was tall and thin and awkward and nonathletic. In other words, he was a prime target for bullies, but he could fight back when pushed too hard, because he was passionate. Those morons didn't understand passion. They'd have bullied Byron and Wordsworth, too, probably did in some past life.

Yeah, he was bullied and picked on, and everyone thinks that’s why he killed himself, but he didn't, not after eleven years of this, when he only had a year and half to go. That would've been letting the bullies win just when he was almost done. He told me, "Another year and a half of these assholes, and then I'm free." And he would've been free. He was gonna apply everywhere in New York, just in case he didn’t get into Columbia, but who are we kidding? He would’ve gotten into Columbia. He just wanted to be in New York, though.

I know it looked like a suicide. His father's gun, his body up in the tree house they'd built together. How come no one gets that he never would've killed himself there? The tree house always made him happy. A guy like Tony would've chosen somewhere significant, the boys' bathroom at school, the baseball field at the park, not the tree house.

Something else killed Tony. His house is a weird one. He used to tell me about the strange scratching noises, locked doors unlocking themselves, things like glasses going missing and then reappearing. I used to think he was teasing, that he made up the crazy old guy who'd committed suicide in the basement back in the 1920s just to spook me when we were alone at night. He swore he wasn't making it up, but he always seemed to think it was funny, not scary. He'd laugh when I got jumpy.

When he stopped laughing, though, a few months before he died, I stopped wanting to go over there. He'd come to my house and tell me he'd felt an eerie, evil presence, something more than unlocking doors or glasses disappearing. He swore he was being watched, both inside the house and outside, in the woods around the house. One night, when his parents were out of town, he came over and told me he just couldn't go home. He was so shaken, so different. We asked Mom if he could spend the night in our guest room…

They stared at the sort of scene they’d both hoped they wouldn’t find. The young girl's body was pale and naked in the bathtub full of crimson water. Soon, they’d move her arms to find the angry slashes on her wrists. Razor blades found in the bottom of such tubs, once drained, shouldn’t be allowed to shine so insultingly.

"I never thought we'd have to worry about teenage suicide pacts in this town," the taller, heavier one said, sadly, to his partner.

"No," she admitted. "Funny, though. Don't they usually do it together? Did you read the note?"

"Yes. Her mom says it’s her handwriting.”

"We'd better keep a close eye on any other friends they had."

The journal tucked beneath the loose floor boards at the back of the bedroom closet wouldn't be found for thirty years. By then, the four suicides that had rocked the small New England town had become the stuff of late-night storytelling at slumber parties all over the country. It often morphed into a staged crime, the work of school bullies, or of a one-armed asylum escapee whose ghostly missing arm came knocking at doors of future victims, or even of Bigfoot. The town itself, however, had chosen to forget. No one ever talked about it.

The house had stood empty for so long, at least ten years. No one could remember exactly when Cassandra's parents had moved down to Florida, leaving it to the care of their two older children, who rarely came to town. It was such a shock when that doctor from Boston decided to move up here, taking over old Dr. Hartman's patients at Town Hall Medical Center and buying the house. The renovations took a few months, but the family came that summer.

The doctor's daughter found the diary, along with a small water pipe and some condoms, the loose floorboards in such an out-of-the-way place having been missed by the carpenters. No one had told her about the girl killing herself in the bathtub.

The diary of another teenager thirty years ago was fascinating, stories of four friends, young love, heartbreak, rebellion.... But then she came to the final entry, and a cold chill ran through her body. The entry began, "This isn't my story to tell." It continued "We asked Mom if he could spend the night in our guest room..." It ended right after that. The handwriting was different, much darker, almost menacing, mesmerizing. She couldn't stop reading it,

"This was not her story to tell."

R.I.P. Group Read: Fragile Things 3

Going Wodwo

Bitter Grounds

Other People

Keepsakes and Treasures

from: Gaiman, Neil. Fragile Things. New York: William Morrow, 2006.

(Before we get started, I just want to draw your attention to this. If you've got an hour to kill -- I listened to it on my Smartphone while out walking one day -- I highly recommend it. It's terrific, and you'll get to hear Neil talk.)

If you had told me last week that I was going to encounter stories in this collection (which I'm reading for the R.I.P. Group Read) that I wouldn't like, I don't think I would have believed you. I now know I should have -- I think. You see, my problem is I can't say definitively that I didn't like those stories that I didn't, but boy, if I thought Closing Time made me uneasy (and, to tell the truth, the more I've read everyone else's reaction to that one the less I feel that way -- or the less I feel that the uneasiness is necessarily a bad thing), I was in for a bit of a shock. "Uneasy" doesn't begin to describe how I felt a good deal of the time this week. "Dirty" or "repulsed" might be better descriptions.

Still, this is Neil Gaiman we're talking about, so even when I'm repulsed, I can find redeeming qualities. Of course, it's only logical, given Gaiman's knowledge and use of fairy tales, that I turn into Beauty when faced with the beasts of his writing. I do have to wonder, though, if I were to read one of these stories in The New Yorker, say, and Gaiman had written it under a pseudonym, if I would be patient enough to try to redeem it. We'll never know, but I have a sneaky suspicion I might, because, unlike so much garbage put out these days that's meant to do nothing but shock and repulse, everything Gaiman writes does make me think.

So, here we go, my thoughts on this week's 4:

Going Wodwo

So far, we've gotten one poem each week, and this was it for week three. This was my favorite of the four pieces we read this week. Being big on nature and the color green, the Green Man is one of my favorite mythological characters (and if anyone's looking for a really good R.I.P read, you can't go wrong with Kingsley Amis's The Green Man, which is funny and over-the-top, and still scared me to death when I was reading it alone one night). I like the way Gaiman blended the notion of the Wodwo (a wild man of mythology) with the Green Man (a god-like figure usually represented by carving a man's face that looks like it's made out of leaves and branches). Of course, I wouldn't have known he'd done that if I hadn't read the Introduction and found out that this poem was written for a collection called The Green Man (which I now must find and read). I love this line,

...I'll stumble through the green

back to my roots and leaves and thorns

and shiver. (p. 83)

You can just see the wild man's face, all leaves and thorns and buds.

This one was also fun, because I recently read Game of Thrones. That book features gods whose faces are found in trees. They brought to mind the Green Man while I was reading.

Bitter Grounds

This is a zombie tale. I was never quite sure who was and who wasn't a zombie. I loved the connections Gaiman made here, though, between those of us who are basically "walking dead," emotionally, and zombies. It's a story that's confusing in the same way Closing Time was, and so I was left feeling a little uneasy again. Overall, however, I really liked it. Gaiman seems to like to use conferences as settings (my favorite is the serial killers conference in The Sandman comics), and the fact that he had an academic conference for anthropologists set in New Orleans was perfect. I've never been to New Orleans, but I'm sure that if I were to go, it would be very much the way Gaiman portrays it in this story -- full of odd characters and tourists and a feeling that something bad could happen to you, if you're not very careful, all covered in a light, supernatural blanket. Despite its being "The Big Easy," it might make me feel quite uneasy. That, as I noted above, is not necessarily a bad thing.

I have a question, though, before I leave my discussion of this one. Did Zora Neale Hurston really know F. Scott Fitzgerald and have any influence on The Great Gatsby? Wouldn't they have run in completely different circles? I can't figure out if it's true, or if Gaiman is playing with us and showing us how urban legends get spread: sometimes we believe facts that come merely from someone getting a name wrong.

Other People

This is the story I so want to hate, but I can't. It's extremely disturbing, but extremely disturbing in the way the movie A Clockwork Orange is disturbing. I still happen to think it's a great movie. I'm not sure I would describe this story as "great," but it may be close.

Part of the reason it's so disturbing is that I like to think of myself as someone who shies away from vengeance. Yet, while reading this story about a man who has to confront a demon who makes him confront all his demons, I found myself thinking, "Oh, yes. This is the sort of fate Hitler or Karl Rove ought to suffer -- people who think they're right and have it made and think only of themselves, while causing great suffering to others. They need to be introduced to their own personal hells." That's a disturbing thought for someone who likes to think that she rarely seeks revenge. Then again, it's easier to take if you read it that way, because what's also disturbing is that, even if you don't believe in hell as a place, which I don't, it's a difficult story to read without thinking, "What if?" Asking that question leads to, "Could this happen to me?" which, in turn, leads to "Don't all humans, in some way, deserve this for all the hurt and destruction they cause?" These questions are far more disturbing than discovering a hidden desire for vengeance.

Gaiman certainly knows how to tap into primal fears. These are not the sorts of fears I like to unleash. I'll take ghosts in a creepy house over a demon with a wall full of torture implements, a knowledge of all my faults, and thousands of years alone with me, thank you.

Keepsakes and Treasures

This one was like reading The Talented Mr. Ripley. As with that book, I felt like I needed a bath after reading it. How could I find myself sympathizing with such a despicable character, which our narrator certainly was? And yet, I did. I could understand why he murdered the people he did (well, except for that poor professor). I almost felt like saying, "Good for him." It takes talent to make a reader sympathize with a murderer. Still, despite the fact that the story has this classic line, "Heavens protect us from the dress sense of American academics." (p. 110) and that Gaiman wove his legendary Shahinai into a tale that, up until that point, was more British hard-boiled than dark fantasy, I don't think I liked it. True, those are redeeming qualities, but just not quite redeeming enough to get me past the despicable character with whom I've been sympathizing who eventually informs us that "his cup of tea" is pre-pubescent girls. I didn't need to know that, and the story would have been fine without the information, especially since we can't even be sure whether or not he's lying.

That's it for week 3. Let's hope week 4 is a little less disturbing.

R.I.P. Group Read: Fragile Things 2

The Hidden Chamber

Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire

The Flints of Memory Lane

Closing Time

from: Gaiman, Neil. Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders. New York: William Morrow, 2006.

Here we are already, the second week of Carl's R.I.P. group read. This time, because, while listening to the audiobook the first week, I'd found that hidden story in the Introduction a bit confusing, I decided to read the print versions first and then listen to Gaiman read them himself. Although I have, many times, started a book in audio form and then switched to print, I've never done what I'm doing with this one (both listened to and read the whole book during the same time period, although there are quite a few books that I read years ago and that I've enjoyed "rereading" recently in audiobook form). I'd highly recommend it, especially with a short story/poetry collection such as this one if you, like me, are not someone who typically reads either short stories or poems.

I like reading first and then listening better than listening and then reading. I've toyed with the idea of reading and listening simultaneously, but that seems like a waste of time, since I read more quickly than audiobooks do (although yea to Audible for now giving us the option of speeding up the reading), and I like to spend the time I'm listening to books doing something else like working out or folding laundry. I can't put my finger on why, but listening to the stories after reading them makes them come more alive somehow, and it provides me with the opportunity to think more about them and to pick up on things I missed while reading. Of course, as I noted in my first group read post, it helps if Neil Gaiman is doing the reading.

I did go back to the Introduction and read the brief descriptions of this poem and three short stories before I read each one. There was no way I could remember everything Gaiman had said about them without doing so. Those introductions to each one also help me pick up on things. I'm so glad he included them. And now, on to my thoughts on each one:

The Hidden Chamber

We turned to the gothic in this week's readings, and Gaiman explains that he's always thought the story of Bluebeard to be the most gothic. I'd never thought of that, but he's right (is Gaiman ever wrong?). This poem is his own variant on that tale, full of the gothic and also the modern and contemporary. Yes, there are ghosts and secret chambers and mystery and lacy shifts, and there's love and physical pain and heartache. How does he do it in a mere five stanzas? This second poem of his makes me wish Gaiman would publish a whole collection of poems. That says something, because I'm one of those who typically shies away from poetry.

Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire

This was the perfect companion to The Castle of Otranto, which I'm also reading right now for the R.I.P. challenge. You can tell Gaiman was having such fun with this story, and it's very funny, although not in a laugh-out-loud sort of way. He takes the gothic and stands it on its head. Or does he take reality and stand it on its head? You'll have to read it and decide for yourself. Listening to it, for some reason, I appreciated the brilliance of it more than I did reading it.

The Flints of Memory Lane

He plays with reality and story-telling in this one. I think we're meant to believe it's a true story, his one "real life ghost story." But is it? With Neil Gaiman you can never quite be sure. Still, it's creepy. It's the sort of thing that happens to a kid that scares him to death and that is forever told again and again at parties and in bars and to children of his own when they ask for a "real life ghost story." He does a wonderful job of telling the story the way the mind works, which is to say that it's not always linear, skipping around, adding details almost as afterthoughts. I loved this one.

Closing Time

This was my least favorite of the four, which was kind of sad, because it had originally been meant to be "an M.R. James-style ghost story" (I worship James), but he says the finished work owes more to the strange tales of Robert Aickman. I've never read Aickman, so I wouldn't know, but I found this one had less of the dream-like quality I've come to associate with Gaiman. It was cruder, and the ending was confusing, not in his typical imaginative way but in a way that didn't work for me. I'm not quite sure why, because Gaiman often writes as if he wants the reader to draw her own conclusions, but I didn't want him to do that this time. Maybe I just didn't like my own conclusions. Still, even the worst of Gaiman is better than most people's best, so I can't say I didn't like it, just that it was different, quite Stephen King-ish, actually (without, of course, drawing the conclusions for the reader the way King usually does).

There you have it. Now I'm off to read what others had to say.

Things THIS Wife Hopes Never to Hear Again

It's completely hopeless, I know. Hoping so often leads to hopelessness. Still, it would be so wonderful to wake up one day in Emily's Fantasyland. Much goes on in this wonderful land (most of it involving books in some way), and Bob is definitely there with me, saying all the wonderful things he often says to me. However, to make it a truly magical place, there are just a few things that in E.F. I never have to hear come out of his mouth. Here they are:

1. "We don't need to call anyone. That's so easy to fix. I can do it." This means I will be 92 years old and still living with some hideous inconvenience. Perhaps it involves keeping buckets of water by the toilet in order to be able to flush it properly. Or maybe there is a window in my study that can't ever be opened, or a burner on my stove that I can never use. Whatever it is, you see, he still hasn't fixed it, even though it would be "so easy." Either that, or the "easy fix" means, say, we have some extraordinarily huge (why are such things always huge and indiscreet?) black (and why are they always black?) pipe that snakes out of the side of the house, constantly threatening to trip unsuspecting guests who venture out after dark (which almost all do, because no one ever uses the front door).

2. "Have you seen my (oh, I don't know, binoculars, say)?" This question is never asked when I'm wandering aimlessly around the house with nothing better to do than to drop everything and look for whatever is being sought. No, most often, it's asked when I'm on the phone with someone I haven't seen/spoken to in months, or I'm busy trying to figure out exactly how to phrase some sentence I'm composing, or I'm lying on the couch or in bed, having just reached the page in which I'm going to find out who killed Professor Plum. No matter how explicitly I describe the exact location of his binoculars (and why the hell does he suddenly need his binoculars at 9:30 p.m. on a rainy Tuesday anyway?), I will be forced to put my friend on hold, abandon my perfect phrase, or put off finding out whodunit, in order to retrieve them from the latitudinal and longitudinal degrees I gave him, because he claims, "They're not there."

3. "How much did that/those cost?" followed by "That's way too much!" Actually, in Emily's Fantasyland, it's perfectly okay to hear "That's way too much!" if I've gone out and bought something like a computer or a camera, or any other number of things that he obsessively researches online. However, if I happen to have gone and bought a new teapot or curtains for the kitchen, I don't want to hear it. Last time I checked, he was neither a teapot nor a curtains expert, and I'm sure he would lose every time if he ever found himself a contestant on "The Price is Right" trying to guess the prices of such items.

4. "What are we having for dinner tonight?" There's no answer I can give to this question that doesn't inspire a response that infuriates me, most especially when the question is asked at 8:30 a.m. Please enlighten me: is there a female on the planet, barring those who work in the food industry or are juggling multiple kids with multiple evening activities, who thinks about dinner at 8:30 a.m.? At that hour, I'm typically thinking about getting another cup of coffee.

5. "Don't throw that away." Good God, why not? It's a friggin' crushed toothpaste box! I know. I know. There is some good, sound, economic and environmental reason not to toss it in the garbage, but I really, really don't want to hear it. I'm not about to collect 500 of them so we can get $1.00 off our next one and so that they can be used to make car engines.

6. "Tom said I'm (fill in the blank). Do you think I'm (fill in the blank)?" You know the proverbial female-to-male question, "Does this dress make me look fat?" This is the male-to-female version. It's a question that makes me wish I owned Harry Potter's invisibility cloak. My husband is far more self-aware than many people I know. Still, he's human, which means others sometimes see traits in him that he denies, and I do not want to be the one verifying what others see.

Stating the obvious here, but in Emily's Fantasyland, here's what I hear instead:

1. "Don't worry about that. I've called the plumber/electrician/contractor, etc., and he/she will be here tomorrow to fix it.

2. (After I've given the exact location of the missing item.) "Found it/them! You're right. That's exactly where it was/they were. Thanks!"

3. "Wow! You got those curtains and that teapot, and that's all you paid for them? You're a genius! I would've thought they'd cost much more than that."

4. Silence at 8:30 a.m. Around 5:30 p.m. or so, "Let's just have canned tomato soup, grilled cheese sandwiches, and banana splits for dinner tonight."

5. "Let's call one of those junk companies and have them haul away most of what's in the attic and the basement."

6. "Tom said I'm (fill in the blank). You know, now that I think about it, he may be right."

What about you? Are there things you wish you'd never hear your husband/wife say again?

R.I.P. Group Read: Fragile Things

Introduction

A Study in Emerald

The Fairy Reel

October in the Chair

from: Gaiman, Neil. Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders. New York: William Morrow, 2006.

Plans are such fragile things, always ready to go up in smoke at the mere mention of a match strike. You see, I'd planned to pick up this book at the library Thursday evening when I was working. I thought things at work might even be slow enough that I'd get a chance to start reading the first four pieces in the book for Carl's R.I.P. group read before I even got it home. Mother Nature had other plans (and hers are almost always less fragile than mere human plans). She proceeded to drench Lancaster County, PA last week with so much rain that we had extensive flooding all around us. The library was closed. I couldn't pick up my book. I couldn't even be sure the library would be open on Friday in order for me to pick up the book (it was, but at the time, the forecast was for the rain and flood warnings to continue well into Friday).

Sometimes, however, when a fragile thing breaks, something even better comes of it. (The heart often breaks and then gets glued back together by something far better than the thing that broke it.) I didn't want to miss this weekend of reading and posting my thoughts, and yet, with all the flooding, I had no real hope of getting out and getting a copy of the book. Then, I remembered that I'd seen the audio version of it while re-shelving materials at the library and also that I have two unused credits sitting in my Audible account. I searched for it, discovered it was only one credit, and soon had it downloaded onto my phone.

Not only was the day saved, but it was saved in a beautiful way. You see, Neil Gaiman himself reads the audio version of this collection of stories and poems. If I didn't already have a huge reader's crush on Gaiman, this would certainly guarantee its birth. He reads it beautifully: dramatic without being overly so, inflection everywhere it should be and nowhere it shouldn't, perfect pacing, and, of course, he has a lovely accent (to an American ear, anyway). You may be thinking, "Well, of course he reads it perfectly. He wrote it." But, believe me, I've listened to plenty of audiobooks read by their authors, and nothing has ever come close to this. I highly recommend your getting a copy and listening, which is not to say that I didn't, once the flooding was all over, still pick up the print copy from the library. I'm such a reader, and Gaiman is such a writer, that, as much of a joy as it was to listen to him tell his tales, I wanted to "reread," so to speak, parts of it to make sure I hadn't missed anything.

Here's what I thought of the actual pieces:

Introduction

I don't typically read Introductions before I've read a book, because I've learned the hard way that they can include spoilers. Sometimes what they include might not be considered spoilers to most, but are to me, because, basically, I like to come to a book for the first time knowing almost nothing about it, if I can. "Oh, it's about a woman who lives in New York," is the sort of description I want. But, we were assigned the Introduction, so, even though Gaiman tells us we should read these pieces in any order we choose, I decided to start with it (especially since it's much easier to "read" an audiobook straight through like that).

Like everything else he writes, Gaiman certainly knows what he's doing when it comes to writing an Introduction. First, he gives us a little bit of background for the collection, where he got the idea for it and how it evolved, even how the title changed and why. Then he addresses each piece with brief annotations of how they came to be. There isn't a single spoiler. What there is is plenty of enticement. As I listened, I found myself over and over thinking, "Ooo, that sounds great. I can't wait to read it." If I ever find myself having to write an Introduction to something, I'm going to use this as a model.

A Study in Emerald

Well, really, how can you go wrong with a story of Sherlock Holmes meets the world of H.P. Lovecraft as put together by Neil Gaiman? Need I say more? Well, I can say one more thing, which is that I really ought to reread Lovecraft some day.

The Fairy Reel

This is the first poem by Neil Gaiman I've ever read (barring any poetry that has crept its way into Sandman comics. I can't remember any off the top of my head, but I'm quite sure it's there, especially in the third collection Dream Country). I'll (hope to) entice you to read it with these first four lines,

If I were young, as I once was, and dreams

and death more distant then,

I wouldn't split my soul in two, and keep

half in the world of men. p.28

Gaiman basically tells us, when describing a different poem in the book, that he understands some of his readers don't like poetry, that we can skip the poems in his book. Then he produces a poem that's so perfect that he could probably convert a million high school students who insist they hate poetry, and he claims it's "not much of a poem, really, but enormous fun to read aloud."(xiii) To make it even better, let Gaiman read it aloud to you. I, for one, am eager to read all his poetry now.

October in the Chair

This was my favorite of what we read for this week's post. It was the jumping off point for what would eventually become The Graveyard Book, a book I loved, so it was fun for me to see how the short story evolved into the novel. I absolutely loved the way Gaiman characterizes the months of the year, was disappointed to leave them in order to "hear the story," but was just as enthralled with the story-within-the-story the minute it got going as I was with them. (That may not make sense, but I'm trying hard not to spoil it, knowing full well that I may already have said too much. Sorry, those of you for whom I should've just said, "It's a story about October sitting in a chair.") This story beautifully highlights Gaiman's unique imagination and the wonderful way he views the world (or other worlds, as the case may be). Gaiman dedicates this one to Ray Bradbury, and I can see why.

And now, on to next week's readings...

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.