Michael Dirda, Readings

I don't feel the same sense of piercing loss finishing this book that I do for others -- instead of having been wrenched out of a particularly glorious world, it is more as though I have emerged with Dirda's voice and thoughts within me. He's graciously shared his books with me, and I have not been shut out of his world once the book has closed.

My favorite passage, out of many: "The pleasures of a book reviewer: to open a new book tentatively, with indifference even, and to find oneself yet again in thrall -- to a writer's prose, to a thriller's plot, to a thinker's mind. Let the whole wide world crumble, so long as I can read another page. And then another after that. And then a hundred more."

My Books to Read list, formidable to begin with, has probably quadrupled in size now.

I read this book slowly, parcelled out during several hour-long lunches that felt both luxurious and too short. I wanted to read more, but I also wanted to savor it. I wore a smile the entire time I read it, sometimes elicited by the bemused recognition of the insatiable hunger for books, sometimes out of sheer enjoyment of Dirda's enthusiasm, and sometimes because it was too funny not to. I think the book is a text equivalent to sitting next to a roaring fire and drinking hot chocolate.

I was also quite proud of myself when two childhood favorites appeared in recommended "Tomes for Tots": Each Peach Pear Plum (need to find that again) and Over in the Meadow!

I am quite sure I will be pulling this out to quote things at people, or to luxuriate in book love, or to dig up more recommendations many, many times.

Jane Yolen, The Devil's Arithmetic and Sister Emily's Lightship

The Devil's Arithmetic: The YA counterpart to Briar Rose. Or rather, given the publication dates, Briar Rose is a more adult look at the Holocaust. Hannah, a girl who is sick and tired of hearing her relatives' stories about the Holocaust, ends up opening a door on Passover that leads to the life of Chaya, a Jewish girl in 1942. I was calmly reading most of the story, despite the horrors of Hannah-as-Chaya finding herself and her entire community sent away to a concentration camp.

I don't know if the -- I don't want to say "prevalence" -- maybe the cultural permeation of the Holocaust and of Holocaust narratives have somehow dulled the impact of yet another Holocaust narrative. I mean, there are works like Maus and Schindler's List, and there's also Life is Beautiful and Jakob the Liar. Not that I've seen Jakob the Liar. But sometimes it's as though the Holocaust has been distilled so anyone can use it if they want to make a tearjerker, and that seems wrong on very many levels.

I've only read the first book of Maus right now, but it reminds me a little of most of The Devil's Arithmetic. The horror is there, but it's off in the distance, buried under the daily hardships and worrying about food and learning how to survive. The blood inherent in the concentration camps has been momentarily hidden. It breaks out in the very last chapters of The Devil's Arithmetic, and suddenly, a book I thought I was emotionally all right about made me cry in bed. ( Spoilers )

Sister Emily's Lightship: Short stories! Jane Yolen does a lot of fairy tale/mythological/etc. rewrites, and for some of them, the endings can seem a little too "shocking" -- you can see Yolen trying hard to turn the formula over. While I liked her rewrite of Rumplestiltskin ("Granny Rumple") as a tale of bigotry and anti-Semitism and her rewrite of Snow White ("Snow in Summer") with a much less stupid Snow White, the revisions felt a little too PC or something. I don't know. It's that feeling of righting a fairy tale gone wrong, of fixing it so that it fits in with our modern morals. "Lost Girls," her redo of Peter Pan, felt like that as well (although I liked the disturbing picture of all the Wendys).

Ones that I did like were Allerleiraugh, a very disturbing rewrite of an already disturbing fairy tale (Donkeyskin/Coat of Many Colors/Tattercoats) and the satiric take on Beauty and the Beast and "The Gift of the Magi" in one ("The Gift of the Magicians, with Apologies to You Know Who"). I also liked the world of "The Thirteenth Fey" and the other two stories in that world -- reminded me a great deal of the Enchanted Forest of Patricia C. Wrede in terms of sensibility toward fairy tales. I also liked "Become a Warrior," a new fairy tale in the shape of the older ones; that is to say, bloody and rather merciless. And "A Ghost of an Affair," which is my idea of a good love story. I think I would have enjoyed the title story more if I knew more about Emily Dickinson. The only resonance it really had for me was one line in which she talks about her dog stopping for death, with the lines "Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me" ringing through my head. I suspect there are more snippets of her poems throughout the story, except I am not knowledgeable enough to pick up on them.

Julia Ross/Jean Ross Ewing, various

I don't think I remember half the plot points of these -- I finished them a while ago, but figured I'd wait and read all her books before posting. Well, a month or so later, I am still reading... Thus goes the story of my life.

The Seduction: Obviously, the old seduction plot. Unsurprisingly, Alden Granville-Strachan loses a bet, and in order to not lose all his money and thus bankrupt everyone who lives on his estate, he agrees to a bet to seduce the notoriously cold widow Juliet Seton. Luckily, no matter how dumb, I tend to like this plot.

Also, I couldn't help liking it because Alden is such an affable rake. I am in general not very fond of alpha rakes. Plus, the seduction was enjoyable (and sexy) to read about because it was mental -- Alden seduces Juliet into playing chess games with him at midnight, into watching him strip his shirt off to harvest her fields, to enjoy herself. And I like Juliet, because she is one of those cold, mean heroines that everyone else hates ;). Plus, Georgian era! Visions of The Scarlet Pimpernel danace in my head...

I found the latter part of the plot a little to labyrinthian and melodramatic for me in that sort of Kinsalian fashion, but the journey there was quite fun.

Illusion: I swear, I was willing to give this one benefit of the doubt, despite the entire heroine-trained-in-Indian-harem thing. And it was going along all right, and then everything sort of went haywire. I give kudos for having non-orgasmic sex and for psychologically interesting sex. I don't know. I didn't much like Frances (said heroine) because she felt so passive to me, and that the passivity was supposedly a cultural part of her learned from India (blah blah meditation blah blah, sorry). I think it was the whole "let me show you inner peace via these mystical Eastern methods" thing. Also, I figured out the villain very early on in the game, and I still don't quite see how the plot holds together, given the disrepency between the beginning and the end.

To be honest, most of my issues in the book stem from the heroine and the Eastern thing, or the combination thereof. It probably would have been a very good book without that...

Flowers Under Ice: I liked this better that Illusion. Dominic's a bit more of a raffish rake than Nigel from Illusion, although not by much. Angsty heroes, both of them. It's also got the seduction thing going for it, plus the hero falling in love with cold and angsty heroine. Mostly I liked this better than Illusion because I liked Catriona better than Frances. Like the other two, the plot of this one is entirely on crack, especially after the plot twist. Hrm. I just don't remember that much of this one...

Miscellania

I am a Livejournal maniac today! Actually, I'm just bored because the boy is doing homework instead of watching It Happened One Night with me. So I sadly click every five seconds to see if anyone on my FL has posted.

Anyhow. I can make my rats dance! They follow me around on the couch, and apparently they will follow my finger around too. So I held my fingers above their heads and moved it left and right to the beat, and my rats would stand on their hind feet and swivel their heads to and fro. It's the funniest thing ever. I have to get batteries for my camera so I can tape it or something.

Listening to my iPod at work, I was quite amused by the fact that Herr Someone in the revival version of Cabaret is originally played by Ron Rifkin. That's right, go listen to Crazy Uncle Alvin sing about pineapples!

I updated my User Info (about time). Sometime I am going to have to go through my memories and reorganize them (LJ, not the ones in my head). I have too many entries in the Books section -- should split by genre. I want a handy little linkbar next to my entries in my LJ, but I like my layout right now. Hrm. Plus, wrestling with HTML is kind of frustrating.

---

(later) I think It Happened One Night was funny, but I didn't like it in the end because the heroine was a complete idiot.

I also completely disregarded the numbers on the bathroom scale (I will pretend it is broken, lalala) and gorged on strawberries and Cool Whip and salt and vinegar chips (best kind! love the kick when you inhale the vinegar) and leftover Easter candy. Really disgusting ^_^. Isn't it great?

First time I had Cool Whip! It has to be put in the freezer, weird! It has a weird springy texture before it melts. I am amused by processed American food (Cheez Whiz!).