Ender's Game - #65

For some reason I don't consider myself a fan of sci-fi even though I've totally enjoyed the few sci-fi books I've read. This book intrigued me because for a sci-fi book to be on a list of favorite novels of librarians, I figured it must be awesome.

IT TOTALLY IS!

I'm just going to dive right in. Ender's Game takes place in a futuristic society that has done away with all religion and strictly controls the population by allowing only two children per family. The society is still dealing with the affects of an alien war that they narrowly won. They call the aliens "Buggers" and children play "Buggers" the way that kids in the pre-"Oh yeah, we totally fucked the Indians over" era played cowboys and Indians.

Because of this war, recruitment to their version of an army is a big part of society and they recruit children at a very young age. The recruitment process involves studying high-potential children by monitoring them visually. If you show enough potential you will be assigned a "monitor" which is basically a video camera that is attached to your neck. You wear it for years, while you are studied by army recruiters. Ender's family is of great interest to the army for some reason, and his older brother and sister were both monitored. Neither made the cut for reasons unknown, but came close enough that Ender's parents were given the rare privelige of having a third child. That's Ender.

I won't be ruining much of the surprise by telling you that Ender does make the cut. The rest of the story is about his experiences as he trains in the army. One of the things I liked about the novel is that it doesn't soften Ender's experience because he is so young -- only six years old when he first enters. His life is pretty much awful, but he's such a bloody genius that you can see why (sort of) the army pushes him so hard.

The author is incredible at describing his world. The children live in zero gravity and Orson Scott Card describes this experience so well that you can totally envision living in that environment. The war games that the children play in zero gravity are complex, but still easy to understand. Unlike stupid-ass Quidditch (Harry Potter) you actually get the point of what they're doing and the scenes are exciting. I got the sense that Card's imagination had brought Ender's world to life to such an extent that he wasn't creating the world in the book, but observing it.

There is an interesting parallel story about Ender's siblings -- whom he doesn't see -- and what they're doing while Ender is in the army. His brother is basically evil and his sister is practically angelic. You begin to see that Ender's strength was his more moderate character -- that is why he was chosen. However, his siblings are no less special or brilliant than Ender. It makes for good reading and sets context for what is going on in the world while Ender is in his highly sheltered environment of army training.

I don't want to give any more of the book away but I will say that there is a jaw-dropping twist at the end. I was so taken by surprise that it was almost embarrassing. AWESOME.

This is a book that stays with you. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it.

&&&&& -- FIVE AMPERSANDS!!!

WHAT'S COMING UP:

The Clan of the Cave bear by Jean Auel

Number 33 - Cold Sassy Tree

Cold Sassy Tree was number 33 on The List. After reading it, I was surprised that it's on the list at all, let alone in the top 50. It's not that I didn't like it, I just wasn't blown away by it. At my book club meeting when I told people that I had just read it, there were gasps and exclamations about how truly wonderful the book is. I wonder if I am missing something?

PLOT SUMMARY

This book takes place in 1906 in a little town called Cold Sassy in Georgia. Cold Sassy is named after a Sassafrass tree that stands in the town. Hence the book's title. The author writes the accent of the characters in - ex: "What we go'n do, Will Tweedy, we go'n line yore grandma's grave with these here roses." This goes on throughout the book and you get used to it, though I know one of my readers didn't like this and quit reading it early on. It had the effect of making me feel an overwhelming urge to speak in a Southern twang the week that I was reading it, which I only surpressed when other people were around.

The story is told from the first-person perspective of Will Tweedy, a 14-year-old boy. He's a likeable character, which greatly enhances the story. There is a sharp contrast between the way he behaves and the way modern kids behave. No talking back at all, they worked their asses off pretty much non-stop and unquestioningly obeyed their elders.

The main event in the story revolves around Will's grandfather. His wife, Will's grandma has very recently died. She was a hugely important figure in the family, and her daughers and grandchildren miss her very much. It is a great scandal when Will's grandpa announces that he is getting married only three weeks after Grandma is buried.

I probably need to emphasize again how much of a scandal this is. It's 1906, and people still are expected to observe a full year of mourning when someone close to them dies. Mourning entails wearing nothing but black, and abstaining from pretty much every fun activity. It would be scandalous for Will to play football, so that might shed some light on how scandalous it is for Grandpa to actually marry someone else. Not only is it way, way, way too soon, the woman is very young, not even 30 years old - she is younger than Grandpa's oldest daughter.

Grandpa is an eccentric man who enjoys success as the owner of the town's only general good store. He gets away with a lot, including picking fist fights and drinking whiskey in the middle of the day. He's a complex character and I'm not sure whether I like him or not. He seems wise because he doesn't let the opinion of others, or social propriety influence him, but he also has the ability to be very mean to people. His son-in-law, a man who is chronically unsuccessful, slow and maybe even stupid, takes many harsh, public criticisms from Grandpa. Will is a favorite of his though and from his perspective, you also see Grandpa's many good qualities.

The woman he's planning on marrying - Miss Love -- is very pretty and the object of Will's desire, although he never acts upon it. Everyone wonders why in the world she would marry the old man, and assume it is because she is after his money. In truth, she marries him because he tells her he'll leave her his house if she will marry him. He says he wants her to be his wife in name only and to act more as a housekeeper than wife. She has had a very hard life, and to her this sounds like a good deal.

The town shuns the couple, despite the fact that Miss Love is very sweet. She brings many positive changes to Grandpa's life, including getting him to improve his appearance, make changes to the store and to the house. This only makes Grandpa's daughters angrier, as she is given things that Grandma never got - like a brand new car and indoor plumbling.

Eventually it comes out the Grandpa is very much in love with Miss Love, and they start a love story, all of which is witnessed and narrated by Will.

REVIEW

The book is charming, and captures the differences between life back then and life
today. There are things that seem like they were so much better - people knew each other, helped their neighbors, lived a simpler life. There are things that sound intolerable - you were judged for everything, life was harder and there was an endless amount of work and a very finite amount of freedom. It was fun to read about how an entire town would get wildly excited about one person buying a car. THere's a subplot that involves Will's love for a girl who is very much from the wrong side of the tracks and therefore completely forbidden. That was interesting and sweet. Interesting things happen in the book -- Will is run over by a train and you find out that Miss Love had a VERY sordid past. Still, I found the plot to be a little slow, and all in all, was just left with a feeling of being underwhelmed by the book.

RATING
I have to give this one && -- Two ampersands

I know this review is totally boring, but eh -- that's what happens when the book is kind of boring. Stay tuned. I'm currently reading #65 - Enders Game...and LOVING it..

41 down, 59 to go -- woohoo!

The Girl Who Played with Fire

Those of you who read my last blog will remember that I was nearly finished with the second of Stieg Larson's trilogy of books - The Girl Who Played with Fire. Well now I'm done. I have since learned that this trilogy is being referred to as the "Millenium" trilogy.

Let me back up a bit and talk about the background of these books. The first was published in 2004. They've been hugely succesful worldwide and have launched a thousand movies -- or at least 9. The author's story is dramatically tragic in that he died only a few months before the first book was published. So, basically he didn't get to enjoy even a second of the phenomenal success. I'm very pissed off at God on Stieg's behalf.

As I mentioned in my half-assed blog, the book is about Lisbeth Salander, a 4'11" 90-pound girl with a penchant for Billy's Pan Pizza and being badass. She's taken more than her share of beatdowns from life. One of her predators says that she just looked like a victim, so he felt he had to prey on her. There's something that I really don't like about the author putting that in there. Anyway, she's a bit nutty and her social skills make Rainman look outgoing and easy to talk to. But she's a bloody genius at almost everything and has a strong sense of right and wrong.

The first book is kind of self-contained. It introduces you to Lisbeth and her friend (as much as she's capable of having friends), Mikael Blomkvist. Blomkvist is an idealistic reporter who works for the magazine Millenium. In the first novel they meet and together work on solving a really interesting mystery about a young girl who disappeared 32 years earlier. I won't go into the plot of the first book too much, but it's important to note that during their investigation they discover a truly twisted family - like Texas Chainsaw Massacre family twisted - only in Sweden and with a lot more money.

The second book is all about Lisbeth. The first book left you with many questions about pieces of her past that were merely alluded to. The second book answers most, if not all, of those questions. She refers to a time in her life when she was 12 years old and "All the Evil" happened. You find out what "All The Evil" was in the second book. By the way, I think I need to start using that phrase more in my everyday life to vagulely refer to the unspeakable hardships I've had to endure. Example:

My wrist used to be straight. Then, "All The Evil" happened and now I'm hideously deformed.

Our government used to be semi-tolerable until "All The Evil" happened in the 2000 Election and He Who Must Not Be Named became President (slipped in some Harry Potter there too - bonus!)

My career seemed to be on track and then All The Evil happened with the economy and I haven't had a pay raise since.

Anyway, in GWPWF Lisbeth is enjoying new-found wealth that she acquired in the first book. She suddenly has like a quarter of a billion kronor. This is the equivalent of about $40 million US. It's a clumsy conversion rate -- something like .14 cents = 1 kronor so I never really know how much money she has. But even though a kronor isn't what it used to be, hundreds of a millions of them do add up and Lisbeth is living the good life. I also really like the word kronor and think we should start using it to refer to money in general. For example, "I'm working overtime, hoping to pick up some extra kronor this weekend." or "I made mad kronor bartending at the Vault last night" (shout out to Janell!)

The book starts out kind of fun with Lisbeth spending her kronor on a crazy fly apartment and furnishing it with a spending spree at IKEA. She has also spent the last year travelling around the world which would also be awesome. Little do we know that Lisbeth's carefree days are about to come to an end -- cue dramatic music.

Here's the problem with these books. They have a lot of improbable coincidences. I mean, I know Sweden isn't a huge country but the odds that Salandar and Blomkvist keep getting mixed up with the same people through independent means seem kind of long. Sweden has a pretty low number of violent crimes each year, and most of them seem to be perpetrated on Lisbeth. Blomkvist is the luckiest journalist alive, getting scoops of the century in his lap every couple of months. That kind of thing.

Nonetheless Stieg did his best to make the convenient associations seem believable and it didn't interfere with my enjoyment too much.

So in GWPWF Lisbeth is the subject of a nation-wide manhunt for committing a crime that you're reasonably certian she didn't commit. The worst part about this book is that there are about 150 pages where Lisbeth just disappears and you're forced to get to know a whole new group of characters who you aren't interested in and follow them as they try to piece together who Lisbeth is from the few clues they can find. One of the cops is the stereotyical sexist, aggressive pig who literally can't get one sentence out without first dunking it in hostile bigotry. That's one thing that I don't forgive -- the one-dimensional character. No Stieg, I can't forgive you that.

There's one character in this book who's really interesting. He's a "giant" - they call him that several times -- who can't feel pain. He has Homer Simpson disease. So you can beat the living hell out of him and he won't back down. His own punches are like Drago's in Rocky IV - enough to kill a person with one blow (R.I.P. Apollo.) His weapon of choice is a chainsaw. Anyway, they paint a pretty vivid picture of the guy and I don't mind telling you after reading about him for several pages a girl can sure get spooked by the motion sensor light in the alley outside her garage/house inexplicably coming on at 1:30 in the morning.

The main difference between this book and GWTDT is that the story doesn't really end and immediately carries into book 3. You could read Book 1 and be done, but Book 3 is definiely required reading if you're going to pick up Book 2.

Some Thoughts:

-- I liked GWTDT better than GWPWF. The story was tighter, more clever, and more realistic.

-- GWPWF finds Lisbeth discovering yet another horrible Texas Chainsaw Massacre-esque dysfunctional family. The little lady has zero luck.

-- I think Stieg started to fall in love with Lisbeth a bit in GWPWF. She's becoming a superhero instead of just a very interesting person. She's just too awesome -- wicked smart, an amazing fighter, always, always one step ahead of the dozens of people who are after her, uncompromisingly moral...it starts to feel like he's having an A Few Good Men moment with his main character.

-- Blomkvist is also a little too perfect. I think Stieg maybe wanted to be Blomkvist -- cool, smart, open-minded, brave, and good with the ladies

Lest you think I'm being a hater, I did like this book. I burned through it pretty quickly and have already taken a chunk out of the third one. I recommend the whole series, just felt it was my duty to pick on a dead man's greatest work...that's all...

The Books I've Been Reading, or A Very Half-Assed Post

The road to blog hell is paved with good intentions. Long story short: Books read - 5+, Books blogged - shamefully 0. I had intended to blog each of them, painting rich tapestries with my vivid observations. But that didn't happen, so you'll have to settle for this:

1. Lucky Girls

This was a collection of short stories that I feel like I read an eternity ago because I can barely remember any of them. Each story has to do with an American girl who is either living in another country (most often the Middle East) or in some way associated with another country. They all also have to do with a romance of some sort -- but respectable, literary romance, not smut romance (which we'll get to later on in the post.) The one I most remember was about a high school girl who was living in India and had an Indian tutor who was super smart. They talked about that one story where all Earthlings live on Venus or something and it only rains once every seven years and the girl is the only one who remembers rain because she came to Venus later or something...anyway the one day it rains the evil children lock her in a closet and she misses it. Now that I think about it it's pretty half-assed of the author to base her short story on another person's short story...but I can respect that.

2. The Spook's Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch
This is a series of YA books that Jamie and I read together before bed and they all rule. This was one of those super skinny books that are comprised of the little story nuggets the author didn't fit into the actual novels that they throw at readers as crumbs until the next real book comes out. It was delicious.

3. Quivers: A Life

I love Robin Quivers (Howard Stern's sidekick.) I read the book because in the basically bi-weekly "Howard's Life in Review" shows they put on the air when Howard is on vacation they talk about how crazy it was when this book came out - how shocking to everyone on the show. I found her to be much more of a lunatic than I would have guessed. She's a ball of fury through most of the book - she was really mean to Howard. I was shocked. But her life is definitely fascinating. She's intelligent and interesting. She's also unapologetically selfish which is refreshing because I am too and it's nice to have a wealthy, successful role model. If you're a fan of Howard Stern, I'd say it's a must-read, and if you're not you'll probably still be diverted by it.

4. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Ugh. In Citizen Kane, Kane says "If I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man." I can't help but think of that line when I reflect on JSaMN. If it hadn't been 900 fucking pages, it might have been a really great book. It was one of those asshole books that has a truly compelling story, but self-indulgently goes off on 200 page tangents about side plots and ancillary characters that are bizoring. So you stick with it because you really want to know how the main plot is going to get resolved and you lose chunks of your life that you'll never get back wading through excruciatingly detailed descriptions of things that just don't matter. I suspect that's what my blog readers feel every time they get an update from me. At least I'm considerate enough to space them about 6 months apart.

Anyway, because I wouldn't subject anyone to the unabridged version of JSaMN I'm going to summarize the plot here.

The story takes place in England during the Napoleanic wars. The premise is that magic used to be very commonplace in England in the previous two centuries, but over the years it has fallen away until all that people do is study magic -- they don't practice it. The study of magical theory is a very gentlemanly passtime and typically only rich people with no jobs do it.

So this one character who is basically unimportant but about whom you learn quite a bit, is at a meeting of gentlemanly magic scholars and asks why there are no practical magicians left in England. This starts a debate and ends up in someone saying that there's a guy in York or something who is supposed to have the best magical library in the country and why don't they go see him. Well, the library guy is Mr. Norrell.

Mr. Norrell's character is really interesting. The author was amazing at character development. Norrell's an actual practical magician and he is utterly intent on hoarding all the magical knowledge in England. He quietly dupes all of the practical magicians into agreeing to give up magical study and buys up all the books in the whole country, refusing to grant access to anyone else. You totally dislike him, he's got an incredibly weak and petty character. Yet, he's a three-dimensional person and somehow, sometimes you see the good side of him, like you do with people in real life who suck.

He wants to bring magic back to England so he asks the English government if he can assist them in the war against Napoleon. They take no interest in him because they don't really believe in magic anymore until he brings back one of the Ministers' wife from the dead. However, in order to bring her back he has to invoke the help of a Faery (Faeries in the book are not tinkerbellish, more satanish. But really more like the Ned Flanders Satan in the Treehouse of Horror than the biblical Satan.) Because of the resurrection, Norrell becomes an overnight success and is very famous throughout the country for bringing magic back. He is commissoned to help the English Army and does cool things like make fake navy fleets out of rain to fool the French, etc.

So then along comes Jonathan Strange who has so much natural talent that he's become fairly adept at practicing magic himself even without instruction or books. He's a pretty charming guy and much more likeable than Norrell even though he's kind of self-involved and neglectful of his lovely wife. He is at first targeted by Mr. Norrell as a mortal enemy, but eventually Norrell meets Strange and is so intrigued by his magical ability that he ends up taking him in as his student. He still won't let Strange read most of his books and sometimes deliberately misleads him in his studies, but he's more or less cool to him.

Meanwhile the lady who Norrell brought back from the dead -- Lady Pole -- is living an absolute nightmare because the Faery owns half of her life. So in the evenings he brings her to some alternate universe and she attends balls with the same guests every single night and she is only half alive and very, very unhappy. He also sucked Lady Pole's black servant into the alternate universe. It's kind of funny because the Faery put a spell on Pole and the servant so that if they try to tell anyone about the Faery's curse, they can't do it. Instead, they start going off in detail about some strange subject, like Julius Caesar, or plants. The Faery - LOVES - the black servant and is trying to make him the King of England. It's kind of funny how much he adores the black servant, who really hates and is afraid of the Faery. The Faery has total magical ability and can pretty much do anything he wants in the human world. He's often pretty whimsical in his actions -- he's always giving the black servant priceless treasures, like ancient golden scepters and a crown (wants him to be King) but he can also be unspeakably cruel in the most casual way. The Ned Flanders as Satan comparison is apt.

So Strange ends up going to Spain to help fight Napoleon and he hones his magical ability by doing kind of cool things to help the army. For example, if the French Army is getting close, he'll just move the road that they're travelling on to America, or make it lead in a completely different direction. It talks about how angry Spain was getting because he was completely changing their geography.

After about 700 pages the plot finally progresses and Strange's wife is captured by the Faery. By this time Strange and Norrell have parted ways because Strange no longer needs Norrell and disagrees with him on a lot of magical philosophy. Another kind of funny thing that happens is that Strange writes a book refuting a lot of the things that Norrell has said. But Norrell puts a spell on all of the books so that whenever anyone tries to read them the pages go blank. He's such a dick.

In order to free his wife, Strange needs to join forces with Norrell, which he does. Though they are able to free Lady Pole, the servant and Strange's wife, the magic that they use to do it casts Strange into a kind of eternal nighttime, where wherever he goes it becomes very dark, and he is left to wander the world alone in search of a cure for the curse. Doesn't seem fair since Norrell's the one who caused all the problems, but such is life.

So, if the plot doesn't sound that compelling, I have to say it's really the intense character development that is what makes you care. You are really interested in Norrell and Strange, as well as some of the minor characters, like Lady Pole, Norrell's servant and Strange's wife.

VERY UN-FUN FACT: This book was written with a really odd quirk. It has footnotes -- hundreds of them...like it's a history book. So, at least once a page you'll be directed to a footnote with a completley unrelated tidbit about whatever it is you're reading. For example the story will talk about something Norrell says about a certain book. Then there'll be a paragraph or two in a footnote at the bottom of the page with all sorts of information about the spell, the author of the book that the spell was in, etc. Sometimes they were several pages long. It was totally distracting and annoying and I got to the point where I just ignored them.

That is all about JSaMN

5. Random Harlequin Presents novels

I don't have a lot to say about these. I was at a used book store and I got nostalgic over a cart of old Harlequin novels that cost only $2 for 5. I grabbed 5 and read a few of them. I think I read 3. They were so awful. They were all written in the early 80's -- and get this strange coincidence: Two of the novels' heroines were raising children that weren't their own. But everyone thought the kids were theirs and were super mean and jugemental about them having an illegitimate child. Two of the totally different books, out of 3 , had this plot line. w.t.f? Also, the books were terribly, laughably sexist. The guys were totally unappealing...especially the cover pics. The ideal image of a man has definitely changed since 1982. If I get some motivation, I'll scan some of the pics in.

6. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Yes, I'm jumping on the GWTDT bandwagon. For those who don't know, this series of books was written by a Swedish author and take place in Sweden. I love the bizarre little Swedish things that don't make sense to me. For example, they all seem to do their full-on grocery shopping at 7-11. The main character - Lisbeth - eats something called "Billy's Pan Pizzas" by the gross and I feel like I'm supposed to know what that is. They talk about "American gangster movies" a lot. They make a couple of references to a Swedish leader who was assassinated about 15 years ago in real life and they had to add a little asterisk for all of the globally ignorant American readers telling what the hell they're talking about. No one owns a car, they just rent one when they need it. Nearly every man is violent towards women. Cute little local things like that...

The story is interesting, moves along really quickly. You like Lisbeth and her buddy, Blomkvist. My one reservation is about the graphic violence towards women. I read a critical article about it in Entertainment Weekly about how the very feminist male author is clearly trying to condemn the violence, yet there is a gratuitousness to it that seems exploitative. That bothers me a little, but I do get a lot of satisfaction from watching the poor, wronged Lisbeth get her sick and decidedly adequate revenge on the evil Swedish predators...I especially like her tattoo and butt plug revenge (makes you want to read it, doesn't it?)

It's a long book, about 700 pages, and that's about the length of the other two books. I've got about 100 pages left of book two, so stay tuned.

You may have noticed that none of these books are on my librarian list - the reason for this blog. Sue me. I've got Alice in Wonderland coming up and then Cold Sassy Tree will be next. I will try to be more focused in my task!!!

LoLo Out

Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs...of Truth

Yes, it's been a long time since I've blogged, but don't think for a moment that I've been too lazy to read...just too lazy to blog.

What has finally motivated me to write an update is an unnatural substance -- Cocoa Pebbles. Let me explain. I never, EVER allow myself to buy my favorite cereals -- namely Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Puffs -- because there's simply no way I can rationalize buying a box of root canals disguised as cereal -- especially not at $5/box. But QFC had this crack-dealeresque sale: 10 boxes of cereal for $10!!! WTF?

I now have a box of nearly empty cocoa pebbles, a half-empty box of Honey Combs (Jamie's fave) and an unopened box of shredded wheat.

Cocoa Pebbles are fucking good. I'm a Cocoa Puffs girl, but the Pebbles have got nothing to be ashamed of. A little unsweetened Almond Milk and you've got yourself a snack that not only satisfies your hunger for breakfast and dessert, but also provides you with a dizzying surge of energy! Hence, my first blog in...whenever...

What have I read?

Lucky Girls -- a short story collection by Nell Freudenberger

The Spook's Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch (co-read with my man) by my man across the pond, Joseph Delaney

A Life -- Robin Quivers' autobiogrpahy

Currently plowing through -- Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

No, none of these books are on my list and for that I suck. But, I will blog about each of these books and get right back to the list as soon as I'm finished with Strange and Norrell (which is around 7-800 pages...) I would love to start now, but my Pebble Buzz has turned into a Pebble Crash so I've got to sleep now and probably wake up with a god damn Pebble Hangover. More later...

Tisha: The Story of a Young Teacher in the Alaska Wilderness

Okay, I'm going to try to avoid having an "A Few Good Men" moment here, but I LOVED this book.

When I was in high school I wrote a review of "A Few Good Men" for the newspaper and you wouldn't believe how much I waxed poetic about that movie. I
went off about how good it was. I went so far as to call it the perfect movie. When I got the graded review back from my Journalism teacher she wrote, "Kind of gushy." I was taken aback. People always like a bad review more than a good one, but I remember thinking to myself, "Gushing? Is it gushing to call the pyramids in Giza magnificent?" At that moment "A Few Good Men" was the film equivalent of the pyramids to me.

Later on, I remember reading a review in People that was favorable, but also rational. It had a great line in it that I still remember: "Jack Nicholson comes awfully close to doing a Jack Nicholson impression." It also said that Demi Moore's performance was so hammed up it could have been put between two pieces of rye bread and sold at a deli. I had to admit that the reviewer was right, and I started to feel a little stupid about my review.

Sidebar [But dude, that is a good movie -- even the minor characters -- Kiefer Sutherland, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Noah Wyle? Don't get me started!]

I will try to refrain myself, because I feel like gushing about this book. I just loved it. It maybe seems more powerful to me because I didn't expect to like it as well as I did, and the subject matter is not the kind of thing I'd think I'd be into. Lest I get ahead of myself, let's start with the basics:

Some Stats:

Most important stat: It's a true story!
Year book was written: 1976
Year story takes place: 1927
Number of pages: 361
Time that I stayed up last night finishing book: 2:00 AM
Number of times I laughed out loud: 12+
Number of times I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen next: 3
Number of times I read Tisha while working out on the treadmill: 1
Number of times YOU should read Tisha: 1+

Plot Summary

So, all morning long I've been looking up more info about this book so that my devoted readers would have the background they've come to expect from this blog. "Tisha" is so named because it is how the Indians/Eskimos pronounced "teacher." Her name is Anne Hobbes. In 1927 she left the civilized town she was teaching in Oregon to move to Chicken freaking Alaska to teach school for a year. The story was "told to" the author, Robert Specht, although Anne Hobbes is also attributed as having written it if you look her up. She considers herself to have written the book. I'm not implying any issues between her and Robert, just saying that it was a joint effort.

This book is very well written. From the first few pages I was stricken by how lean and entirely unaffected the writing is.

It's written in the first person and it starts out with Anne talking about the four day ride on horseback from Eagle, Alaska to Chicken. Not having ridden a horse since she was eleven, the trip was brutally painful for her, yet kind of funny. You can't help but like Anne because she is so down to earth and free from vanity.

The thought of a 19-year old girl making the decision to leave a very nice job teaching in Oregon to go to a settlement so remote that it's a four day horseride from Eagle is pretty astonishing. I can't even imagine the courage that must have taken and there were a lot of women who did it.

I kind of expected a quaint little Polyanna-type story of the village and its inhabitants but it turns out to be about how mostly everyone is an asshole. Anne is extremely liberated for the time and has no prejudice against Indians. This does not sit well with the Chicken crowd -- some of whom Toby Keith may have descended from.

In the year that Anne spends in Chicken she contends with cold that makes me, a native Minnesotan, feel like a complete wuss. There are stretches where it is 57 degrees below zero for weeks at a time. There are holes in her wall, there is no plumbing or electricity and people actually get stuck on the outhouse hole. She sleeps with her potatoes so that they won't freeze.

When she allows "breeds" -- half Indians into her classroom the "school board" -- which for some reason consists of three of the most shit-kickingly ignorant people in town -- throw a fit. When she falls for a half-Indian boy it gets even uglier. Things progress until Anne finds herself caught up in an adventure that is so dangerous and suspenseful that I couldn't go to sleep last night.

Despite the fact that Anne runs into a lot of prejudice, she manages to get along with people fairly well through most of the story. The details and descriptions of the way things were and how she felt are very genuine -- Specht didn't try to sex anything up. There are some beautiful descriptions of how Alaska looked in the dead of winter. Anne wasn't the least bit afraid of going out in the middle of nowhere on skis in weather that can only be described as complete bullshit.

There is no way you can walk away from this book and not be thoroughly impressed with this girl...I think I might be gay for her.

Here are a couple of my favorite parts.

In this scene Nancy, a no-nonsense older girl who is living with Anne and helping her out with the class, gets into it with Evelyn, the daughter of the biggest asshole in town. Evelyn has inherited his racist ways and is picking on an Indian kid. Where Anne is never really able to do anything about the snot-nosed brats in the class, Nancy is under no obligation to be cool.

"They must have washed Chuck's face with snow because it was all red and wet. None of them saw me, so I figured I'd let Nancy handle it. She was toughter than all of them put together.

'You keep your hands off this kid from here on,' Nancy said to Evelyn, putting a mitten on Chuck's shoulder.

'You don't have any right to tell us what to do,' Evelyn sneered.

'I'm not tellin' you what to do. I'm just tellin' you that if you lay your hands on this kid again I'm gonna bash your head in.'

They left Chuck alone from then on.

Sweet.

I think this is a really interesting passage because it never occurred to me that anyone would LIKE winter...

"Now I realized what the North was really like. It was made for winter because winter was when everything went on. You could ski any place you wanted to and get there twice as fast and twice as easily as you could before there was snow. People went out and brought in the trees they'd cut for firewood and left lying until they could use sleds to haul them. The whole country just opened right up."

Although Anne is pretty non-confrontational, she gets pissed off at one point in the story. I like this speech, even though it's sort of depressing.

"You asked me before why I came into this country. I'll tell you the truth. I thought I was going to find something wonderful here -- everything I ever dreamed about. Maybe that's stupid but that's what I thought. Well I found out one thing. People here aren't much different from the ones back in the States. The only difference is that here they can do anything they want, which means acting just about as mean and selfish as they can."

It is pretty messed up how people can just get away with anything -- both because it's the '20's when no one really cared about how bigoted and violent people were, and because they're in the middle of frickin nowhere. I mean, it would have been cool to have been a criminal there, but not so much a schoolteacher.

When the mail guy, Mr. Strong, comes to town a couple of times a month the school closes early, people get "dressed up" and stand outside waiting for him to get there. This is the kind of detail that makes the story ring true -- it's just cute.

"Jimmy and the rest of the kids were busy piling snow up at the edge of the settlement. They did it every time Mr. Strong was due in, built a barrier a few feet high just so they could watch Mr. Strong's horses kick it to pieces when they went through it."

Kids are so retarded.

Review

I can't say enough about the writing. Robert Specht was from New York City and he graduated from CCNY at the late age of 32. There he won "top awards in both short story and essay competitions." Well earned, I'm sure, Mr. Specht.

There is an honesty in Anne's perspective that feels timeless. She was clearly a strong and open-minded person, intelligent, infinitely compassionate...sexy. The book really conveys her humanity and she's easy to identify with even though the circumstances she's in are not. I don't want to give too much of the book away because you should read it for yourself, but the book has a definite story to it and you'll be sucked in right away, I'm sure.

I am reminded of Julie of the Wolves, another book about a girl in Alaska that knocked me on my ass -- it was so good. Maybe this is my new thing, books about girls in Alaska. Seriously, it's one of the more enjoyable and thought-provoking books I've read in a long time.

Anyway -- guess how many Ampersands Tisha gets!? That's right! The coveted FIVE Ampersands!!! & & & & &

Stay tuned for my next book -- "How Green Was My Valley" -- Tisha will be a hard act to follow. Just like A Few Good Men.

Definitely NOT on the list

Since the age of about 8 I've had a penchant for trashy novels. Yeah...eight. My mom was not one to censor my reading choices. I remember reading Flowers in the Attic when I was in fourth grade. It's still one of my favorite books, but let's face it -- the main focus of that series is on a sexual relationship between a brother and sister. Needless to say, I did not acquire Flowers in the Attic through the scholastic book order.

Anyway, the point is that I still read romance novels from time to time. They're escapist, steamy and usually hilarious. Unfortunately, much of the actual "romance" is gone for me. I realized by the age of ten that 99% of romance novels are as formulaic as a Kate Hudson movie. Romance novels basically run on templates. There are maybe 15 to choose from, especially in the genre I read -- "historical" [he he] romance. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. The Lady is a Tramp: Breathtakingly beautiful virginal woman gets lost in a bad part of town and is mistaken for prostitute. She is presented to a dashing, strapping, well-endowed man who has his way with her...romance ensues.

2. The Lying Lover: Impossibly handsome rake who has quite the reputation with the ladies spies astonishingly beautiful virgin (often at a ball doing something quirky like spying on someone or stealing food) and decides he must have her. For whatever reason he cannot be straight forward with her so comes up with a ruse to make her his(frequently he says he's helping her find a husband - not himself.) Romance ensues...and how!

3. Lady in Drag: A virgin girl of unparalleled beauty dresses like a boy for some reason. Really, this happens ALL the time. A man with impossibly wide shoulders, chiseled features and the seductive powers of 10 men is at first annoyed by her/him but then realizes that he's a woman, baby. She never knows he knows and there's inevitably an awkward scene where he's trying to make out with a "boy." Romance ensues.

4. Terms of Endearment: Either the virginal girl with the body of a woman and porcelain skin or the toweringly tall man with a chest like a brick wall who smells of soap and manliness, gets very sick. The one nurses the other back to health. In so doing they invariably learn the other's life story through his/her delerious (yet surprisingly lucid and thorough) muttering. Ex: "No, no -- don't take advantage of me Uncle John Smith," or "Dammit Martin, my only brother, why didn't I take that bullet during the war?" The nurse bathes the other's naked body throughout the illness. This causes the woman who was bathed to blush "to her roots" and if it's the man, he smiles arrogantly/seductively. Romance ensues.

On the heels of the depressing Kristin Lavransdatter I turned to Johanna Lindsey -- a very prolific American romance writer. Here are some of the ACTUAL titles of her books:

Savage Thunder
A Loving Scoundrel
Warrior's Woman
The Devil Who Tamed Her
Captive of my Desires

How awesome are they?!? A trend that has begun in the last 20 years in the genre is to tell the story of not just one lucky, gorgeous couple, but of all of the siblings and friends of that lucky couple. For example, in the first Lindsey book that I read -- "Tender Rebel" we meet James Malory and Georgina Anderson. "Tender Rebel" mixes templates, as only the best novelists do, using both "Lady in Drag" and "Terms of Endearment." Anyway, there are NINE offshoot books about James's and Georgina's brothers, nieces, nephews, friends etc. My favorite is "Tender Rebel" (Lying Lover, The Lady is a Tramp) which tells the story of James' brother Anthony and his Scottish lass Rosalyn. Rosalyn says "och" a lot -- especially when she's being expertly aroused by Anthony.

But like any series, the more there are, the weaker and more watered down they get. The one I happened to pick up after Kristen Lavransdatter - "The Magic of You" attempts to spice things up by going outside the template, and also by marrying a distant Malory relative to one of Georgina's brothers -- Warren Anderson.

In order to abandon the template, Lindsey also had to abandon all illusions of being historically accurate. Amy Malory has, for reasons never explained, decided she wants to marry the dangerously handsome Warren. She throws herself at him shamelessly -- more Carrie from Sex in the City than 17-year-old 18th century English maid, and he grouchily turns her down over and over again, to the detriment of his frustrated, throbbing manhood.

This book is - so - bad. My favorite parts are when Lindsey tries to provide exposition through dialogue that is so unnatural you can actually feel the paper its written on cringing. Below are a couple of examples from a conversation that is happening between two cousins.

"When Uncle James gets in a fight, the poor victim doesn't usually walk away. My friend, Nick, found that out first-hand and nearly missed his wedding to our cousin Reggie because your father laid him up in bed for a week."

In real life the response to that would be, "No shit, moron, he's my dad. I was THERE. And you don't need to call our cousin Reggie "Our Cousin Reggie" -- I KNOW she's our cousin.

Another example:

"But I thought it was only Nick's wife, Reggie, whom they took such a personal interest in. They didn't bother with Amy's older sisters, Clare and Diana."

That would be like me having a conversation with my husband and saying, "Honey, your mom and dad, Louise and John, called and they wanted me to let you know that your older brother, Pat, and his girlfriend, Amy, are going to be coming over to their house on Malibu Drive in Edina tonight."

Men in these romance novels are usually monstrously huge -- even in 18th century England. They're super tall and if you touched them you'd think they'd been carved from granite. Everywhere. (If you know what I mean, wink.) For example, the description of Georgina's brothers, who have traveled all the way from America for the birth of her first son...cause I'm sure people back then made that kind of a trip all the time for such things...

"They did come inside, a veritable mountain of men filing past her. Two of them were just short of six feet, but the other three topped six feet by a good four inches... And all of them were too handsome for a young girl's composure to last very long."

As for the story, it's got your typical 10% background, 60% filler and 30% love scenes. The plot is skimmable, like all of them, but this one really gets an A for effort. There's something about an ancient vase, and Warren and Amy end up being captured on a boat owned by Chinese people. That part is awesome:

Chinese person who captured Warren: "Time is of no importance."
Warren: "How fortunate for you, but the rest of us live our lives by the clock. No deal, Mr. Liang."

I think Lindsey might have read a pamphlet written in 1948 about Chinese culture as her research, because her descriptions are pure cliche and outdated.

"The first meal, a bowl of rice and strange-looking vegetables in a tangy sweet sauce, had been delivered by a cheerful little fellow who called himself Taishi Ning. He was a stringbean of thinness (The metaphor of stringbean to indicate skinniness is particularly vivid and fresh) in his loose trousers and belted wraparound tunic, his thick black braid nearly as long as he was. Like Li, Taishi was no taller than Amy (Warren must tower over them!) How hard could it be to overpower him with the assistance of her rice bowl? Not hard a'tall."


I repeat:

"How hard could it be to overpower him with the assistance of her rice bowl?"

She tiptoes the line of racism occasionally, too:

Taishi: "Lookee what Taishi bring, little missee. Big-time good stuff. You no likee, I chop off cook's hand lickety-split. Big-time promise."

WTF???

In the end, our hero and heroine declare their mutual love for each other, with scenes of invading tongues, burning hardnesses and aching breasts sprinkled throughout. Amy and Warren (Amen? Like Brangelina?) are married and live happily ever after...yay!