My insomniac self just finished reading Toy Dance Party, by Emily Jenkins (illustrated by the fabulous Paul O. Zelinsky). Toy Dance Party is the sequel to Toys Go Out, which I read back in October. I loved this one too. Toy Dance Party is about a lot of things--the washing machine is a major character!--and among them, it's about the little girl of the house growing up, showing more interest in her Barbies, which don't even talk to the other toys, than in the stuffed animals and plastic ball who used to mean so much to her.
Fun, strange, excellent books.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Ready Player One
I crashed my motor scooter Monday, requiring some emergency dental surgery (I broke a tooth) and lots of rest. I did need the rest, but I was also in no rush to go back to school and have my students make fun of my split lip. So I slept for a couple days, got the tooth fixed, and now it's Thursday and here I go.
I also read a ton while I was lying around. That was the only good thing about this experience, frankly. No--I'm sure my sunny self could find other good things, like the awesome guy at United Fire, Health and Safety, the business I crashed in front of, who took me and my scooter in and took care of us. Etcetera. But anyway--the reading part was great too. I finished A Better Angel on Monday, Flip on Tuesday, and read all of Ready Player One yesterday. Maybe I started it Tuesday night--it's long--but yeah.
This is not the kind of book I'm usually into--I guess it might be called "hard sci-fi." Last year I read all of Pat Murphy's books--this was akin to those, I suppose. Except different. Written in 2011, feeling very written in 2011, and about a multibillionaire who was a teenager in the 1980's. It feels as though it's by someone of my generation but a couple years older--and yes, it was. I googled him--Cline was born in 1972. I was born in 1976. So this explains how his view of the 1980's is more firmly set in the earlier part of the decade, before I discovered pop radio in middle school in 1987. My 1980's were more about George Michael and Madonna than Oingo Boingo and The Alan Parsons Project (I forgot about this awesome blog, that features The Book Notes series, where writers create and discuss music playlists that relate in some way to their books). Also, video games were barely on my radar. I remember occasionally playing with someone's Nintendo at a slumber party, but I never had a Nintendo or anything of that sort, and I didn't care so much. I might have played a video game once or twice at a bowling alley or something, but eh. And this book is maybe 55% about video games? Maybe 65%? Anyway, Cline is reading on December 17 at Ground Kontrol, which I have grown to love thanks to my obsession with pinball, but I don't play many video games there, except with Sierra and Miles--watching them playing the driving games is almost more fun than pinball, and the PacMan cocktail table game (lingo I have added to my vocabulary thanks to Ready Player One) with them is a blast.
Many of the same movies were important to me as figure largely in Ready Player One: the John Hughes oeuvre specifically. And Ghostbusters. Though Ghostbusters was more important to one of the characters in this novel than it ever was to me. And many of the same writers: Vonnegut specifically, Douglas Adams, Bradbury, Tolkien. Plus lots of more sci-fi and fantasy writers I was never into: Neal Stephenson, Terry Brooks, Heinlein...
Anyway, the book was so much fun. It's basically about a future (2044) that is even grimmer and poorer than today. James Halliday, a very rich guy--one of the designers of OASIS, basically the next generation of the internet--dies and leaves his entire fortune to the person who can solve the series of puzzles he's left behind. Our hero, Wade, who lives in a stack of trailers twenty-two trailers high (gas got too unreasonable, so people "desperate for work, food, electricity, and reliable OASIS access--had fled their dying small towns and had used the last of their gasoline ... to haul their families, RVs, and trailer homes to the nearest metropolis"), is one of the "gunters" obsessed with solving James Halliday's puzzles.
It's a good story. Even if you're not into sci-fi and/or video games, it's compelling and fast-moving and well-told. The one thing that annoys me is when Wade finds out that another gunter, also one of the leaders in the contest, and someone who's been a close friend of his for a long time in OASIS, although they've never met in real life, is different from how he's presented himself online. When Wade learns this, the reader is told that he "loved her as a dear friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation." I just don't buy that. I'd like to, but I'm not sure I can.
But this huge revelation is never any kind of issue ever. Not sure how much it would fit into the narrative if it was, but still.
Otherwise an awesome, fun book. Highly recommended.
I also read a ton while I was lying around. That was the only good thing about this experience, frankly. No--I'm sure my sunny self could find other good things, like the awesome guy at United Fire, Health and Safety, the business I crashed in front of, who took me and my scooter in and took care of us. Etcetera. But anyway--the reading part was great too. I finished A Better Angel on Monday, Flip on Tuesday, and read all of Ready Player One yesterday. Maybe I started it Tuesday night--it's long--but yeah.
This is not the kind of book I'm usually into--I guess it might be called "hard sci-fi." Last year I read all of Pat Murphy's books--this was akin to those, I suppose. Except different. Written in 2011, feeling very written in 2011, and about a multibillionaire who was a teenager in the 1980's. It feels as though it's by someone of my generation but a couple years older--and yes, it was. I googled him--Cline was born in 1972. I was born in 1976. So this explains how his view of the 1980's is more firmly set in the earlier part of the decade, before I discovered pop radio in middle school in 1987. My 1980's were more about George Michael and Madonna than Oingo Boingo and The Alan Parsons Project (I forgot about this awesome blog, that features The Book Notes series, where writers create and discuss music playlists that relate in some way to their books). Also, video games were barely on my radar. I remember occasionally playing with someone's Nintendo at a slumber party, but I never had a Nintendo or anything of that sort, and I didn't care so much. I might have played a video game once or twice at a bowling alley or something, but eh. And this book is maybe 55% about video games? Maybe 65%? Anyway, Cline is reading on December 17 at Ground Kontrol, which I have grown to love thanks to my obsession with pinball, but I don't play many video games there, except with Sierra and Miles--watching them playing the driving games is almost more fun than pinball, and the PacMan cocktail table game (lingo I have added to my vocabulary thanks to Ready Player One) with them is a blast.
Many of the same movies were important to me as figure largely in Ready Player One: the John Hughes oeuvre specifically. And Ghostbusters. Though Ghostbusters was more important to one of the characters in this novel than it ever was to me. And many of the same writers: Vonnegut specifically, Douglas Adams, Bradbury, Tolkien. Plus lots of more sci-fi and fantasy writers I was never into: Neal Stephenson, Terry Brooks, Heinlein...
Anyway, the book was so much fun. It's basically about a future (2044) that is even grimmer and poorer than today. James Halliday, a very rich guy--one of the designers of OASIS, basically the next generation of the internet--dies and leaves his entire fortune to the person who can solve the series of puzzles he's left behind. Our hero, Wade, who lives in a stack of trailers twenty-two trailers high (gas got too unreasonable, so people "desperate for work, food, electricity, and reliable OASIS access--had fled their dying small towns and had used the last of their gasoline ... to haul their families, RVs, and trailer homes to the nearest metropolis"), is one of the "gunters" obsessed with solving James Halliday's puzzles.
It's a good story. Even if you're not into sci-fi and/or video games, it's compelling and fast-moving and well-told. The one thing that annoys me is when Wade finds out that another gunter, also one of the leaders in the contest, and someone who's been a close friend of his for a long time in OASIS, although they've never met in real life, is different from how he's presented himself online. When Wade learns this, the reader is told that he "loved her as a dear friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation." I just don't buy that. I'd like to, but I'm not sure I can.
But this huge revelation is never any kind of issue ever. Not sure how much it would fit into the narrative if it was, but still.
Otherwise an awesome, fun book. Highly recommended.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
A Better Angel
As I discussed in an earlier post, I read a great collection of fairy tales retold, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, and I went on to look for more work by several of the writers who had stories included. One of these was Chris Adrian, who got his MFA from Iowa, went on to med school, then got a master's at Harvard Divinity School. So he writes, but he is also (primarily) a pediatrician. I liked his story a lot in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, but I was also just curious about him. I liked this interview, in which he says, among other things, "I think I sound fancier than I actually am. I’ve just tried a lot of different stuff, but I’m not necessarily very good at any of it," when the interviewer says, "Well, I thought we should get out of the way that you’re probably self-conscious about how accomplished you are in general. I read a quote somewhere that you were cautioning people not to think that you were smarter than you are."
I read a collection of his stories that came out in 2008. It was nice to read a collection of stories. I should do that more often. I liked these stories a lot--many of them concerned hospitals and illness, many of them were somehow about children, and many of them had things in them like angels and visions and the anti-
Christ. They are strange and wonderful. I'm looking forward to reading more of his stuff.
I read a collection of his stories that came out in 2008. It was nice to read a collection of stories. I should do that more often. I liked these stories a lot--many of them concerned hospitals and illness, many of them were somehow about children, and many of them had things in them like angels and visions and the anti-
Christ. They are strange and wonderful. I'm looking forward to reading more of his stuff.
Flip
Just finished another book on Julianna Baggott's list for NPR, "Hooray for YA: Teen Novels for Readers of All Ages." So now I've read three of the five: Flip, Ten Miles Past Normal, and Karma. I'd put the other two on hold from the library, but I picked them up then had to bring them back before I had a chance to read them because they both had holds on them and I was busy with other books. I'll try again with both of those--the others have been great. I loved Flip. It's a boys-switching-bodies story that I found to be completely convincing and moving. It rings true, and I feel like it does a nice job of addressing the sorts of questions that aren't always addressed in such situations. Questions I'd have about what happens when friends or family reference common memories that the body switcher wasn't around to share... the relationship between the people who switched... I don't know. Just questions.
A fun book that wasn't nearly what I'd expected, in many excellent ways.
A fun book that wasn't nearly what I'd expected, in many excellent ways.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Hugo
Laurel and I saw Hugo this week--and it was frankly pretty great. I love the book it's based on--The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick--so much, and I was very nervous about one of my favorite books being made into a movie, but I heard that Selznick was really happy with it, plus it's such a book that's asking to be a movie--it's so visual, and it's so about film. The movie does a lovely job of using footage talked about (and pictured in drawings) in the book, and it makes me happy to have that footage in a movie that people who might not have seen it will see (and those who have seen it will be happy to see it again)--Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of the clock in Safety Last!--which fits into Hugo in many ways--several clips and references to The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, and plenty of others including lots of Melies. The actors are great, the script is great, of course it's not the same as the book and I'll always love the book, but the movie does a fabulous job of telling the story of the book, but telling it as a movie. If that makes sense. I guess the movie isn't really quite telling the story of the book--it's telling its own story, closely related but well suited to its medium.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
I read a great collection of "new fairy tales," edited by Kate Bernheimer, of fairy tales retold, reconceived, and new. Many of these stories--all by different writers, and such a wide range, including of course many I haven't heard of (I've put several books on hold since I started this book, wanting to read more by some of these writers!)--is a retelling of a classic story, or some kind of reworking of the story--but some of them are new fairy tales, maybe playing with some elements of the classics.
I know most of the stories that are being played with, but I've discovered some new ones:
Donkey Skin: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault11.html
The White Cat: http://mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/310.htm
Highly recommended collection. Lots of fun. Always so interesting to see which elements writers pull out of familiar stories, and so much fun to read fairy tales based on stories I don't know or don't know as well.
There's a "Snow White" with no Snow White, only dwarves--this might be one of my favorites. Francine Prose wrote a strange beautiful unexpected "Hansel and Gretel." There are a couple awesome and very different "Rumpelstiltskin"s, a fabulous "Swan Brothers" (I did always love "The Swan Brothers," and it is such an odd story, really), and on and on and on.
The mothers and fathers in fairy tales are so weird. It's great. Nice to see certain elements highlighted or addressed at a literal level.
I'm going to reread and read lots of fairy tales now. Some more. Again. After I read Emily, Alone, by Stewart O'Nan, which I got off the "Lucky Picks" shelf so I won't be able to renew it, and In Cold Blood, which is this month's bookclub book. Then (and honestly, probably in between), fairytales.
I know most of the stories that are being played with, but I've discovered some new ones:
Donkey Skin: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault11.html
The White Cat: http://mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/310.htm
Highly recommended collection. Lots of fun. Always so interesting to see which elements writers pull out of familiar stories, and so much fun to read fairy tales based on stories I don't know or don't know as well.
There's a "Snow White" with no Snow White, only dwarves--this might be one of my favorites. Francine Prose wrote a strange beautiful unexpected "Hansel and Gretel." There are a couple awesome and very different "Rumpelstiltskin"s, a fabulous "Swan Brothers" (I did always love "The Swan Brothers," and it is such an odd story, really), and on and on and on.
The mothers and fathers in fairy tales are so weird. It's great. Nice to see certain elements highlighted or addressed at a literal level.
I'm going to reread and read lots of fairy tales now. Some more. Again. After I read Emily, Alone, by Stewart O'Nan, which I got off the "Lucky Picks" shelf so I won't be able to renew it, and In Cold Blood, which is this month's bookclub book. Then (and honestly, probably in between), fairytales.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Wonder Struck, by Brian Selznick
I loved Selznick's previous novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Loved it so much that it shot up into my canon almost instantly. It is even on my 50 Favorite Books List.
So I had unfairly high expectations for Wonder Struck. I was almost certain to be disappointed. And I was. I was disappointed that I didn't want to read it again immediately. That's an unreasonable expectation, but that's how I felt about Hugo.
I am excited to reread Wonder Struck, though. Maybe in a month or two. It's the same fabulous confluence of text and image telling the story--though for much of Wonder Struck, there is one story told in text and the other in image, which frankly I didn't like. We'll see if it grows on me. They are related stories, and they come together beautifully in the end. I don't know.
So Wonder Struck is a wonderful book. I'm not sure yet if it's a great book. It's no Hugo Cabret, that's for sure. But who would really want it to be? That would've been disappointing too. I'm happy with how different a story it is, and I have to give Selznick props for telling what is in many ways a more ambitious story. So yeah. Read it. It's awesome. It's not on my top 50, but only 50 books are.
So I had unfairly high expectations for Wonder Struck. I was almost certain to be disappointed. And I was. I was disappointed that I didn't want to read it again immediately. That's an unreasonable expectation, but that's how I felt about Hugo.
I am excited to reread Wonder Struck, though. Maybe in a month or two. It's the same fabulous confluence of text and image telling the story--though for much of Wonder Struck, there is one story told in text and the other in image, which frankly I didn't like. We'll see if it grows on me. They are related stories, and they come together beautifully in the end. I don't know.
So Wonder Struck is a wonderful book. I'm not sure yet if it's a great book. It's no Hugo Cabret, that's for sure. But who would really want it to be? That would've been disappointing too. I'm happy with how different a story it is, and I have to give Selznick props for telling what is in many ways a more ambitious story. So yeah. Read it. It's awesome. It's not on my top 50, but only 50 books are.
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