19 Crows

Still feeling coldish and in need of light reading so I turned to graphic novels:

Calling Dr. Laura: A Graphic Memoir, Nicole J. Georges. Nicole finds out from a psychic that the father she thought was dead is actu-ally alive and her family has been lying to her all this time. It's a great premise that got me to buy this, but the actual story isn't that interesting. She jumps around from her troubled childhood with an abusive mom and stepfathers, her current unhappy relationship, and eventually the story of who her father really was and why it was a secret. The drawings are in the naive style that I like from Aileen Kominsky-Crumb but find annoying by anyone else, though she can really draw faces well.

The Tale of One Bad Rat, Bryan Talbot. A well done story of a girl fleeing sexual abuse and looking for heaing in the Lake District, home of Beatrix Potter, whom she idolizes. Beautiful art.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Alison Bechdel. Complicated, dense, fascinating memoir of growing up in a dysfunctional fami-ly with unhappy parents. Her father was ap-parently gay, but closeted, and seems to have been manic depressive. Bechdel describes her own childhood neuroses and her eventual coming out, and wonders if that triggered her father's death, which could have been a sui-cide. I read Dykes to Watch Out For for years (when I lived where I could pick up papers that carried it) and already loved her drawings but this is on a whole other level as she finds connections between various family events, literature, her own coming out, gay history, and more.

Stitches: A Memoir, David Small. Beautifully drawn coming of age story of a boy growing up in a loveless home. He has an operation for a cyst on his neck and finds out his parents have lied to him about that, and other things.

Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama, Alison Bechdel. Probably not fair to compare them, but I can't help it. I didn't like this one as much as Fun Home. It was a lot more wordy and cerebral, and I admit that I just didn't understand a lot of the psychological terminology she used to tell the story. Also I read To The Lighthouse a few years ago and for me it was eh, so I didn't have that connection. I mean, I got the main point - and it was very poignant for me - that her mother just didn't have love to give and Alison figured out early that the best thing she could do was to not need anything. That's pretty much my relationship with my mother, so it meant a lot to me, but in some ways it was a simpler and less interesting story.

Fledgling, Octavia Butler.

(Probably most of you have read this but if not, there will be spoilers.)

A young girl wakes in a cave, injured and in pain, with no memory of what’s happened to her. She slowly heals and makes her way outside, and uses her hypercharged senses to orient herself. Eventually she (and the reader) discovers she’s a vampire with the appearance of a young black girl.

The device of someone with amnesia is useful – she narrates her re-entry into the world. It’s fascinating to watch her slowly recover some of her memories of what she needs, how to care for herself. Later, when she encounters others of her kind – Ina – they explain everything to her about her family, her past, her people. I liked that too. They’re white, but she was a genetic experiment to combine human genes with Ina to create an Ina whose dark skin lets her tolerate sunshine and who can stay awake and think during the day. She’s 53, almost mature in Ina years.

She finds out she’s lost all her whole family, her male and female relatives who live in sex segregated communities, and her previous family of symbionts. She remembers nothing about them. There’s interesting suspense about who’s doing the killing and why. The twist: it’s not villagers with torches but racist vampires.

Along the way I realized I was uncomfortable with the relationships. Ina form families with human symbionts by biting them and using their venom as an addicting drug. After Shori leaves the cave she’s picked up on the road by a guy named Wright. She bites him in self defense and it’s pleasurable for him and draws him to her. That’s how it works. Once a human is bitten, the Ina can kind of control their mind, and after more bites they can be bonded to each other. Symbionts age more slowly than humans and don’t get sick, but they’re tied to their Ina and can die if their Ina does. They live wherever their Ina chooses, in a family of other Ina and symbionts. Many keep the same nocturnal hours. They might marry other humans in the Ina family and have children, though apparently there are Ina who see their symbionts as lesser creatures and who don’t treat them well, though we don’t see this.

There’s a lot of talk about how the symbionts have free will and can leave but we never see this actually happen. Wright accepts the bond without really understanding its implications. Shori bites Celia and Brook because they need to be taken in by one of her kind after they’ve lost their Ina (her father) but again, after enough bites they’re tied to her too. They had to choose to let her take them on but it didn’t seem like much of a decision for them – do each of them really want to do this? It feels like they just go along.

Theodora was the different one: Shori uses her as a random food source when she’s still learning what she needs, but realizes she’s drawn to her – her scent, her cluttered office etc. Theodora loves her, too, but how much of that is simply because of Shori’s venom?

Perhaps this is an allegory of slavery. Ina love their symbionts, they’re family, and they protect and care for them. But Ina need their blood to live, and symbionts aren’t free to go. Not really. So I think discomfort is what Butler wants us to feel.

It’s surprising to read reviews where people are offended because she looks like a child and has sex with human adults (and seems to be experienced with sex, I guess? It’s not really clear) which to them is pedophilia. I didn’t even think about this. I wasn’t visualizing her, I knew she was actually 53, pedophilia isn’t an issue for me, and this isn’t pedophilia. I think even if I had visualized her – something I rarely do when I read – it wouldn’t have bothered me. She’s 53, nearly mature. I guess the case could be made that she’s more like a young girl who hasn’t reached menarche – we know she’s not quite old enough to mate with other Ina, but old enough that her scent makes males uncomfortable. Not enough information.

What did make me uncomfortable was all the touching: hugging, snuggling up together in bed, back rubs, her need for constant touch from her symbionts and their willingness to give it. I felt skin fatigue just reading about it. But that’s my problem, not a problem with the book.

I was hoping there might be a twist, that her amnesia would turn out to be hiding something from her and from us. But once you get used to the Ina and their world, the plot is straightforward. I didn’t like Shori very much, truth be told. She’s sure of herself in a way that sometimes comes off as arrogance – that trips her up in the book, too, a few times. I didn’t like that she has this New Agey-name while nearly everybody else in the book has regular, familiar names. Maybe her mothers and other ancestors we never get to meet had similar names, but it was jarring.

It was an interesting, thought provoking book that I’ll be processing for a while. I’m sorry that Butler died before she could write a sequel. I’d very much like to know what happens to Shori and her family next.

Then I read nearly all of Child's Play by Reginald Hill on the plane. British mystery about a strange will and missing son and other complications, with Inspector Andy Dalziel.

I read Trustee from the Toolroom, by Nevil Shute. Keith Stewart is a mechanical engineer who loves building models of things like engines and clocks, and writes a column about that for Minature Mechanic magazine. His comfortable life with his wife in a London suburb is upset when his sister and her wealthy husband, who've left their daughter in Keith and his wife's care, are shipwrecked sailing from England to Vancouver. Keith, a man who's never left England, must find a way to get to a remote South Seas island to see about his sister and brother in law's graves, salvage the ship, and death with something else that will greatly affect their daughter's future. It turns out that his columns have readers all over the world and there are many fellow engineers who are happy to help him along his journey. He even manages to earn a considerable amount of money as consulting engineer.
It's a pleasant and satisfying read, with some amusing characters along the way. I know little about engineering or sailing but enjoyed the descriptions of handling sailboats and various engineering and mechanical things. Keith's tiny generator that he built for fun figures into the story, impressing everyone and making friends for him wherever he takes it.
Keith's a likeable guy but it's a little strange that during his months-long adventures he doesn't seem to miss his wife or worry about her or their ward, and doesn't even write home. But on the other hand, that's a lot like some of the engineers I know.
What I liked is how the common language of engineers and problem solvers is shown to unite a group of very disparate people, from a barely literate guy who built is own sailboat and sailed it across the Pacific, to a business tycoon.

After that I started Hello World: A life in Ham Radio by Danny Gregory and Paul Sahre. Gregory got interested after finding a scrapbook of QSL cards, the postcards hams send each other to confirm they talked, at a flea market. It's both a history of one man's multi-decade hobby, and of radio and amateur radio in general. It's interesting and the cards are graphically interesting.

However, I'm a astonished that so far they haven't explained why it's called "ham radio". Wikipedia has this: "The term "ham operator" was commonly applied by 19th century landline telegraphers to an operator with poor or "ham fisted" skills. Early radio (initially known as wireless telegraphy) included many former wire telegraph operators, and within the new service "ham" was employed as a pejorative term by professional radiotelegraph operators to suggest that amateur enthusiasts were unskilled. In "Floods and Wireless" by Hanby Carver, from the August, 1915 Technical World Magazine, the author noted "Then someone thought of the 'hams'. This is the name that the commercial wireless service has given to amateur operators...""

There are also various folk etymologies including one that the first radio station had the call letters HAM, etc.

I also started The Crossing Places, by Elly Griffiths, involving an archeology professor who gets involved with solved a murder. So far, very good. I'm not sure what I think about all the mentions of her thinking about how fat she is. Not unrealistic but maybe a little too much.

Watch the North Wind Rise, Robert Graves. A poet from our time (1949) is transported years into the future, which is now a peaceful, Goddess worshipping world culture where money, technology, and wars have been eliminated and people live in rural villages and in defined social groups. I love utopia/dystopia fiction, and part of what I love is being dropped into this alternate world and figuring out how things work. This one doesn’t have that because from when he arrives, everything is explained to him (and us.) I don’t believe for a second that this culture would work; I don’t have that much faith in humanity, but it’s interesting to speculate. What made it a page turner was the interactions between the protagonist and other characters including a troublesome woman from his past who has somehow appeared in the future with him. But that sort of fizzled out and it was ultimately kind of philosophical musing about Goddess culture and good and evil, which was okay (especially because of my acquaintance with the Goddess) but eh.

Now I'm reading The Round House by Louise Erdrich and really enjoying it. About a crime on a reservation in North Dakota and the narrator, the victim's son, reacting to it. There's a lot of great stuff about family and friendship, not to mention issues about crimes that happen to Indian people.

After that I'm going to read The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths, a mystery somebody recommended.

I've just started Kay Thompson: From Funny Face to Eloise by Sam Irvin. Back to a nice relaxing biography. I know about Kay Thompson as a big figure in stage & screen, though I don't think I've ever seen Funny Face because I'm the only woman in the world who doesn't love Audrey Hepburn. I discovered the Eloise books when I was "too old" for picture books, and love them then and now.

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, Apostolos K. Doxiadēs. Well the fact that it took me months to finish this should tell you how much I liked it. The parts about Bertrand Russell's childhood and life were interesting, but the parts about logic, not so much. I didn't really like the drawing, either.

A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan. A group of linked stories, many of which are about a woman named Sasha. They're all entertaining, some more than others. There are themes of being authentic and true to yourself in a lot of them, but that just didn't speak to me - either I'm already living authentically or I'm a phony, I guess. Anyway, I didn't love it. It started out fine but became a chore to finish. I think part of it was that the trajectory of her life seemed disappointing to me (marriage and kids, and the Powerpoint diary of one of them was just tiresome and gimmicky.) Maybe the bigger problem was that a big issue of hers introduced in the first story (her stealing) never really got explained, unless I missed something, which is certainly possible.

Edited a few days later to add: Okay, I listened to this podcast of people discussing it and it reminded me of many of the book's subtler points, including maybe an explanation of her stealing, and it made me realize there were a lot of things I like about it. So, it gets another star. It really is a book that works best if you read it in one go, instead of a little every day, as I did. http://fuzzytypewriter.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/ft-podcast-fuzzy-typewriter-book-club-a-visit-from-the-goon-squad/

Now I'm reading Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn. Wife goes missing, it looks like the husband killed her but he says he didn't. And then there are twists. I'm liking it a lot and want to sit down to finish it tonight, which doesn't happen very often for me.

Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals about the Mind, Margalit Fox. There is a Bedouin village in Israel where, because of intermarriage, so many people are Deaf that everyone uses Sign. Because the village is isolated, the village’s language arose there, independent of other languages and other versions of Sign, so it’s being studied by linguists seeking to understand how human language instinct works. The book’s chapters alternate between discussion of linguistics and narrative about the linguists’ work in the town. I know some about Deaf culture and the history of Sign from other books, but the linguistic stuff is really great. Ms Fox is a senior writer for the New York Times who writes the best obituaries and I wish we were related.

Tomi: A Childhood Under the Nazis, Tomi Ungerer
I first encountered Tomi Ungerer when I saw his very dirty cartoons in Evergreen Review in the late 60s so it came as quite a surprise to me to find out years later that he's a respected children's book illustrator. Anyway, this book is a memoir of his childhood in Alsace during the German occupation. Appropriately, it's also a scrapbook of his drawings and of photos and ephemera of that era. His father died when he was around four years old and he drew from an early age. An early drawing is of Mickey Mouse (later condemned as degenerate art by the Nazis) and later ones show caricatures of friends, school days, German occupiers and depictions of battles as the war got closer to home. The occupation began when he was nine. Everyone had to start speaking German and even had to change their names from French forms to German ones. He includes pages from his copybook where the kids had to write out quotations from the Fuher and do drawings of swastika flags and other symbols. Another poster (not by him) shows the German broom sweeping away "Gallic trash" like Jeanne d'Arc and the rooster symbol of France, showing how Alsace is returning to its Germanic roots at last. Of course the Alsatians identified themselves with Alsace, neither France nor Germany.

Ungerer has some good stories about how his pretty, clever mother outwitted the Nazis and collaborators - accused (accurately) of speaking French at home, she went to the general's office and said something like "Yes, yes we are speaking French in our home - because when the glorious Fatherland finishes conquering France, who will be able to educate the French about the beauty and splendor of the Third Reich??" (etc., etc.) which of course charmed the general so much he gave the family carte blanch to speak French. The book ends with the Americans defeating the Nazis and treating prisoners as badly as the Germans had treated French prisoners, which Ungerer observes with sadness. Now I'd like him to write a book about how he came to America with a suitcase and $40.

Elizabeth Jane Howard died; I read her Cazalet Chronicles a few years ago and loved them, and didn't realize till I read the obits that there is a new book in the series. Since I don't have that yet, I've just started her first book, The Beautiful Visit.

I'm still reading the biography of Tony Perkins and enjoying it. He's in college and starting to realize he might be gay, and it's 1951 so not a great time for that.

We're going on vacation starting Saturday so I'm enjoying picking too many books to take along. I like having a choice even if it means dragging them around.

I finished The Intuitionist; two stars. My review:

Novel set in a universe in which elevators seem to be the highest form of technology, and there are disputes between two schools of inspectors, the Intuitionists and the Empiricists. Lila Mae Watson, the city's first female black inspector, is being framed for an elevator crash designed to show up the Intuitionists. We're in a city that's clearly New York, in a era when segregation is just ending. I'm not sure I got all the subtext. I liked its quirkiness, the alternate universe, but ultimately I was bored and disappointed. I think I missed its subtleties and metaphysics. Okay, elevators are a way to rise, and being an elevator inspector is a rise in status, but beyond that I got nothing. There are a couple of big revelations, one of them about people not being what they seem; I couldn't discern the significance of the other.

Now I'm reading The Knife of Never Letting Go and am enjoying, as usual, viewing a different world and society. So far it's pretty intense and the tension is getting to me.

I finished Harriet Said.... Beryl Bainbridge's first novel, unpublished till later in her career. It's rather odd, about two precocious girls who prey on an older man. The narrator is in thrall to Harriet, her friend directs their schemes and the diary entries where they write about their adventures. For me it had a lot of personal resonance, so I liked it. There is a convincing aura of menace over the whole thing that I enjoyed too.