Ready When You Are, C.B.

Dakota's Favorites: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaimon

2012-01-27T05:53:00.000-08:00

Usually, I select the books for Dakota's Favorites. I pick a review from the archive here at Ready When You Are, C.B. featuring a book I enjoyed enough to recommend not once but twice. Today, though, I thought I'd go with a book that Dakota enjoyed much more than I did.

Here's the little video we made for Neil Gaimon's, The Graveyard Book back in 2009.

The Terrorists by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

2012-01-25T05:55:00.000-08:00

The National Commisioner of Police

smiled.

Opening to

The Terrorists

by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

Translated from the Swedish by

Joan Tate

I started reading the Martin Beck series "The Story of a Crime" just over one year ago. I meant to read one book in the ten book series each month and finish in October of last year, but the project took a little longer than I expected.

Last week, I completed book number ten, The Terrorists. I'm pleased to say that the series holds up right to the end. Each book is as good as the ones that came before; choosing a favorite or the best one should be done by drawing names out of a hat. They're all very good. They'll probably be classics of the genre for generations to come.

And you don't really need to read them in order, either.

The Terrorists is one of the better pieces of plotting you're likely to find in detective fiction. The book opens with a courtroom scene, a young woman accused of robbing a bank at knife point. Martin Beck has been called to testify for the defense. In a scene designed to make Sweden's justice system cringe, the defense is able to prove that a woman who walked out of a bank with a canvas bag full of bills that were not hers was completely innocent of any wrong doing. At first, while I enjoyed the scene, I felt it a bit unfair and a bit artificial, inserting an apparently superfluous subplot just to make the justice system look bad. Were Sjowall and Wahloo extending their critique of Sweden's police force to the judicial system just to get in a few bonus before the series ended? As soon as the girl left the courtroom a free woman, the plot shifted into the story of an American senator, visiting Sweden and the terrorists who have threatened to kill him. I should have trusted Sjowall and Wahloo more. There never was any chance that they would let the reader down in this the final Martin Beck book. The girl comes back in a shocking way that I really should have expected all along. That's the best possible ending for a story like "The Story of a Crime," a shocking finish that should have been expected.

This is not to say that the authors don't allow themselves a little bit of self-indulgence in The Terrorists. After nine books, I think they're entitled. Chapter 16 opens with an assessment of what makes Martin Beck such a good detective. It's easy to imagine that the authors were responding to critics and fans of their books alike in this couple of pages spent reviewing their detective's career. They admit that some argue he has very few cases and that they are easy to solve. But they also lay out a their case for why he is a good detective, and I imagine by extenstion a good case for what makes a good detective in general. He has a "systematic mind, common sense and conscientiousness," "his good memory; his obstinancy, which was occasionally mulelike; and his capacity for logical thought. Another was that he found time for everything that had anything to do with a case, even if this meant following up small details that later turned out to be of no significanse. Occasionally these minute considerations led to important clues."

This description of what makes Beck a good detective could easly be a description of what makes Sjowall and Wahloo's detective stories so good. Consider it advice for the would be writer of police procedurals. You won't find anyone escaping from a moving freight car via a hole in the floor, or an intricately planned revenge plot involving bondage and tatoos in anything by Sjowall and Wahloo. What you will find is attention to detail, logical thought, conscientiousne, stories and people much closer to Simenon's Maigret than to the Hollywood plotlines so typical in today's crime fiction-- crime fiction Sjowall and Wahloo helped make possible.

You'll also find a wicked sense of humor. The kind of humor that manages to end a ten volume critique of Sweden's socialist government with the phrase "X as in Marx." I think that's pretty good. Not a bad way to spend a year reading either.

Tuesdays with Voltaire

2012-01-24T06:33:00.000-08:00

"He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked."

Voltaire

In 1752 Voltaire wrote one of the first pieces of science fiction, Micromages, about ambassadors from another planet observing the foibles of human governments.

Sunday Salon: I'm sick of reading!

2012-01-22T05:43:00.000-08:00

But I'll get over it and be back next week.

Friday Picture Reading - Marlon Brando

2012-01-20T03:09:00.000-08:00

Marlon Brando

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

2012-01-19T05:17:00.000-08:00

We didn't always live on Mango

Opening to

The House on Mango Street

by Sandra Cisneros

Street.

I've a feeling I may take some heat for this review.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a collection of scenes from a year in the life of Esperanza Cordera, a girl entering her teenage years in a tough Chicago neighborhood. A plotless collection of scenes praised throughout the world for its poetic language, The House on Mango Street paints a portrait of one family and the block where they live. Ms. Cisneros does a good job, too. By the end of the book, the reader has met and come to better understand a wide range of people. But I don't see what all the fuss was about.

There was a lot of fuss about The House on Mango Street when it first came out in 1984. In no time at all the book was in widespread circulation, used in colleges, high schools, even middle and elementary schools. I found my copy on the high shelf of the book room at school. It's a good book overall. It presents a point of view that was not exactly easy to find in print in 1984. And it's short. It should really be considered a novella at 110 pages, half of them white space. Most of the chapters are less than two pages in length; perfect for literature anthologies. The section called "Bums in the Attic" is in the one my school uses.

I think the shortness of the chapters worked against my reading of the book. So many quick sketches in sequence, a brief scene in one, a character outlined in another, made me begin to question why the author hadn't taken the time to flesh out a genuine plot, even a slice of life plot. Frankly, it began to feel a bit self-indulgent by the end. There really should be more there there.

As for the poetry of the writing which was often discussed back in 1984, I guess so, but I wasn't all that impressed. I felt like I was reading the memoirs of an intelligent young woman writing about people she loved. It's nice that she took the time to share her family with us, but the book did not rise to the level of classic I was led to expect.

Towards the end of the novel some of the women on the block tell Esperanza that she'll always be a part of Mango Street and Mango Street will always be a part of her. I suppose I should read this as a statement about the larger experience of growing up in Chicago's Latino neighborhoods, but even with that in mind I just couldn't buy it. Her family spent just a year on Mango Street. You need to spend more time than that in a place before it becomes a part of you, especially at that age. There just wasn't enough in the book for me to believe that Mango Street could be that meaningful after one year. There will be other streets, other towns, other people. Other books, too. That I felt the author agreed with the women who made this claim just made me suspicious of her. Mango Street? Why is Mango Street so important?

Sometimes a street is just a good place to be from.

Tuesdays with Voltaire

2012-01-17T06:25:00.000-08:00

"Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law."

Voltaire

During his exile in London, Voltaire became aquainted with Isaac Newton. Voltaire is considered the source of the apple tree story, which he heard from Isaac Newton's niece and first mentioned in his book Essay on Epic Poetry.

The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci

2012-01-16T05:10:00.000-08:00

I had hoped that a new start away from

Steepleton would make my junior year

seem like a hundred years ago, rather

than just one.

Opening to

The Body of Christopher Creed

by Carol Plum-Ucci

Christopher Creed is the weirdest kid in school. Intelligent, tall, socially beyond awkward, he has no friends that anyone can name, though he seems to see himself as popular. During his junior year he disappears without a trace, except for an email he sends from a school computer that could be a suicide note or just be a goodbye note. Or it could be that Christopher Creed didn't send the note at all if he was murdered and his killers simply wanted to cover-up their crime.

Since no one knows for certain what happened to Christopher Creed, including the reader, the novel becomes the story of what happens to those left behind. How can his family deal with this loss when they don't know what kind of loss it is? How can the students at his school adjust to knowing they may have contributed to their classmate's suicide when the truth may be that he simply ran away?

Suspicion eventually falls on the narrator, Victor Adams, a classmate and acquaintance of Christopher's who attempts to solve his disappearance. Victor and s few of his friends try to spy on Christopher's mother because they believe it was her eccentric, strict upbringing that drove him to run away from their small town. After Christopher's mother catches them out, she becomes convinced that they are responsible for her son's death. She simply refuses to believe that he ran away or that he committed suicide.

This is much more plot summary than I usually like to do. While I enjoyed The Body of Christopher Creed and think it is a well written book, I find I have nothing to say about it. It's an interesting story that becomes something of a thriller and it goes on. The characters are all interesting and believable. I enjoyed reading it. That's just all I really have to say.

TSS: Would You Review a Book You Skimmed? Part II

2012-01-15T04:21:00.000-08:00

Skimming the frothy surface of a creme brulee.

Last week I asked if it's okay to review a book you only skimmed. I confess this was a desparate, last minute post. I realized Sunday morning that I had not done anything, so I slapped up the first thing that came to mind. I was in the midst of skimming my book club's current book, which I ended up abandoning. (Since so many of you asked, it was Super, Sad, True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart.) For such an off-hand post it sure stirred up a lot of comments--21 by Tuesday morning. You all had very interesting things to say on the topic. All 21 comments were in favor of reviewing skimmed books; many supported reviewing abandoned books. Sandy at You've GOTTA Read This had this to say:

It is your blog, and if you have things on your chest, I say get it out. As long as you tell us that you skimmed some of it, that is fair. I actually appreciate knowing which books you can't get through. I need to know that just as much as the ones that will be your favorites of all time!

Sandy's position on the issue is one many shared. Shannon at Shannon's Book Bag went a bit further in her comment:

I think these reviews are likely the most important! Many unfinished books are unfinished because they are not good books. If you avoid posting about them then we are never given the chance to compare our likes and dislikes to yours to determine if I should avoid them. Isn't that the whole point of book blogs?!

Biblibio argues that it's fair to review not only skimmed books but abandoned ones as well and makes a strong case for negative reviews in general:

"Most bloggers would probably agree that it's not really fair to review a book you haven't finished reading, but what about skimming?" - I don't agree with the first part of this sentence at all. I'm a big believer in the negative review as a useful tool for analyzing a book. It doesn't have to be in a spiteful way, but a negative review can warn away potential readers and also raise a lot of relevant points about the book.

Personally, this means that if you abandon a book at a certain point (not within its first pages...), there's nothing wrong with providing a thoughtful review on why you abandoned the book and acknowledging that you didn't finish it. You can comment on the writing style, on the characters, and on the plot. What's the difference?

And so onto the second half of your sentence - I don't think it's a problem. You've formed an opinion based on what you've read and it's entirely legitimate to call the book out on its stupidities, if you so desire. Get these things off your chest. That's as important a part of reviewing as making sure to always review fairly.

Before I put my thoughts down, especailly since I'm finding I disagree with my commenters a little, I should state my working definition of 'review'. For the purpose of this essay, I'm defining review as a full length post focused on a single book or a set of thematically linked books. I'd like to exclude "books I didn't finish" type posts from my definition of 'review'. I've no issue at all with anyone doing a post about books they didn't finish. I think Sunday Salon is an excellent place to do this, too. Like many of the commenters said, that type of post can be a useful tool for readers considering a certain book and for readers wanting to get a better sense of a blogger's personal taste.

But is it fair to write a full length "review" about a book you only skimmed? (I will make a confession here, that I reviewed The Knife of Never Letting Go by Partick Ness a few weeks ago, even though I skimmed the last fifty pages of the book. I didn't like it. My review is not very nice.)

I've been thinking about reviews in general. I've long been a fan of Roger Ebert's movie reviews. Mr. Ebert always has thoughtful reviews, even of largely thoughtless movies, and, like most of the remaining professional movie critics left, it's his policy to watch every movie through to the end no matter how much he hates it. Even a terrible movie could have a good second act or a brilliant finish. Several years ago I heard an interview with the restaurant critic for the New York Times. She explained that before she writes a review she goes to the restaurant multiple times with different groups of people, often in disquise, so she can get a fuller sense of the restaurant's food as well as the service it provides. I don't read product reviews, but I imagine the more authoritative ones, like Consumer Reports, examine products in a similar thorough fashion.

However, Ready When You Are, C.B. is not a professional site; it's a hobby. I've no illusions about becoming the next New York Times Book Review. As several commenters pointed out, it's my blog; I can do want I want with it. Which makes the question, what do I want to do with it? I'd like to expand that question. What do we want to do with them? What standards should we expect each other to uphold?

It's my belief, and I'm sad to say this, that professional book reviews are quickly dying out and probably won't come back. This has been written about exstensively elsewhere, so I'm just going to take it as fact here. What will the alternative to professional reviews be? Maybe it's us. I suspect it already is. How many of you still read book reviews in print or other paid media sources? If we are to be the alternative to professional book reviews, do we have a responsibility to maintain a certain level of ethical standards? How would we benefit from doing so?

Many people argue that book blogging is largely about networking, finding a group of friends who share a passion for books. I agree. Others argue that book blogging is a tool for finding new books that might be of interest and for finding out which books won't be of interest. I agree. Are we about filling the void that has been left by the demise of professional book reviews?

If we are, then we'll have to accept a set of standards. Maybe not "minimum standards" but overarching goals. By this I mean things we hope to become instead of baseline items we all have to be. I do think one of them should be reviewing (see definition above) only books we've read. That will be the new rule at Ready When You Are, C.B. I may mention abandoned books and skimmed books in Sunday Salon type posts, but not in full "reviews" anymore.

I want to end by thanking everyone who commented last Sunday. You have kept me thinking about this topic all week long. I mean that as a compliment. One thing I look to gain out of keeping a book blog is food for thought. Last Sunday was a feast.

Dakota's Favorites: Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby

2012-01-13T02:06:00.000-08:00

It's been an unsettling couple

of months.

Opening to

Shakespeare Wrote for Money

by Nick Hornby

Shakespeare Wrote for Money is the third collection of the columns Mr. Hornby wrote for Believer magazine about the books he read each month. This is the column that almost got me to subscribe to Believer; a popular author with eclectic reading tastes, writing about the books he's reading every month--sounds like the perfect thing for every incurable biblioholic to me.

Shakespeare Wrote for Money, the final collection, covers Mr. Hornby's reading from August 2006 to September 2008 and includes September 2006 when Mr. Hornby read not a single book, due to his obsession with watching the World Cup. It's nice to know that even a devoted reader takes a month off now and then.

Each entry begins with a list of the books Mr. Hornby read that month along side a list of the books he bought. The lists never match. Book bloggers tend to love lists of books and I freely admit that these added greatly to my own enjoyment of Shakespeare Wrote for Money. (What is it about list of books that we all like so much? Are we really closeted librarians?) The articles/chapters are breezily written and tend to wonder off on whatever tangents Mr. Hornby's reading suggest, though never in an uninteresting way. One month he reads several books about East Germany's police force the Stasi and a couple on mental illness, while in another he discovers the world of Young Adult fiction. He claims that his editors, whom he calls the Polyphonic Spree, won't allow him to write bad reviews so he ends up recommending almost everything he reads. (This does have the side effect of adding titles to ones TBR list. Consider yourself warned.)

Though not as eclectic as I am, since he freely admits his complete lack of interest in fantasy and science fiction, Mr. Hornby reads a wide range of material. His reviews cover non-fiction, some popular, some more serious, and fiction ranging from literature in translation, to graphic novels, to classics, to Young Adult fiction, to best sellers. There is something for almost everyone in Shakespeare Wrote for Money. (Except, of course, people who read only fantasy and science fiction.)

While Mr. Hornby is a successful author, he reads more like an everyman. You won't find an esoteric critique of literature in these columns, but you will find an honest and open reflection on what one man's reading experience was like. When something moves him in an embarrassing way, he admits it. When something begins to bore him, he admits that as well. At least, as much as his editors who do not like negative reviews will allow. He does not recommend books that are good for you or that should be read, but books that he enjoyed reading. A useful distinction that makes Shakespeare Wrote for Money a useful and entertaining read.

Dakotas Favorites is a semi-monthly feature here at Ready When You Are, C.B. It's a chance for us to rescue a review from the obscurity of our archive. Dakota is a rescue dog.

What Your Books Are Doing When You're Not Looking.

2012-01-12T05:30:00.000-08:00

There's nothing like a real book.

Hat tip to The Daily Dish.

Walkabout by James Vance Marshall

2012-01-11T05:33:00.000-08:00

It was silent and dark, and the children

were afraid.

Opening to Walkabout

by James Vance Marshall

Walkabout, by James Vance Marshall has a fantasy like quality to it that took me by surprise. The story, which became the basis for the well-known cult film of the same name, concerns two children, a girl entering puberty and her younger brother. The two have survived a plane crash in the Australian outback and are trying to find their way back to civilization. Along the way, they meet an Aboriginal boy, also just entering puberty, on his Walkabout, a rite of passage Aboriginal boys must go through where they are left alone in the wilderness to survive on their own wits.

Mr. Marshall's novel becomes a story about two children lost in a magical land with a magical guide to help them along. While the two siblings should be worried for their lives, they spend so much of the novel having a wonderful adventure that their story becomes something like a trip to Wonderland. Much of this feeling comes from Mr. Marshall's description of the Australian landscape. Take, for example, this passage describing the land the children pass through as they leave the Eden like valley where they stayed with the Aboriginal boy.

At first the valley was well-shaded and softly-coloured: aglow with the gold of casuarina, the creamy white of bamberas and the pink of gums and eucalyptus. But as the children climbed higher, the vegetation gradually became more stunted and the colours harsher, cruder. By midday they were traversing a rocky barren terrain, its only trees the drooping mugga-woods, its only flowers the everlasting daisies; the flowers that never ide; that live on, even after their petals, leaves, stalks, and roots have crumbled and withered away. The children grew hotter, tireder, and hungrier. It was lucky that Mary had had the foresight to gather a cache of bauble nuts, and these they ate, soon after midday, in the shade of a slab of rock that overhung the stream.

Golden glowing casuarina plants, creamy white bamberas, pink gum trees, drooping mugga-woods, everlasting daisies--even the names used sound like things you'd find in Wonderland. Eating a 'cache of bauble nuts.' Reading Walkabout was like watching someone cast a spell on me. I knew what was happening; I knew when I was being manipulated so the author could make a particular point, I knew he was capitalizing on exotic place names that a reader whose never been to Australia would be enchanted by, but I didn't care. Mr. Marshall is a magician, good enough at his trade that he can make his audience enjoy the illusion, even though we know it's an illusion.

That is not to say that there isn't plenty of meat underneath all that sauce. Take the above passage. The two siblings are leaving what was a Garden of Eden. As they climb up out of the valley the landscape gets more and more hellish. If they're climbing up were they in heaven or in hell? They have to leave this Eden because of a fatal misunderstanding between Mary and the unnamed Aboriginal boy caused by Mary's awakening awareness of sexuality, which also ties in neatly with the image of Eden. The children are linked to the everlasting Daisies that live on in spite of how tired, hot and hungry they become. This reader can't help but see that as a possible projection for their passage through life and what happened to Adam and Eve once they left the Garden. The children will leave this paradise for civilization, but they'll often think of their time in Eden and wish they could go back to it. Okay, now that I've written that thought out it doesn't really sound all that deep. But while I was reading the book, while I was under its spell, I was pretty impressed.

Unfortunately, the novel is realistic enough to generate an uncomfortable feeling in modern readers due to the children's casual racism. The children in the novel are from the American South, and continually refer to the Aboriginal boy as 'the darkie.' This is entirely accurate to the novel's time period, but it makes for slightly uneasy reading today. But, that is how people talked in much of America in 1959. Even little kids.

Below is the trailer for Nicholas Roeg wonderful film adaptation of the book. While Mr. Roeg takes considerable liberties with the plot, his film is wonderful. Maybe even better than the book.

Tuesdays with Voltaire

2012-01-10T05:25:00.000-08:00

"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."

Voltaire

Voltaire wrote his first play while a prisoner in the Bastille. He was sent to the prison for the crime of writing satirical verse about the Regent, Phillip II, Duke of Orleans.

Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo by Michael Schiavi

2012-01-09T02:36:00.000-08:00

"Well, it's about fucking time!"

Opening to

Celluloid Activist: The Life

and Times of Vito Russo

by Michael Schiavi

Vito Russo changed my life. When there are only a handful of books, a small handful, that I can honestly say that about, it seems odd that a book about Hollywood movies became so important to me. But it did.

Vito Russo's book, The Celluloid Closet, examines the history of how Hollywood has represented gay and lesbian people in movies from the very beginning to the mid-1980's when the book was published. What made it so important to me was not the thorough examination of gay and lesbian images in American film, though it's coverage is exhaustive, but the political rallying cry Vito Russo turned this issue into. The notion that Hollywood had systematically painted gays and lesbians as monstrous villains, simpering victims or effeminate clowns for decades, and that this was something we as a community should object to, was a radically new notion to my 22-year-old self. I took to the streets, quite literally, ACTing-UP against Ronald Reagan's refusal to fund treatments for people with AIDS or even to speak the name of the disease that had already taken tens of thousands of American lives by the time I was 22 and sending more than a few letters to studios, networks and publishers as well, letting them know just what it was they were doing and just what I thought about it. I tried to be civil, but honestly, why did so many serial killers have to be gay?

So I was a bit disappointed by the movie version of The Celluloid Closet, which didn't come out until many years later. It features lots of wonderful clips from films as far back as the experimental movies Thomas Edison made before movies became movies, but it included none of Vito Russo's passion or his outrage. The Celluloid Closet was meant to educate, but it was also meant to motivate. The book was supposed to make you mad enough to do something. The movie version simply entertained.

Now, almost 30 years after I read The Celluloid Closet, Michael Schiavi has written an entertaining and informative biography of Vito Russo, Celluloid Activist. You don't have to be a movie buff to gain from reading Mr. Schiavi's book. Vito Russo was an active participant in most of the major gay rights organizations beginning several years before the riots at the Stonewall Inn, through the early days of ACT-UP until his own death from AIDS in 1990. Celluloid Activist, by documenting the life of one man, documents the lives of a generation of activists who began demanding equality in a time when they could still be arrested for simply being who they were. Mr. Schiavi's book makes for interesting reading as a piece of history. It makes for interesting reading as a biography as well.

If Mr. Schiavi's book lacks the same fire Mr. Russo's book had, I believe part of that is due to the times we now live in. While there is still certainly cause for outrage, there is not nearly as much cause as there used to be. The struggle for gay and lesbian equality has become an unfinished success story. Mr. Russo did not live to see Hollywood blockbusters with gay characters like In and Out, or Brokeback Mountain or television shows like Will and Grace,k Angels in America, or Modern Family but we have. While big budget production about gay and lesbian people with actors who are openly gay and lesbian in are still rare, that day is probably coming very soon. Rick Santorum is not going to be a happy man in his old age.

Below is one of Thomas Edison's early experiments in motion pictures. This clip was featured in the movie version of The Celluloid Closet.

Sunday Salon: Can You Review a Book if You Skimmed Most of It?

2012-01-08T04:04:00.000-08:00

I'm reading this book that I kind of hate.

It's for my book club, and all I can say is that they owe me one. It's just awful. I'm about halfway through it:; I'll be skimming the rest.

My policy at Ready When You Are, C.B. is to only write reviews of books I've read cover to cover. If I don't finish a book, I don't review it. I also don't do posts about books I didn't finish, in general. I know many people do--I enjoy reading them, too--but I don't do them here, mainly to save myself the time. A few years ago, when blogging was taking up too much of my time (remember those days), I determined that instead of writing full reviews, I would just say what I wanted to say about books I finished reading, always trying to say something interesting, and move on.

Most bloggers would probably agree that it's not really fair to review a book you haven't finished reading, but what about skimming? What if a book is so over-written that by skimming a paragraph of so per page actually conveys 80% of the book anyway? What if you skim the book and end up with a whole lot of things you really just want to get off of your chest, mainly about how much you didn't like the book?

Should you go ahead and write a post, or just keep it to yourself?

Friday Picture Reading: That's Showbiz

2012-01-06T02:18:00.000-08:00

Woman reading backstage

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

2012-01-04T06:36:00.000-08:00

I found a box full of old paper back copies of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express just before winter break. Since I figured they might appeal to some of my seventh graders I offered the title as a book club choice.

"This is the classic story about a group of strangers on a train travelling through Europe," I told each of my classes. "One night one of the passengers is found murdered, stabbed to death. Luckily, detective Hercule Poirot is on the same train. Will he find the killer before the train arrives?"

I got some of the details wrong, but I also got their attention. Just over half of the book clubs (about 35 students) selected Murder on the Orient Express for the winter break reading. Since we would be writing essays about our books this time around--the last set of essays was not very good; we could use some more practice-- I decided I should probably reread the book myself. It's been many years since I last read one of Ms. Christie's classic who-dunnit's.

It was a lot of fun. The story is well known, by now--a train car full of passengers in the off season gets stuck in the snow when one of the passengers is discovered stabbed to death in his cabin. Hercule Poirot must discover which of the passengers killed the man. He investigates, interrogates, investigates some more, then sits down to discuss the clues he has collected with his companions, really with the readers. The solution is revealed. Justice is more or less served.

But I've no idea how we're going to write a paper about it. Usually book report essays consist of the student selecting one theme in the book and three scenes that illustrate the author's point regarding this theme. This is a useful formula that works with almost every piece of young adult fiction you can name. But I don't see it working with Murder on the Orient Express. The main thing with a response to literature essay is organizing it around a topic and selecting evidence to illustrate that topic. The problem students run into, and the one that torpedoed the last set of essays, is the temptation to simply write a long plot summery.

Sounds a bit like book blogging, no?

The main theme for the book is the conflict between justice and revenge. I've a problem with the author coming down so clearly on the side of revenge, but that's what she did so that's how we should write the papers. As an alternative, we may be able to write an essay describing what makes Hercule Poirot a good detective. He's got a great memory for details, he's methodical and detailed. He picks up on small things mentioned during interrogations. And, of course, he tends to select only cases with suspects willing to give complete confessions when even the slightest bit of evidence emerges.

Any way you look at it, it's not going to be an easy paper to write.

Tuesdays with Voltaire

2012-01-03T05:21:00.000-08:00

"All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

Voltaire

Voltaire was often in trouble with the French government over his satirical verse. He was once imprisoned in the Bastille accused of writing a satire later discovered to have been written by someone else.

Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison

2012-01-02T04:40:00.000-08:00

Today--on the very day that I write

this--I received a phone call from the

New York Times. They are taking an article

I mailed them three days ago. Subject: the

colonization of the Moon.

Opening to the introduction by

Isaac Asimov

First published in 1967, Dangerous Visions was editor Harlan Ellison's attempt to make the case for science fiction as a literary genre and to shake up the genre itself in order to push it towards something new and better. At the time Dangerous Visions was the largest collection of original science fiction short stories. It has become something of a legend in the 40 plus years since it was published. By insisting on all original work, no reprints of earlier material, Mr. Ellison hoped to provide a platform for ideas and stories that could not find a home in the periodicals of the day, visions of the future too dangerous for ordinary publications.

Reading the anthology some 40 years later most of the stories struck me as largely pedestrian, the kind of stuff one typically found in early science fiction magazines. They are all well-written; they are all entertaining, but only a handful struck me as dangerous or visionary. Some make contain very mild social critique. A few suggest there is no God. One creates a future society where incest is the norm. Most of them are material that would comfortably find a home on the Syfy channel today.

Samuel R. Delany provides the only truly dangerous vision in his story "Aye, and Gamorrah..." Mr. Delany imagines a future full of space travel that comes at a very high price. In order to survive the harsh conditions of space, "spacers" must be surgically altered to resist high levels of radiation including a process which renders them genderless. "Aye, and Gamorrah..." is the story of one such "spacer" on a visit to earth where he must face the advances of "frelks" unaltered humans who are sexually attracted to the genderless and passionless spacers. Readers of Mr. Delany know that he never shied away from discussion of sex and sexuality and the possible forms it might take in humanity's future. The rest of the stories in Dangerous Visions seem afraid of sex by comparison.

But the real reason to read Dangerous Visions in 2012 is the introductions Mr. Ellison wrote to each of the 33 stories, which are the only introductions I've really enjoyed reading. Gossipy, opinionated, intended to reveal the authors of each story, they succeed in creating a portrait of the editor who wrote them by creating portraits of the authors in the book. Many of the authors in Mr. Ellison's book did go on to do great work, but most of them are people I've never heard of before, in spite of Mr. Ellison's assurance that this was an author to watch. However, through his introductions, some of which are as long as the story that follows, Mr. Ellison brings each author to life as a character in an ensemble piece which is the world of science fiction circa mid-1960's. For that alone, Dangerous Visions is a useful and entertaining record.

Which is one reason why I found it such a shame that none of these visionary authors saw a future with a place for gay/lesbian people. References to LGBT people are limited to a few bits of casual homophobia both in the stories and in the introductions. I'm willing to cut people in history a little slack, but even in 1967 this was a backwards looking view. Pro-gay social movements were already visible in the major cities of America if not the countryside in the 1960's. Since so much of the publishing world at that time was centered in New York City, I find it difficult to accept that none of the writers in Mr. Ellison's book were aware of LGBT people. They're supposed to be visionaries. They're supposed to imagine the future. We would have to wait several more years for writers like Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K LeGuin, Octvia Butler to make room for gay and lesbian characters in science fiction. You can see a hint of his future in Mr. Delany's story, but that's the only one in Dangerous Visions that sees a future with anything other than fully heterosexual people in it.

Sunday Salon: Completely Fake Statistics Based on What I Read in 2011

2012-01-01T01:34:00.000-08:00

At the end of each year many people publish their stats-- records of the books they read divided by various categories such as books by women vs. books by men. I've always been very impressed by the stats I see published, in part because keeping such detailed records of what I read is beyond me. So last year, I started publishing a list of fictitious stats. They were a hit last, and fun to do, so I decided to do them again this year.

So here are my reading stats for 2011. The numbers do not always total 100% which shouldn't really matter since they are entirely made up anyway.

Books read in 2011 - around 90 to 100 total, maybe a few more. Define book.

Fiction 85%
Non-fiction 10%
Non-sense 5%

Books by Tea-Party sympathizers 18%
Books by Occupy Wall Street sympathizers 34%
Books by fence sitters unable or unwilling to take a stand one way or another 51%

Books by the 99% 99%
Books by the 1% 1%

Books that put me to sleep 17%
Books that kept me up at night 23%
Books that were neither one way or the other 63%

Books written by the author listed 87%
Books written by ghost writers 8%
Books written by zombie writers 4%

Books written by authors who are team Jacob 23%
Books written by authors who are team Edward 18%
Books written by authors who are team Buffy 61%

Books influenced by Harry Potter 19%
Books that influenced Harry Potter 23%
Books that have no connection to Harry Potter 58%

Books Oprah would like 32%
Books Oprah would not like 68%

Books that won awards 12%
Books that should have won awards 28%
Books that should not have won awards 65%

Books by authors who never wrote a better book. 32%
Books by authors who wrote better books. 68%

Books I want to keep 13%
Books I'd give to people I like 63%
Books I'd give to people I don't like 17%

Books I read on the sofa 28%
Books I read in a chair 32%
Book I read on the stair 1%
Books I read while in bed 23%
Books I read while on my head 0%
Books I read on the train 8%
Books I read in the rain 7%
Books I read on the toilet 5%

Books that would make good compost 82%
Books that would not make good compost 18%

This year, though the books I read were more sympathetic to Occupy Wall Street than they were to the Tea Party, one in 20 were non-sense. Still, over 90% were sensical, which is an A range grade. I read very few books by the 1%, but I submit to you that the one percent writes very few books. This is probably because publishing is simply not a very good way to make money these days. There are still profits to be made in publishing, but not like there used to be. Both ghost writers and zombie writers are down a bit this year when compared to last, which may be tied to the overall increase in team Buffy writers, up 16% from last year. I suspect a growing number of authors have grown tired of the supernatural since the final Harry Potter and what we hope are the final Twilight books came out.

Oprah and I should probably not be in the same book club. I just don't think it would work out. Most of the books I read did not or should not have won awards which makes sense when you look at the high number of books I read by authors who wrote better books than the books I read by them and the low number of books I read that I would keep. I did I lot of trash reading this year, hence the high percentage of compostable books (82%) this year. Finally, a majority of the books I read this year were read in an upright sitting position, be it on the sofa, on a chair, on the stair, on a train, in the rain or on the toilet.

Where was I while reading read compostable books?.....not going to go there.

Dakota's Favorites: My Dog Tulip by J.R. Ackerley

2011-12-30T08:34:00.000-08:00

Two years ago, when I was walking my dog in Fulham Palace Gardens, we overtook an old woman who was wheeling a baby carriage. She was chatting cheerfully to the occupant of it, and it was therefore, perhaps, not unreasonable of me to be surprised to find, when I caught up with her, that this too was a dog.

My Dog Tulip by J.R. Ackerley is a love story. It's also a dog story, but it's not like other dog stories, nor is it like other love stories. Mr. Ackerley, who came to own Tulip, an Alsatian Shepard late in life, found in her an emotional bond deeper than anything he ever had with friend, family or lover. She was instantly and completely devoted to him; he soon became devoted to her. Mr. Ackerley's friends have said that the two were inseparable, much to everyone's consternation. Tulip was a difficult dog, but he insisted on taking her everywhere he went. Soon, his friends stopped inviting him round. Then they stopped coming round. But Mr. Ackerley never wavered in his devotion to Tulip, nor did she in her devotion to him.

My Dog Tulip, his memoir of their time together, is about love but it is not romantic. I have never read a more unvarnished account of what it's like to own a dog. No one tells you this, I can assure you no one told me, but once you have a dog you will soon become obsessed with "liquids and solids." In fact, Mr. Ackerley gives his second chapter this exact title. He lives in a London flat, so finding a suitable place for Tulip to do her business without disturbing the sidewalks and doorways of local shops is not exactly easy. Even his offers to scrub down the sidewalk afterwards do not quell the anger of some store owners. Because dogs cannot talk, how well a dog urinates and the condition of its bowel movements are two of the few ways a dog owner can tell how healthy their dog is, but Mr. Ackerley's is the only dog story I've ever read that goes into this topic. He goes into detail and while the details may make the reader squirm they bring laughter in their wake. They are also very true to life; I can assure you.

Most of My Dog Tulip is about Mr. Ackerley's attempts to successfully breed Tulip. He wants her to have a full life which includes the experience of motherhood, in Mr. Ackerley's opinion. (The events in the book cover several years in late 1940's well before the time when having your dog fixed became more the accepted norm.) Again, Mr. Ackerley is unromantically frank in his portrayal of how difficult it was to find a mate for Tulip and what it was like for her to go through heat. He tries many times to find a suitable male Alsatian Shepard for her, but she rejects them all only to end up with a neighborhood mutt. Keeping a litter of pups in a small London flat is not easy, nor is finding them all homes when the time comes, so Mr. Ackerley does not repeat the experience.

What I like most about My Dog Tulip is that throughout the memoir Tulip remains a dog. At no point does Mr. Ackerely anthropomorphize her. She never rescues anyone from a burning building or does something so wonderful that it brings a broken family back together. Her pups are not a troop of Keystone Cop comedians; they are difficult and demanding. Tulip never thinks human thoughts; her affection is never compared to that of a child or a lover. She acts like a dog and Mr. Ackerley deals with her as a dog. He is not a man who would ever put a dog in a baby carriage. Tulip is devoted to Mr. Ackerley as only a dog can be. It's not at all like a human to human bond. It's a human to dog bond. It's different. And it's nice to see it celebrated for the wonderful thing it is in My Dog Tulip.

Dakota's Favorites are selections from the archive at Ready When You Are, C.B. Since this review ran Dakota and I have seen the movie version which we can both highly recommend. It's both entertaining and faithful to the book. Here's the trailer.

Cop Killer by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

2011-12-29T04:57:00.000-08:00

She reached the bus stop well ahead

of the bus, which would not be along

for half an hour yet.

Opening to Cop Killer

by Mah Sjowall and Per Wahloo

translated from the Swedish by

Thomas Teal

Who is the cop killer?

Cop Killer, the ninth volume in The Story of A Crime series, starts with an investigation that takes police detective Martin Beck out of Stockholm to a small town on Sweden's southernmost coast. There he befriends the head of the local police department, a bachelor who lives above the police station. Over the days and then weeks he spends investigating the disappearence of a local woman, Beck comes to see that the detectives who choose to live and work far removed from Stockholm are probably better than the detectives in the city. Not what he expected to find at all.

Midway through the search for the missing woman a pair of small time hoods, stopped for a traffic violation, open fire on three police officers. One police officer dies several days later, due to a wasp sting incurred when he fell in a nearby ditch trying to avoid the gun fire. The other officers survive the shooting. One of the hoods is killed.

Afterwards, the media circus that had been following Beck's case, moves on to the search for the cop killer, the higher brass in the national police force having made sure the story of the wasp sting did not get out to the press. The Sweden's press follows the bungled search for a petty criminal who never fired a gun in his life, while the reader follows the story of Beck's professional police work as he continues to search for the woman's killer.

At this point in the series, Sjowall and Wahloo are openly dealing with political and social issues in their books. They take care to keep the events of the story uppermost in the reader's mind, but they are willing to pause the twin searches for a page or two when needed to complete their critique of Swedish society. The story itself now serves the project, too. The press who hound an innocent man accused of the woman's murder, for example, an "innocent" man was recently released from prison in spite of murdering the girl in the first book Roseanna. Sjowall and Wahloo are thus able to critique a justice system that let a killer walk free after serving only a few years in prison while simulaneously attacking a press corp and a police force that rushes to judgement without any evidence, even that of a corpse.

The National Police Force has borne the brunt of Sjowall and Wahloo's critique. With its incompetant, politically appointed upper brass who has militaized the police force giving him a small army to arrest a petty thief and the cops who confronted speeding drivers guns drawn in the first place, I'm starting to wonder what the crime is in The Story of a Crime. Why isn't it The Story of Crime? Why "A" crime? The crime seems to be the nature of the Swedish police force once it was nationalized. The real criminal in Sjowall and Wahloo's series appears to be the Swedish government charged with protecting its citizens and enforcing the law. The government commits a crime on its police force who then become part of the crime committed on the people of Sweden.

This is not a comforting thought in America circa 2011.

Towards the end of the novel, Beck complains to a compatriot that the helicopters and heavy weaponry the police for now owns will have to be used to justify their purchase, even though they are not needed to arrest a single, unarmed, frightened young man. Sjowall and Wahloo drive this point home when the failed show of force is followed by a pair of old-time professional police officers who simply find and arrest the young man.

Coming soon to a demonstration near you.

Meantime, some 40 years after Cop Killer was published, the Department of Homeland Security is sending tanks like the one pictured here to police departments across the United States at a time when violent crime rates are at record lows throughout the country.

It's this intermixing of classic police procedural and social critique that helped make The Story of a Crime the trendsetting success the books became. It's also what makes them unsettling reading today.

The Best and Worst of Shakespeare

2011-12-28T09:12:00.000-08:00

Inside Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore, Paris

Alyce at At Home With Books asked me to write a guest post for her weekly best/worst feature. (You can read my selections for the best and worst of Shakespeare here.) Each week, Alyce asks a guest blogger to write about a favorite author of theirs focusing on two works, one the author's best and the other the author's worst.

To see my choices for the best and the worst plays by William Shakespeare go to At Home With Books today.

Tuesdays with Voltaire

2011-12-27T05:11:00.000-08:00

"A witty saying proves nothing."

Voltaire

Voltaire was the pen name of François-Marie Arouet ( 1694 – 1778) He was a French Enlightenment writer known for his wit and advocacy of civil liberties. His most well known work, Candide, is one of the funniest books I've ever read.

Ready When You Are, C.B.

Dakota's Favorites: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaimon

The Terrorists by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

Tuesdays with Voltaire

Sunday Salon: I'm sick of reading!

Friday Picture Reading - Marlon Brando

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Tuesdays with Voltaire

The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci

TSS: Would You Review a Book You Skimmed? Part II

Dakota's Favorites: Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby

What Your Books Are Doing When You're Not Looking.

Walkabout by James Vance Marshall

Tuesdays with Voltaire

Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo by Michael Schiavi

Sunday Salon: Can You Review a Book if You Skimmed Most of It?

Friday Picture Reading: That's Showbiz

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Tuesdays with Voltaire

Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison

Sunday Salon: Completely Fake Statistics Based on What I Read in 2011

Top Ten Favorites Reads of 2011

Dakota's Favorites: My Dog Tulip by J.R. Ackerley

Cop Killer by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

The Best and Worst of Shakespeare

Tuesdays with Voltaire