The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Click picture for link to NPR interview...
I just finished this book (bought at Kepler's last night) which won one of the big non-fiction book awards, and like Terry Gross on "Fresh Air" said, "I hated to read it and I loved to read it" at the same time.

Joan's husband died suddenly in Dec 2003 and this is her story of how she got through the year after that. I actually ended up identifying even more with her experiences of her daughter being sick, because it reminded me of when my mom was sick.

Although this really pushed a lot of emotional buttons for me, it was reassuring because I always thought magical thinking in terms of thinking "If I would have done something different or been different, it would have saved her" is something that mainly children experience (it always strikes me as sounding so wacky) ... but here is Joan Didion having the same thoughts.

I don't even remember consciously thinking that I could actually have done anything to save her (my mom, not Joan Didion :-)
as a 12 year old (when she got sick) and 16 year old (when she died), but my therapist says this is the root of much of this self-doubt, self-punishing that we do... we would be good people and deserving of (love, good jobs, etc) if we had been able to save this person that we loved.

So it was very reassuring that Joan Didion as a mature person was also going through things that happened before her husband died and trying to find ways that she screwed up by letting it happen.
And things like wanting to keep his shoes because unconsciously she wants him to be able to return.

Anyway, it is a very good book and it may bring up some stuff for you also but in the end I am very glad I read it. (And it's fairly short.)

Tikal!

This is not a book but a new game we finally got since it has been reprinted. It's basically an "Adventure through Mayan ruins" game, like Indiana Jones. We have not played it yet, although I looked through the game last night and read the rule book, so yes, I guess it does kind of count as a "What is SunPath Reading" entry.

It has the drama of "exploring" a jungle by each player drawing and placing a tile on the board, which initially is mostly just deep foliage, except for 4 explored areas - 2 temples, a base camp, and I think the 4th is a blank jungle.
After placing the tile, they "have 10 action points to explore Tikal" - which means that they can spend these points in a variety of ways - placing workers or leaders, establishing base camps, digging up treasure (treasure tiles have an area where the treasure tokens are placed - players who have a worker in that tile can grab treasure and get points fo it), moving workers or leaders, and "uncovering" temples. The uncovering is really interesting as physically you are actually placing numbered tiles and "building" the temple higher (kind of like in its cousin game Torres) but the concept is that you are "uncovering" them.
As the point totals get bigger the tiles are smaller so in the end the temple actually looks like a temple with some structure.
The game box is also nicely designed - each of the 3 sizes of temple tiles has its own place, as do the treasure tiles, etc.
The scoring rounds happen when a player draws a volcano - the hexes to explore are sorted by letter appearing on their backs, so the volcanoes I think appear in B, D, and F - the letters go to G, so there are 3 scoring rounds plus the final scoring round at the end.
So I am looking forward to playing this if Dave is not too tired after coming back from the As game, and this is certainly distracting me from working....

Locked Rooms by Laurie R. King

So I was trying to upload the book cover using BloggerBot but it didn't seem to be working, maybe because they now have Blogger Images.

Anyway, I loved this book - I got it as an advance reader's copy courtesy of Dave and Kepler's -- it's the 8th book in a series about Mary Russell, a strong woman who's also a detective in her own right, but who happens to be married to Sherlock Holmes.
This story takes place in San Francisco, where Holmes and Russell go to settle the estate of Russell's parents, who died in a tragic accident which Russell blames herself for.
But of course a mystery unfolds and not everything is as it seems.

I was initially scoffing at this since King doesn't have to work very hard to establish Holmes' character - she gets a free partner for Russell, whom everyone is already familiar with.
However, I changed my tune when I got to the part of the book that is third person in Holmes' voice. Most of the book is first person from Russell, but it is really fun to read something that is coming from Holmes' perspective, as even in the original tales we had it filtered through the eyes of Watson. (and this story is told while Conan Doyle is publishing Watson's stories - apparently Conan Doyle is cast more as Watson's literary agent than as the actual author).

I read on Amazon that this is the first book with a part told from Holmes' POV - the previous 7 books in the series were all from Mary's standpoint.
Very fun also that it is set in San Francisco, just 18 years after the big 1906 earthquake, and people are "discovering" things like crossword puzzles, etc. A lot of entertaining details from the time period. Although one of the Amazon readers pointed out that a big plot point hinges on Mary's father planning to enlist in the army in 1914 when the US was not even in WWI yet. Details...Details...

Gene Wilder's Kiss Me like a stranger, book cover. 

Kiss Me Like a Stranger, by Gene Wilder (audio CD)

This is an awesome book and very reassuring to listen to while working.
Gene Wilder's voice is very calming and I find it inspiring to think of everything he has been through - in addition to Gilda Radner's death, his mother also died when he was young, and he also fought through non-Hodgkin's lymphoma with the use of stem cell therapy.

Ringworld's Children by Larry Niven

Back to the blog now - after much time spent working and alternately playing City of Heroes when not working.

I got this book from the Bookcrossing Crossing Zone at Global Blends Coffee here in Mt. View, along with Alice Walker's "The Temple of My Familiar."

This one wasn't yet registered as a BookCrossing book, so I registered it myself and dropped it back again at Global Blends yesterday.

This is the fourth book in the Ringworld science fiction series, and I have never read any of the other Ringworld stories, so this was a bit overwhelming at first.

Luckily a glossary and cast of characters is presented at the beginning of the book, so I could go back and look at that.

It was really fun to be introduced to a completely new world -- also the plot and characters are well-done too. The Ringworld is a huge ring, constructed by a group of beings (not very clear who they were) but it is orbiting a sun and the inner edges are inhabited, with boxes placed at intervals to provide day and night.

There's an interesting concept on the Ringworld that there is a huge variety of hominid species -- because the creators got rid of all dangerous creatures that can threaten "mankind" - the hominid species have branched out into the ecological slots left empty. For example there are fierce cat-like people called Kzinti, and people who are more prehensile, called "Hanging People" and so on.
The other concept that was very interesting here was the 3 stages of life -- human species are actually 3 stages - child, "breeder" (the adult stage we're familiar with) and "protector" which is a form that is designed to protect their own species, especially their own children and grandchildren - sexless and lives forever or at least a long time.

Good Faith by Jane Smiley

I read this during the March hiatus from the blog - it was from the library.
Jane Smiley is really good at depicting realistic and complicated families, especially with an idiosyncratic patriarch. Gordon, one of the supporting characters in this book and father of the woman that the prototagonist is having an affair with, is one of these interesting patriarchs.
He's a more benevolent one than the father in "A Thousand Acres" though.
There's a lot of real estate wheeling and dealing in this book, which at times can get a little bit tedious. Maybe I don't connect to it as well as I think I connect to the farming in A thousand acres, even though I haven't lived on a farm or ever bought any real estate.
The book seemed to end pretty abruptly although it was long and dragged a bit in the middle. It was enjoyable but not sure I would re-read it...

The Tale of Urso Brunov: Little Father of All Bears

Dave and I fell in love with this book several months ago when we saw it in a little store in Oakland. Apart from the confident story, it also has an animation on the upper right corners of the pages of Urso trudging along!

Urso Brunov is "The Little Father of All Bears" and sets off on a rescue mission when four of his bears are found missing when he wakes up from his hibernation a little early.

At every point he faces up to foes much larger than himself, and states to all who might not believe his might, "Believe me, for I am Urso Brunov!"

After buying the book, I read it out loud to Dave (and to Kevin when he got home) as Dave was cooking in the kitchen. It was really fun to do the voices, and by the end I was really getting into the "Believe me...!" refrain.

Urso fighting a large goat by bending its horns backwards!

Urso in a rare moment of low control!

This all inspired me to create a very beloved City of Heroes character, named Urso Brunov also.
His picture is below:

Birthday at The Tech

I went to the Tech Museum in San Jose today to see my friend Michelle and tour her exhibit she designed - NetPla@net.
This picture is linked to a webpage I made while I was at the Tech - visitors log into the exhibits with bar code arm bands and so each person can make a webpage with pictures of them using the exhibits, etc. Michelle's cat is on one of the default page backgrounds for the website creator program.
This picture is me winning a virtual arm wrestling - I arm wrestled with someone at the Tech, but I could have arm wrestled against people at museums across the country.
I also had fun playing with the Virtual World, which is the kid version of Linden Labs' Second Life online world for adults.
Kids can sit around a circular table, each with their own terminal, playing the game. They didn't seem to be using the "chat" feature much, instead just yelling out "where are you!" and "Look, someone's swimming!"
One kid figured out how to "fight" by throwing objects at other people.
This was my character:

There is a catapult in the game which was pretty fun - a pig is nearby to catapult and you can also catapult yourself or other people. Kari may enjoy this virtual verson of the Monty Python catapult I gave her for Christmas.

Solveig's Polysyllabic Spree - March

This is the running Books Bought/Books Read log in homage of Nick Hornby - see posts in February 2005 on his book "The Polysyllabic Spree" where he did the same thing.

March 2005
Books Bought/Checked out from Library

• Good Faith, by Jane Smiley. Checked out from Library, 3/2.
  
• White Doves at Morning by James Lee Burke - checked out 3/2
  
• Etymology for Everyone by Kati's former prof, Anatoly Liberman
  
• Dark Fields of the Republic book and tape - by Adrienne Rich. I can't find my tape of this so I am ordering a new copy.
  
• an anthology book/CD of Adrienne Rich reading her poetry (forget the title)
  

Books Read:

• The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (omigosh, good book to kick off the Month of March. Finished 3/1/05.)
  
• John Dunning's latest Bookman novel - in progress
  
• Get a Financial Life by Beth Kobliner - I read bits of this at various times along with Smart Women Finish Rich by David Bach for inspiration.
  

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and Victor/Victoria

This is a time travel story but it is really primarily a love story. Henry De Tamble is a man with "Chrono-Displacement" disorder - causing him to suddenly shift into a different time period of his life, appearing naked because he can't take any objects between times with him.
Claire Abshire is the woman who eventually becomes his wife - although they first meet (for Claire) when she is 6 or 7 and he is in his thirties. For Henry, they first meet when he is 28 and she is 20 (in real time) - he is flabbergasted to meet this beautiful woman who knows so much about him, but whom he has never met (yet...)

The story is told in 1st person switching off between Claire and Henry which makes it very personal, and it can get pretty mind-boggling as each chapter is in a new time frame, but Niffenegger really ties it together with the romance between the two of them, pushing you further and further into the story.

Speaking of awesome marriages, I also watched the DVD commentary for Victor/Victoria by Blake Edwards and Julie Andrews who are married to each other and apparently had a great time while making the movie too. I know the movie so well that I could almost say the lines myself while listening to the commentary, and it was quite fun to laugh and hear Julie chuckling at the same time.
They talk of various bits of knowledge that Blake took advantage of while directing Julie, including her true fear of cockroaches and her susceptibility to crying during Madame Butterfly (there's a scene at the opera when she is just _weeping_ and they say in the commentary that Blake just set her in front of that opera and that was it.)
Anyway, it's such a relaxing and positive movie.

The City Not Long After by Pat Murphy

The City Not Long After: Buy on Amazon

This book cover is from the Blackstone audiobook and I like it even more than the cover on the library copy that I've now checked out and read at least twice. I also like the new cover on the paperback version also.

This is one of my favorite books - I first read it in 2002 and just re-read it again since I am on a "Brazen Hussies" kick along with the Lisa Goldstein books.
I used the main character's name - "Jax" as my name on the Bookcrossing website.

There's something about this book that I really identify with - hmm - a motherless girl comes to San Francisco as a teenager, not having ever been there before, meets many very interesting people, finds an identity for herself, and falls in love with the area and the people.
Luckily for us all in the Bay Area, the book's events have not yet come true completely -- in the book San Francisco has been the victim of a pandemic disease, around the time Jax was born, leaving very few people who were immune. The peace-loving city now faces an invasion by an army from the Sacramento/Modesto/Fresno area (General Miles, known to the citizens as "Fourstar") and strikes back in its own brand of Gandhi-esque guerrila "fighting."

And on top of all that, the Golden Gate Bridge is being painted blue by the city's individualist artisans! What more can you ask for in a book?

Plus, this should be read along with Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City for an entertaining and varied intro to SF for travelers/new residents.
Also see Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, mentioned earlier in the February blogs, for more post-apocalyptic "fun."

Travelers in Magic by Lisa Goldstein

This is really an irresistible collection of fantasy stories by Lisa Goldstein - they do have a central theme of travel, both in time and space, but all have a separate hook.
Two stories deal with the land of Azaz, whose citizens get their news from packs of tarot-like cards, and several more touch on the Halocaust in various ways.

I gobbled this up really fast and as usually happens with short story collections, they are starting to jumble up in my mind (I'm writing this on Wed, March 2 even though I finished the book on Sunday...)

Dark Cities Underground by Lisa Goldstein

This is probably one of the weirdest books I've read recently but very entertaining.

What if most of the world's children's stories, which were "allegedly" told to children by the authors (J.M. Barrie and the Davies boys for Peter Pan, Kenneth Grahame's son for The Wind in the Willows, and so on) were actually accounts of true things that had happened to the _children_ in a Nether Land/Never Land world, and the adult is writing down these stories?

That's one of the central points in this book but along the way Goldstein also throws in quite a lot of riding on BART and the London Underground, Egyptian mythology, and history of the cemeteries in Colma (not to mention origins for the word "Colma").

I really liked the book on a whole but it did feel not fully fleshed out in some way. Perhaps part of it is the large cast of characters - It felt like some of the supporting characters were there to fulfill a mythic place but they were not really fleshed out as real people.

Good movie companions to this book would be Finding Neverland and Shadowlands.

Talking Back: What Students Know About Teaching, by the students of Leadership High School with 826 Valencia

(not sure where you can buy this online yet but I am linking to the 826 Valencia store site.)
The Leadership High School class of 2004 had an assignment from their English teacher, Kathleen Anne Large, to write an essay that answers the prompt: "If you were to give a talk to teachers about education in the United States, what would you say?"

The students presented their talks to an enthusiastic audience of one, their teacher. Wanting to have their views heard by a much larger group, Large then contacted 826 Valencia, which provides writing tutors from the community (which may soon include me) to help kids with their writing and other school assignments.
826 Valencia not only provided tutors to bring these essays to publication quality, they also worked with the class's editorial board to publish the essays into this book.

This really should be read by everyone dealing in any way with high school and middle school education: teachers, parents, principals, other students, and so on.

I've always been fascinated by teachers in general but my feeling is that as a "starring" classroom teacher, I could not hold the attention of the room as some of my teachers have (Mrs. Langemo, Mr. Watterson, Mrs. Opdahl, Mr. Knodle, Mr. Beauchman, Mr. Goffe, Mr. & Mrs. Hieb for example) - so if i am going to be a pretty mediocre teacher - better to spend time working one-on-one instead.

One of my favorite essays is "Real Lessons" by Krystal Maxwell. Her writing is crisp and she has a very individual voice. I could see her with a monthly column. Perhaps in "The Believer" alongside the Nick Hornby column. Here is an example:

"Teachers might believe that class time belongs to them and not us, but I beg to differ. Where I'm educated, cutting class is easy and people exercise it like a guilty party pleading the fifth. Prepare a lesson for every class period that's worthwhile to my classmates and me because counting the dots on the ceiling is getting pretty old."

Also her closing, direct to teachers:

"You are as much my hope for the future as I'm your social security payouts. We're not here to test your patience and fight you; we only do that when we're bored. Take care of us. Nurture that one-tenth of our minds you're able to reach without forcing it into overdrive, and I promise you you won't regret it."

This book also made me think of the poem "Inscriptions" by Adrienne Rich (from Dark Fields of the Republic). This poem has 6 parts and is probably my most frequently quoted poem ever as I keep using pieces of it in speeches and so on:
This is a partial quote:

When does a life end toward freedom? grasp its direction?
How do you know you're not circling in pale dreams, nostalgia,
stagnation
but entering that deep current malachite, colorado
requiring all your strength whenever found
your patience and your labor
desire pitted against desire's inversion
all your mind's fortitude?
Maybe through a teacher: someone with facts, with numbers
with poetry
who wrote on the board: IN EVERY GENERATION ACTION FREES OUR DREAMS.
Maybe a student: one mind unfurling like a redblack peony
quenched into percentile, dropout, stubbed out bud
--- Your journals Patricia: Douglas your poems: but the repetitive blows
on spines whose hope you were, on yours
to see that quenching and decide.
--- And now she turns her face brightly on the new morning in the new classroom
new in her beauty her skin her lashes her lovely body:
Race, class . . . all that . . . but isn't all that just history?
Aren't people bored with it all?

Solveig's Polysyllabic Spree - February

In Homage to Nick Hornby's columns:

February 2005 (Feb. 22 on)
Books Bought:

• The Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby. Bought on Feb. 22 at 826 Valencia Pirate Store. Signed up for Children's Book Writing and Publishing Seminar for Kari and I.
  
• Talking Back: What Students Know by the students of Leadership High School in conjunction with 826 Valencia. Also purchased at the Pirate Store. I then walked down Valencia looking for a bathroom and for The Time Traveller's Wife. I stopped at Modern Times Bookstore, found a bathroom and also found The Time Traveller's Wife, but it was a new copy.
  
• Continued on down the street and stopped at DogEared Books where I found The Time Traveller's Wife used. Blog to come when I read it. I was also looking for Pat Murphy and Lisa Goldstein but did not find them even in the fantasy bookstore that is also on this street.
  
• How to Make Your Child a Reader for Life by Paul Kropp. I also bought this at DogEared Books as research for teaching literacy to families. But then the next day I missed the tutoring orientation for the literacy program because my job interview went too long! When buying the DogEared books, I realized that I had left the other 2 books in the bathroom at Modern Times, so I went back up and got them on the way back to the car.
  
• E-Learning Book by Michael Allen - I don't remember the exact name of this book but I ordered it because I was going to apply for a job at Allen Interactions (the company founded by Michael Allen). It looks good but I haven't applied for the job yet so the book may be less practically useful than I thought.
  
• The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy. Ended up checking this out from the library to reread as I could not find it used on Valencia
  
• Dark Cities Underground and Travellers in Magic by Lisa Goldstein - also checked out from the library with the Murphy book on Thursday. I started reading Dark Cities sitting on the floor in the library stacks because I was so curious about how in the world she is going to blend children's stories, BART, etc. It is really cool - she also has Egyptian deities in the book as well.
  
• The Sign of the Book by John Dunning - I found a signed copy of this at "A Clean, Well Lighted Place for Books" while attending the SARK reading Friday 2/25, there. Dave and I really like the Bookman series but neither of us knew this one had been published. So it was a good surprise for Dave. I also bought another copy of SARK's Creative Dreams book to serve as a present for someone else.
  

Books Read:

• Nick Hornby's Polysyllabic Spree
  
• Talking Back I just finished on 2/25 and about to blog it...
  
• New Yorker - I have a free subscription from KQED membership and have been reading it religiously along with the Newsweek free subscription.
  
• Library books get priority so the Goldstein books may be next. I still need to find Moominsummer madness and return to library... sigh...
  
• Dark Cities Underground by Lisa Goldstein - 2/26
  
• Travelers in Magic by Lisa Goldstein - 2/27
  
• The City Not Long After by Lisa Goldstein - 2/28
  

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

I love reading Nick Hornby's work (High Fidelity, About a Boy, How to Be Good) and in this book I get to read about what _he's_ reading.

This is a collection of columns from The Believer magazine: "A Hilarious and True Account of One Man's Struggle with the Monthly Tide of the Books he's Bought and the Books He's Been Meaning To Read."

It's like his book/CD package: "Songbook" in that you get to peek into his reading appetite and see where it goes. I especially like looking in the "Books Bought" column for one month and then looking to see if he ever actually read that book later on. He did buy a couple books that I also have, most of which he didn't yet get to!

"I'm beginning to see that our appetite for books is the same as our appetite for food, that our brain tells us when we need the literary equivalent of salads or chocolate, or meat and potatoes."

Hornby also said "I hate Amazon reviewers, even the nice ones..." so I was going to go post a review on Amazon that just says something like "Hornby hates Amazon reviewers so I'm not going to review this book. But I loved it."

Seeing that there are already at least 12 Amazon reviews and at least one of them alluded to the "hate reviewers" comment - I kept quiet.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

This book was recommended by Madeleine L'Engle in her book on writing mentioned below. As with the Robertson Davies books I could not help trying it out and it was very good.

Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, in a hospital bed recuperating from a broken leg, is getting very bored until one of his friends brings in a collection of portraits for him to look at and "profile." One of the portraits is of Richard III, the king widely thought to have had his young nephews murdered to ensure his succession.
But the detective, who's always thought himself a good judge of faces, sees not villainy, but pain, in the king's face. This triggers a research crusade/"investigation" in which he digs into the historical information, (what there is of it) and tries to find out whether or not there is any proof that Richard did murder the young Princes in the Tower.

The detective's work is aided in this by a young American researcher, who's followed his actress/girlfriend to England under cover of a less exciting research project.

The plot is carried along by the researcher's frequent visits with new developments as he ferrets out facts in this ancient "case."
Madeleine L'Engle said that when this book was written in 1951 it set off several new protests for the innocence and character of Richard III.

The title apparently comes from an proverb on the title page: "Truth is the daughter of time."

This would be an interesting book to read along with watching the movie "Wag the Dog" and/or various articles written about current and past political Adminstrations and ongoing attempts to recolor actual events going on today. This book talks about a lot of the propaganda/misinformation that the Tudors either spread around or else failed to correct during the period after Richard III's death and the beginning of Henry VII's rule.
I'm reading an article in The New Yorker (the large anniversary issue) about the practice of "outsourcing torture" - it lists several examples of US officials sending those suspected of terrorism to 3rd countries (not their own) that widely practice torture during interrogations.
It's interesting that these occurences aren't really widely known by the public either - I wonder whether or not they will be referenced in future school history books?

Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman

I'm not sure if I'm going to actually re-read this today or not but I wanted to include it to mark the fact that today is my mother's birthday. She was born on February 20, 1948 and would have been 57 today.
She died in April 1990 at 42, when I was 16. I feel very close to the author of this book because although she is older than me, her mother also died when Hope was 16.

I'm in a Motherless Daughters meetup group which is meeting today, coincidentally. I'm thinking of bringing a picture of my mom for the group, as I have been talking about that for awhile.

WonderCon, William Stout, Dragons, and Dinosaurs

Yesterday Dave and I went to WonderCon and saw William Stout, among many others, including Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, and Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca in "Star Wars".)
Stout illustrated the book Dinosaurs which I have from its early edition and now is rereleased as The New Dinosaurs. I could have bought a signed edition of this book for $100 at the con but since both Dave and I are unemployed, I instead had Stout sign the free "Dragons" poster above, and I bought a copy of his 2nd Dinosaur sketchbook (below).
The Dragons poster is to promote the Animal Planet series coming out on March 20 which will have CGI representations of dragons and research on the question of whether or not dragons (as pictured in world story and mythology) actually existed. Check out the link on the poster graphic above. The Animal Planet website is quite awesome and has a lot of footage from the show.

Here's Stout's Dinosaur sketchbook #2 which I bought for $15. Right after I bought this, a guy came up behind me and asked "Do I need to pay money to get your autograph?"
Stout replied, "No..." but unspoken was perhaps the thought "No, but I wish you would _want_ to buy something just because you admire my work enough to ask for an autograph."
Dave got a lot of autographs yesterday and of course we couldn't buy something from everyone but I think he tried to at least buy a couple sketches, especially from people that he admired. After I had bought the book and had Stout sign my poster, Dave arrived separately (when we were trying to meet up again after separating for awhile) and Stout also signed Dave's historic "Daily Bugle" notebook - he did another short dinosaur sketch in the book but it was one of the most detailed that anyone had done previously.

The Dinosaur sketchbook is quite awesome - it has several sketches relating to the Disney Dinosaur movie. The most interesting is to read Stout's notes in the margins about all the details of the dinosaurs he's drawing - for example, he lists the various points of difference between a female dinosaur and a male dinosaur in one drawing of a female.

Other WonderCon stuff:

(Dave also has autographs of "Jay and Silent Bob" aka Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes in the book of record, as well as Sergio Aragones, Joss Whedon, and many others). He caught Kevin (above) and Jason at the escalator as they were trying to go somewhere but had been mobbed by fans.
During Kevin's talk, he had said "I wish I could hear from more people who are just moderate fans and aren't afraid to say so" in response to one of the many questioners saying "I'm a huge fan..."
So when getting his autograph, Dave said "I'm a moderate fan..." and Kevin retorted, "Then you're certainly wasting a lot of time here then, aren't you?"

We did not get Christian Bale, star of Batman Begins and previously adored by my sister Kati. He was at the show to promote the movie and in the midst of a huge room full of people waiting to see the Batman preview, I felt unable to spend the time to tell him as directed by Kati and Julie, "There are two women in Minneapolis who are still big fans of your performance in Newsies!"

World of Wonders by Robertson Davies

Finally in this 3rd novel of the Deptford Trilogy we find the answers to the questions:
Who killed Boy Staunton?
How in the world did Magnus Eisengrim and Liesl ever meet and form such a unique relationship?

And in addition we learn more about the history of how Paul Deptford, the boy with the mad mother who was kidnapped at age ten by an evil carnie illusionist, becomes the famous Magnus Eisengrim.

I am now actually posting these blogs right after finishing the book in question!

Working Identity by Herminia Ibarra

I gave a speech for Toastmasters about my own layoff and how helpful this book was for me.
The subtitle is
Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career.

The basic principle is that adults are more likely to act their way into a new way of thinking, than to think their way into a new way of acting.
Meaning, that the idea that we all need to sit around and carefully research out what we are going to do next in our lives/careers usually doesn't work very well, because we actually need to keep testing these hypotheses to see if what we're thinking about is really what it seems to be and what we might want.

I was happy to read this book also because I have already been trying to do this, although not that successfully yet in terms of actually starting something new.
The three steps she lists in this book for this iterative wash, rinse, repeat process are:
1. Do new things -- for me, I'm getting trained as a volunteer literacy tutor. I am going to apply for an internship at a literary agency, and I've started up my website again and started this blog to bring out more of my creative sides. Perhaps also this will go into making radio shows, perhaps by working on Philip's show idea.
2. Make new connections. This is partly to be able to try out these "new selves" in new communities where you aren't only known for what your old self does. Also the book pointed out that most job connections happen on the "edges" of your network. It's not the person that you know directly, it's the person they know, or the person their friends know, who is often most helpful in getting you useful contacts in a new field. I'm not necessarily doing this very well yet but I am reconnecting with the current network and trying to meet more people as part of Toastmasters and the tutoring links also.
3. Retell and re-incorporate the findings into your personal story. This is giving you a chance to again test out these hypotheses and make the abstract idea of what you want to be closer to the reality, by incorporating these learnings into your personal story about yourself.

I'm not sure how well these points got across in my speech which I had not properly prepared for, but they are very useful and the book is very inspiring to anyone who is looking to make a change.

Fifth Business & The Manticore by Robertson Davies

Madeleine L'Engle recommended this book and the other two books in the Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies, in her Reflections on a Writing Life book I wrote about below.
This weekend I checked out the Deptford Trilogy from the library as well as a book by Josephine Tey, another L'Engle recommended read.
World of Wonders is the third book and will get its own blog as I haven't finished it yet.

I thought this trilogy was going to be more of a straight fantasy - thinking of L'Engle's Time Trilogy - but really the myth and wonder in these books are much more subtle. The characters are for the most part "regular" people - who grew up in one small Canadian town called Deptford.
The three books cover roughly the same chronological events but they have 3 different narrators so the end result is as if you are able to "zoom in" on the story from the vantage point of the specific narrator for that book.
I was pleasantly surprised that this was the case, as it really gives you much more time to get into the story and really know all the characters better.
Also I was very happy to be surprised by who were the narrators and main characters for each of the books so I won't write any more here about the plot.

It's interesting that I knew I was going to read these when I was pulled over to Margaret Atwood in the bookstore and they are of course both Canadian and also both with some similiarity in that they are writing fairly realistically but with some aspects of myth, fantasy, and/or the future in the story.

The Katurran Odyssey by Terryl Whitlach and David Michael Wieger

This is a very beautiful book (with its own website and accompanying CD soundtrack - click on the cover).
I read this at the same time as the Madeleine L'Engle book and the SARK book.

The illustrator and creator, Terryl Whitlach, spent eight years at Lucasfilm and was the principal creature designer for Star Wars: Episode One.
The story (by David Michael Wieger) is about a lemur named Katook who is exiled from his home and undertakes a long journey to find his way back.
Whitlach really has a magical way of portraying animals so that it certainly does not seem odd that they are talking to each other or doing things like selling figs in a marketplace.

Dave and I saw this book several times at our local Tower Books last fall, and every time I would stop, touch it, and read a bit of it. But each time it seemed like too big of a purchase for people who already have a whole ton of books and entertainments.
But last week it was 20% off and I could not resist!

Two of my favorite double-page spreads are on 40 and 41 (day) and 42 and 43 (night) which show Katook riding on the back of a sea-turtle, accompanied by a host of what looks like every possible sea creature that exists.

Katook also meets two very memorable characters at a market that seems as diverse as the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars. I laughed out loud in the bookstore when I read this:

Katook turned to see a bristly-maned, spindly-legged cud-chewer standing next to him. And sitting on its back was a plump, squinty-eyed spiny anteater, who chimed in, "Quite hungry indeed. A shame for one so athletic as you appear to be." The anteater bowed slightly and continued, "Fleng I am and Plod is he. Horned and prickly, we two be. I am an anteater. Plod is a gnu. And you?"

Katook also meets a quagga named Quigga later on in the story - I was very entertained by the variety - lemurs, gnus, and quaggas instead of the normal bears, lions, and other animals that usually populate more traditional "picture books."

Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood

This book is a post-apocalyptic vision told mainly in flashback by the last surviving human, a man who used to be a boy named Jimmy and now calls himself Snowman.
It's also a story of the triangle between Jimmy, a beautiful woman named Oryx, and a scientific genius and Jimmy's childhood friend - Crake.
Even in Jimmy's childhood, the world is still in a time at least (hopefully) a little bit in the future. The coastal cities have all been submerged and there is no New York, only New New York.
This book pushes you along quite fervently to figure out _what really happened_ to the world, to bring about the scenario in which Snowman is living on a beach, supported and leading a group of genetically designed post-humans he calls the "Children of Crake."
There's also the sub-mystery of what happened to the world to bring out the closer future from Jimmy's childhood.
I read some of Atwood's essays on the site linked from the book cover above - she said that she had already started writing this novel when September 11 happened and she had to stop writing for several weeks - as it was hard to write about a fictional world tragedy when a real one was actually going on.
I bought this at Kepler's Books on Saturday, Feb. 12 and had finished it by Sunday Feb. 13

This book also reminds me of "The City Not Long After" by Pat Murphy, which I also fell in love with when I read it a few years ago. (You can't say no to any book where San Francisco has been taken over by the artist community and someone has painted the Golden Gate Bridge blue.) Pat Murphy and her group of Brazen Hussies(2 more great writers) will get their own blog entry - I just looked her up on the web and am also intrigued by many of the books written by the other Hussies, especially Dark Cities Underground by Lisa Goldstein which apparently ties together children's books with the BART system somehow...

Madeleine L'Engle: Herself - Reflections on a Writing Life plus a little Annie Lennox

I'm already getting ahead of myself on this blog, as this is Sunday and I think I finished this book on Friday (or perhaps even Thursday) - but I haven't had a chance to write about it yet.
Note that from updates on the Madeleine L'Engle site I saw that she is writing a book about Meg from A Wrinkle in Time in her fifties, but it seems unlikely this will be published, as it was already in progress in 1998.

This book is a great source of inspiration to me as a person and as someone who might be trying to write fiction someday. Madeleine L'Engle to me is one of the wisest people in the world. She is the author of the Time Trilogy (Wrinkle in Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Wind in the Door) and many other fiction and non-fiction books, including Meet the Austins, A House Like a Lotus, and a set of autobiographical journals called The Crosswicks Journals - my favorite is The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, because she talks about the summer when her mother died and how hard it was (taking care of her, watching her decline, and so on).

In this book, Carole F. Chase has compiled several short essays/commentary from Madeleine on writing, faith, her books, and other topics, into ten sections.
Some of this material is from the Crosswicks Journals and other books mentioned above, and some is from workshops she gave in the seventies and more recently (these are all in the L'Engle collection of Boswell Library at Wheaton College.)

Reading these words is like sitting and having coffee with Madeleine right when your inspiration or faith that you can go on is lagging. It's really reassuring to read that she also needs to write every day (just like a pianist needs to practice every day) and to be reminded of the 2.5 years that A Wrinkle in Time spent going around to various publishers before it was finally published.
I just had lunch with a friend of mine who is working on a science fiction novel and much of Madeleine's comments and thoughts would be helpful to him - will send him the link as I bet he will just want to buy it.

Madeleine L'Engle and Annie Lennox
I am also a big fan of Annie Lennox, especially her new album "Bare" - and I was listening to this at the same time as reading this book. It's like having the combined wisdom of two wise older women (attention I always crave since I don't have a mother.)
The below song seems to fit into this inspirational theme even though the song and most of the songs on its album seem a little depressing:

Annie Lennox's Pavement Cracks
portions: (this song looks fairly depressing but notice she is "walking just the same" even though all this stuff is happening):

The city streets are wet again with rain.
But I'm walking just the same.
The skies turned to the usual grey.
When you turn to face the day

oh and love don't show up in the pavement cracks
all my watercolors fade to black
I'm going nowhere and I'm ten steps back
all my dreams are falling fast

where is my comfort zone?
a simple place to call my own?
cause everything I want to be
comes crashing down on me

Also I found this commentary from Annie herself on Pavement Cracks - I'm kind of happy about this as it seems to confirm my feeling about the song (that it is not really as depressing as it seems!)

Found at

Pavement Cracks: "Children have such an instinctive way of reacting to the world. They skip because they're happy. They delight in the moment - in the macaroni on the plate before them. We lose that freshness as we grow. Life knocks it out of us. Yet still, there's this miraculous capacity for new growth. In my darkest times, I'd walk with my head bowed, seeing only the cracks in the pavement slabs. But then I'd notice the weeds pushing up through them, like a metaphor for hope. All is not desperate. Change comes, even when it seems it won't."

Make Your Creative Dreams Real by Sark

This book is, as its subtitle says "A plan for procrastinators, perfectionists, busy people, and people who would really rather sleep all day.

It's really one of the most inspirational among all of SARK's other inspiring books - and has a lot more "meat" in it, as it is 278 pages long and includes many exercises as well as stories from people who have made their own creative dreams real.
SARK's info on "micro-movements" for those who have trouble getting large (or small) tasks done, is very helpful.

Prey by Michael Crichton

We were at the library and I saw this book and got hooked on it once I started reading.
Like most of Crichton's other books it is very gripping and quite scary. This one is about swarms of nanotechnology "insects" (man-made with biological additions that allow them to now learn, reproduce, and even imitate the human body).

It's set here in Mountain View - as the protagonist and his wife both work for Mountain View based sketchy Silicon Valley companies - his company programmed the code for the swarm which her company then bought (unbeknownst to him) and started using it to make these actual swarms (first they were to be used for military cameras).

I think I finished by the morning after I checked it out -- I read it that night and then took it to breakfast at the local bagel place and read it there and finished it there. Very hard to put down!

first post - Moominland Midwinter

This is my first post on my book review/reading list blog. I'm right now reading "Moominland Midwinter" by Tove Janssen.
I re-discovered Moominvalley while looking around in a Japanese stationery shop - very surprising to see that they had at least two different sets of Moomin notepaper.
Our Finnish LT tester visiting at work confirmed that Moomins are still very popular in their native Finland and in Japan.

I have four books checked out from the library right now and this is the last of them - the other three already devoured were "Tales of Moominvalley," "Moominpappa's Memoirs" and "Moominland Midsummer."
In "Moominland Midwinter," Moomintroll unexpectedly wakes up from his winter's hibernation and finds a odd snowy world - with few others awake except for Little My, the tiny Mymble, Too-ticky, and Snufkin, who is far away to the south. (He leaves every fall to migrate south - Moomintroll is trying to follow him).
Although I've already read most of these books before, I'm still surprised by various twists and turns and ingenious details that Ms. Janssen pops into these stories.
Also, having talked to some friends who are interested in writing and illustrating children's books - it sounds like these days people who can and want to both write and illustrate, as Ms. Janssen did, are soundly discouraged. Books like this could be a rarity in the future....
Unfortunately Tove Janssen passed away in 2001 at the age of 86.