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Deep Survival (Laurence Gonzales): Nonfiction. Some people survive in situations - blizzards, rock climbing accidents, sailing accidents, airplane crashes - that kill others. Why? Gonzales examines survivors' experiences and neurology to describe behaviors and underlying brain actions that explain why some people live through disasters while other people in the same situations freak out and die. Using strong emotion to fuel but not overpower reason may be important. Fairly lightweight, and more wincing at broken bones, motorbike spills, & etc. (7.18)
Q's Legacy (Helene Hanff): I have read pieces of this before. I recognize the words, I know the story before I turn the page. Bizarrely, I remember it being an online piece. Narrative about the fallout from blind curiosity and correspondance. Autobiographical? Anecdotal? Hanff wrote to Marks & Co asking for books, and started a friendship-by-correspondence with the store's owners and employees. The letters became 84 Charing Cross Road after the shop closed. 84 Charing Cross Road spawned a sequel, a BBC production, and stage productions in London and New York. All of which began with Hanff checking out The Art of Writing, by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, from the Philadelphia Public Library at the age of eighteen. Hanff follows the fallout of that event through the Depression to the '80s. I am most shaken by Hanff's love of books as physical objects: it is not enough to possess the content; the ideal book has properties unique to it. For Hanff, they're "...old, mellow leather-bound books with thick cream-colored pages, but not so opulently fine as to make me feel guilty if I underlined a phrase here (in pencil) or made a margin note there when I felt like it. They didn't have the look of rare or fine books, they looked like the friends I needed them to be." This is a sentiment that requires no imagination on my part to understand. I have a copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse (Ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch) that fills a similar comforting niche on my bookshelf. (7.19)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (J. K. Rowling): The juggernaut of the kid's fantasy field. Previous brief and spoilery comments here and here; I think I've gotten though this without actually mentioning any new plot info (shock!). It's almost, like, a meta-review. If I keep this up it's only going to end in tears and the Washington Post Book Review.
I am a geek; if I need to prove my fan cred I submit the annotated Star Wars screenplays sitting on my bookshelf. There's an anecdote in the RotJ section about George Lucas fiddling with 3x5 index cards written with plot points, like "Yoda dies", or "Luke tells Leia they're family." Joe Straczynski kept a binder of episodes when he was working on Babylon 5. (Most relevant comments on it here, and an earlier post relating to the next point here. I love usenet archives.) Certain stuff "had" to happen, to satisfy narrative convention, but the writers were still at liberty to decide what relationship those events will have - near, far, whatever. Since HBP was the sixth installment in a seven book series, fans "knew" that certain events were extremely likely in this book, or almost inevitable in the seventh. So the mad fannish speculation - in fic, essay, and list form - pretty much killed the surprise of the major narrative shock-points.
I'm disappointed that I didn't take this more slowly; one of Rowling's strengths as a writer is her persistance at picking a plot arc and forcing the novel to fit into that arc. This means that HBP should reward closer attention than I gave it. (Someone commented once that "rewards close attention" sounds like lukewarm praise at best, but I like books like that.) Things like Arabella Figg's behavior, Remus Lupin's name (gee, much of a lypocanthic hint?), and the RAB thing in HBP mean that mad fannish plot speculation might be worth the effort. The problem is that Rowling's got a narrow focus for details, and the parts she's less interested in get shafted. For examples of this, go to a large HP board and look for old posts or threads about the population size and sociological underpinnings of the wizarding world. So as a book it is profoundly mixed; as an addition to the HP canon this fangirl thinks it was great fun, even if she still doesn't understand why it was so long.(7.20/21)
The Call of the Wild (Jack London): St. Bernard/shepherd mix Buck is kidnapped to Northern gold fields, mastering the bloody, ruthless life of his ancestor/cousin the wolf. Most immediately striking is the characterization - Buck is nicely emoted, but doesn't feel overly anthropomorphized. Also nice is the evocation of the Alaskan/Northern Canadian wilderness. And I totally would have missed the thematic stuff if I hadn't read the introduction. So it's nice, but possibly better if you have an English prof around to help provide context. (7.21)
The Raging Quiet (Sherryl Jordan): I first ran into Jordan's work in middle school or early high school, when I pulled Winter of Fire off the library shelf and loved it. So when I noticed that she had more I had to grab it, hoping for something like the evocative, low-key worldbuilding and interesting female protagonist I remembered from her first novel. Unfortunately, no luck. At some point I stopped wishing for plucky, independent heroines and started longing for plucky, self-possessed heroines who got along with people. It would save ever so many witch trials if Ms. Plucky (& Slightly Anachronistic) would tell people what she was up to, instead of leaving them to guess and gossip. The disappointing fallout from this slight work is the shadow it casts on my memories of the other novel: if I read Winter of Fire today, would it still be as readable as I remember? (7.22)
Posted and backdated August 4th, 2005
Q's Legacy (Helene Hanff): I have read pieces of this before. I recognize the words, I know the story before I turn the page. Bizarrely, I remember it being an online piece. Narrative about the fallout from blind curiosity and correspondance. Autobiographical? Anecdotal? Hanff wrote to Marks & Co asking for books, and started a friendship-by-correspondence with the store's owners and employees. The letters became 84 Charing Cross Road after the shop closed. 84 Charing Cross Road spawned a sequel, a BBC production, and stage productions in London and New York. All of which began with Hanff checking out The Art of Writing, by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, from the Philadelphia Public Library at the age of eighteen. Hanff follows the fallout of that event through the Depression to the '80s. I am most shaken by Hanff's love of books as physical objects: it is not enough to possess the content; the ideal book has properties unique to it. For Hanff, they're "...old, mellow leather-bound books with thick cream-colored pages, but not so opulently fine as to make me feel guilty if I underlined a phrase here (in pencil) or made a margin note there when I felt like it. They didn't have the look of rare or fine books, they looked like the friends I needed them to be." This is a sentiment that requires no imagination on my part to understand. I have a copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse (Ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch) that fills a similar comforting niche on my bookshelf. (7.19)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (J. K. Rowling): The juggernaut of the kid's fantasy field. Previous brief and spoilery comments here and here; I think I've gotten though this without actually mentioning any new plot info (shock!). It's almost, like, a meta-review. If I keep this up it's only going to end in tears and the Washington Post Book Review.
I am a geek; if I need to prove my fan cred I submit the annotated Star Wars screenplays sitting on my bookshelf. There's an anecdote in the RotJ section about George Lucas fiddling with 3x5 index cards written with plot points, like "Yoda dies", or "Luke tells Leia they're family." Joe Straczynski kept a binder of episodes when he was working on Babylon 5. (Most relevant comments on it here, and an earlier post relating to the next point here. I love usenet archives.) Certain stuff "had" to happen, to satisfy narrative convention, but the writers were still at liberty to decide what relationship those events will have - near, far, whatever. Since HBP was the sixth installment in a seven book series, fans "knew" that certain events were extremely likely in this book, or almost inevitable in the seventh. So the mad fannish speculation - in fic, essay, and list form - pretty much killed the surprise of the major narrative shock-points.
I'm disappointed that I didn't take this more slowly; one of Rowling's strengths as a writer is her persistance at picking a plot arc and forcing the novel to fit into that arc. This means that HBP should reward closer attention than I gave it. (Someone commented once that "rewards close attention" sounds like lukewarm praise at best, but I like books like that.) Things like Arabella Figg's behavior, Remus Lupin's name (gee, much of a lypocanthic hint?), and the RAB thing in HBP mean that mad fannish plot speculation might be worth the effort. The problem is that Rowling's got a narrow focus for details, and the parts she's less interested in get shafted. For examples of this, go to a large HP board and look for old posts or threads about the population size and sociological underpinnings of the wizarding world. So as a book it is profoundly mixed; as an addition to the HP canon this fangirl thinks it was great fun, even if she still doesn't understand why it was so long.(7.20/21)
The Call of the Wild (Jack London): St. Bernard/shepherd mix Buck is kidnapped to Northern gold fields, mastering the bloody, ruthless life of his ancestor/cousin the wolf. Most immediately striking is the characterization - Buck is nicely emoted, but doesn't feel overly anthropomorphized. Also nice is the evocation of the Alaskan/Northern Canadian wilderness. And I totally would have missed the thematic stuff if I hadn't read the introduction. So it's nice, but possibly better if you have an English prof around to help provide context. (7.21)
The Raging Quiet (Sherryl Jordan): I first ran into Jordan's work in middle school or early high school, when I pulled Winter of Fire off the library shelf and loved it. So when I noticed that she had more I had to grab it, hoping for something like the evocative, low-key worldbuilding and interesting female protagonist I remembered from her first novel. Unfortunately, no luck. At some point I stopped wishing for plucky, independent heroines and started longing for plucky, self-possessed heroines who got along with people. It would save ever so many witch trials if Ms. Plucky (& Slightly Anachronistic) would tell people what she was up to, instead of leaving them to guess and gossip. The disappointing fallout from this slight work is the shadow it casts on my memories of the other novel: if I read Winter of Fire today, would it still be as readable as I remember? (7.22)
Posted and backdated August 4th, 2005
