Tag: Bev the slacker

What I Read in 2013

I read a lot of books last year. 139 averages out to about 1 book every 2.6 days.  My intention was to make comments about my favorite books and where I was when I read certain books, etc. But this has been a draft for a few weeks now – so I’m just going to post it without embellishment. I’m happy to answer any questions you may have (like – how the heck did I read 139 books when I worked 3 jobs last year?).

139 books
RR – re-read  44
NF – Non-fiction 32
MM – Memoir 15
Audio – 12

Emma – Jane Austen  RR
Jack of Kinrowan – Charles de Lint  RR
Dreams Underfoot – Charles de Lint  RR
Debt: the first 5000 years – David Graeber NF
Anil’s Ghost – Michael Ondaatje  RR
Speaker for the Dead – Orson Scott Card (audio)
Telegraph Avenue – Michael Chabon
The Last Colony – John Scalzi
Zoe’s Tale – John Scalzi
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou (audio) NF MM
Towers of Midnight – Brandon Sanderson/Robert Jordan RR
Memory of Light – Brandon Sanderson/Robert Jordan
My Life in France – Julia Child RR NF MM
Kicking and Dreaming – Ann & Nancy Wilson NF
Xenocide – Orson Scott Card (audio)
Tapping the Dream Tree – Charles de Lint  RR
The Rules of Inheritance – Claire Bidwell Smith NF MM
Flight Behavior – Barbara Kingsolver
The Round House – Louise Erdrich
Fault of our Stars – John Green (audio)
Blue Desert – Charles Bowden RR NF
Z : A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald – Therese Anne Fowler
Traveling Mercies – Anne Lamott NF MM
Wizard Abroad – Diane Duane RR
So You Want to be a Wizard – Diane Duane RR
Deep Wizardry – Diane Duane RR
High Wizardry – Diane Duane RR
Wizard’s holiday – Diane Duane RR
Eat Pray Love – Elizabeth Gilbert RR NF MM
Children of the Mind – Orson Scott Card (audio)
Reading Lolita in Tehran – Azar Nafisi NF MM
The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg (audio) NF
Girlchild – Tupelo Hassman
Redshirts – John Scalzi (audio)
Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal?  – Jeanette Winterson NF MM
Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell (audio) RR NF
Un Lun Dun – China Miéville RR
The Summer Prince – Alaya Dawn Johnson
Panopticon blog – Franklin Habit NF
Chronology of Water – Lidia Yuknavitch RR NF MM
The Scar – China Miéville RR
The Magician – Lev Grossman (audio) RR
Yes, Chef – Marcus Samuelsson NF MM
Without a Summer – Mary Robinette Kowal
Kraken – China Miéville RR
Finding Your Way in a Wild New World – Martha Beck NF
Zoo City – Lauren Beukes RR
Manhood for Amateur – Michael Chabon (audio) RR NF MM
Shades of Milk & Honey – Mary Robinette Kowal
Glamour in Glass – Mary Robinette Kowal
Sleight – Kristen Kaschock
Wonder Boys – Michael Chabon RR
The Big Meow – Diane Duane
Beatrice & Virgil – Yann Martel
Eliza’s Daughter – Joan Aiken
Broken for You – Stephanie Kallos
The Human Division – John Scalzi
Cooked – Michael Pollan (audio) NF
Sense & Sensibility – Jane Austen RR
Fearless: One Woman One Kayak One Continent – Joe Glickman NF
A Visit to Highbury – Joan Austen – Leigh
Persuasion – Jane Austen RR
Death Comes to Pemberley – PD James RR
Among Others – Jo Walton RR
The God Engines – John Scalzi
Love Medicine – Louse Erdrich RR
Later Days in Highbury – Joan Austen-Leigh
A Wizard Alone – Diane Duane
Beet Queen – Louise Erdrich RR
Pilgrimage – Annie Leibovitz NF
Last Report of Miracles at Little No Horse – Louise Erdrich RR
Supposedly Fun thing I’ll never do again – David Foster Wallace NF
My Foreign Cities – Elizabeth Scarboro NF
Gone Girl – Gilllian Flynn
A Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
Idoru – William Gibson RR
All Tomorrows Parties – William Gibson RR
Graphic Canon pt 1 – Russ Kick
Dirt Work – Christine Byl NF
Beautiful Ruins – Jess Walter (audio)
Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
A Dance of Dragons – George RR Martin RR
Growing up Female in America: Ten Lives – Ed. Eve Merriam NF MM
The Beautiful Struggle – Ta-Nehisi Coates NF
The Dragon Reborn – Robert Jordan
Eye of the World – Robert Jordan
Knife of Dreams – Robert Jordan
Tower of Midnight – Brandon Sanderson/ Robert Jordan
Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
The Shining Girls – Lauren Beukes
King Rat – China Miéville
Bringing Up the Bodies – Hilary Mantel
The Shelter Cycle – Peter Rich
Memory of Light – Brandon Sanderson/ Robert Jordan
Gathering Storm – Brandon Sanderson/ Robert Jordan
Population 485 – Michael Perry NF MM
Truck: A Love Story – Michael Perry NF MM
Warbreaker – Brandon Sanderson
Coop: A Family, a Farm, and the Pursuit of One Good Egg – Michael Perry NF MM
Tracks – Louise Erdrich RR
Bingo Palace – Louise Erdrich RR
Dial H for Hero – China Miéville
Pattern Recognition – William Gibson RR
Spook County – William Gibson RR
Drowned Cities – Paolo Bacigalupi
A Year in the World – Frances Mayes NF MM
The Rice Room – Ben Fong Torres NF
Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan RR NF
Thud – Terry Pratchett RR
Yiddish Policeman’s Union – Michael Chabon RR
Benediction – Kent Haruf
Persuasion – Jane Austen RR
Sandition & other stories – Jane Austen
Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker RR
Grass – Sheri  S. Tepper
Vicious – Victoria Schwab
Singer From the Sea – Sheri  S. Tepper
Tales of the City – Armistead Maupin
The Water Rising – Sheri  S. Tepper
David & Goliath – Malcolm Gladwell NF
Gate to Women’s Country – Sheri  S. Tepper
The Companions – Sheri  S. Tepper
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood RR
Serenity comic series – Joss Whedon
Little County – Charles de Lint RR
Beauty – Sheri  S. Tepper
The Memory Palace – Mira Bartok NF
Up Against It – MJ Locke
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
Mythago Wood – Robert Holdstock
Diving into the Wreck – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Paint it Black – Janet Fitch
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon RR
Fuzzy Nation – John Scalzi
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronté RR
Uglies – Scott Westerfeld
Tough Customer – Sandra Brown
Rise & Shine – Anne Quindlen
Moxyland – Lauren  Beukes

What have I been doing?

What have I been doing since January 2, 2012? What have I been doing? Hell, I don’t know.

I’ve been working [here], and [here]. Both volunteering and  working [here]. I’ve been living [here].

Moved to a new (much-improved) apartment [here]. Walking the riverfront.

portland riverfront spring walking home
This is what my walk home from work looked like recently. Now it’s much sunnier.

Walking the close-in East side of Portland and loving every minute of it. Met all kinds of cool and interesting people.

portland kerns springtime flowering trees
I live in a neighborhood that looks like this in the spring.

Traveled to Montana (more than four times, less than ten). Took day trips around Oregon looking at rocks. Flew to Arizona for sun and softball and Sista-time. Went camping in Eastern Oregon. Went to Las Vegas for a weekend with high school friends. Crocheted a few bags, a few scarves, a belt and some wristers. Sort-of loved and didn’t really lose. Lived through my first (business) IRS audit. Had a lot of deeply crazy dreams. Saw Amanda Palmer and Alanis Morissette and Sugarland in concert. Figured out what was causing the pain in my shoulder/back and made it (mostly) go away. Had an old friend come visit me for a whole weekend. Paid off my credit cards (all of them). Threw myself a birthday party for the first time in a decade or more.

Met Cheryl Strayed (Dear Sugar) twice and Lidia Yuknavitch once. Saw Glen Duncan and William Gibson (again) at Powell’s.  Read innumerable words on the internet. Proofed two books. Wrote six book reviews.

And read 156 books in 477 days. That works out to be one book every 3.06 days.

Good books. Great books. Decent books. The last book in the Wheel of Time series (finally. And also sadly). New (great) books by long-time favorite authors (Kingsolver, Erdrich, Bharati Mukherjee). Fantastic books by new-favorite authors (Glen Duncan, Lidia Yuknavitch, Tupelo Hassman). Books that blew my mind (Debt by Graeber), broke my heart (The Fault of Our Stars – Green), make me laugh (Redshirts – Scalzi), made me angry (Z – Fowler), and made me happy to be alive (well, all of them).

Seems like a good use of one and one-third years. But maybe I could spend just a bit more time writing for this blog in the 15 months coming up.

What have you been doing?

150 Pounds by Kate Rockland

So, a few months ago, someone contacted me through this blog and ASKED ME TO REVIEW THEIR BOOK.  Here. On my tiny little blog on the interwebs. (I imagine they missed the fact that I haven’t posted for 5 months!) Can you guess what I said? Of course you can.

On my own, I would never have picked up 150 Pounds by Kate Rockland. My Advanced Reader Copy has a cover just like the one above. The color scheme, the font, the blurbs – everything points to ‘chick lit’, a category that pisses me off for existing (since it lumps anything written by a woman that is actually about women and not manly pursuits together in one big ‘hey guys, don’t even look at these lame books’ category) and – at its worst – bores me to tears with its mindless girl-power attitude.

Thankfully, this book is not one of those I feel I need to throw across the room. This book is well-written, compelling and – most important of all – has great characters. Rockland does a great job of making these women real – their lives, families and emotional complexities leap off the page.

Alexis spends every day counting calories and working out.  Shoshana spends her days taking care of everyone but herself, and treating herself to food when she feels down. Both are bloggers who write for and about women – from opposite sides of the war on weight.  When they are scheduled together on a segment of Oprah, their encounter is the beginning of important changes in both their lives.

We’ve all had friends much like these women. You love them, and they frustrate the hell out of you because they can’t see how wonderful they are.  One of the most beautiful women I’ve ever known spent more time worried about her looks than anyone I’ve ever met.  She truly believed that all those manicures and hair appointments and new clothes were necessary to keep her looking decent enough to be seen in public.  Still breaks my heart to think of her, living her life buried in self-loathing.

This story is interesting and believable, and realistically hopeful for women in the real world.  I like that it included writing from both blogs, and discussions of media portrayals of women in relation to their weight – one of the all-too-prevalent influences on women’s relationships with their bodies.  I think some of the pieces in the book could have been shorter, and there were maybe a few too many stereotypes in play, but overall this was a good read and a positive portrayal of American women today. I have several friends who hate every book I send them – so I might just send them this one next time.

 

*no, I did not receive compensation for this review, unless you consider a review copy of the book compensation. And it is true I can take that review copy to Powell’s and maybe get a few dollars toward another book, but that’s hardly enough to get me to perjure myself. I really did like the book.

 

The Matrix vs. Lost – how not to end a story well

It’s not news that I am a huge sci-fi-fantasy-comic-book-alternate-universe story freak. I was watching The Matrix (for possibly the 30th time) the other day when I had a narrative epiphany. Or maybe an epiphany about narratives. Speculative fiction video narratives, to be exact.

Stories have to end sooner or later, in some kind of satisfactory manner – or else the things that excited it us (What do the machines want? Are those people dead? What is the Matrix? What is the Island?) will just start piling up and pissing us off.  So. How do you end it? How do you tell interesting stories – in worlds that must be explained – without either burying the viewers with WAY too much technical information, or else short-changing them?

Different story tellers make different choices. Those who are truly successful balance the world building, character exposition and plot perfectly – so we get most of our questions answered, and give a shit about the characters they happened to. I believe this is more difficult in a story in which one must convince the viewer that the world itself exists, in addition to believable characters and a plot that is both interesting and surprising (but not too).

The Matrix Trilogy vs. Lost

Both were very successful out of the gate. Both were very ambitious. Both asked all kinds of interesting questions and answered a few of them in the beginning. Both had a huge following.

And both of them had a huge portion of their followers HATE the way they ended.

In the Matrix story (I’m sticking to just the three films, here. I know there’s a lot more info in Animatrix and the games and whatnot, but the major thread is contained in the films), the writers/directors chose to explain everything they could: the Oracle, the Core, the Architect, Zion, the machines… on and on and on. An entire cosmology and ideology and history and everything. They knew this world inside and out and they shared it with us. And a lot of people (not me) thought it was boring and lame and too complicated. Like you had to take notes just to understand what was going on. And the characters are not terribly complicated. Good guys and girls, bad guys and girls. Boy loves girl, gets girl. Sketched in histories, lots of emotion but not too much depth.  In the choice between plot and character, the Wachowski  Brothers chose plot. It works well in the first flick, and by the third flick it’s clear that plot is what must sustain us.  For many, it was not enough. Or maybe too much – plot, that is, and not enough character. Time restrictions play a factor here – how long can the film be? (IMHO, their worst mistake – horrible recast of the Oracle. I know the original actress died, but they did a crappy job of choosing her replacement. Ack!)

In Lost, the TV series, Abrams and Lindelhof et.al., chose character over plot. We get histories, alternate futures, heavy interactions and lots of ambiguity. Sawyer: good guy or bad guy? Kate: bad girl or good girl? Who are the Others? And the other Others? They built a compelling but barely explicated cosmology that sacrificed detail for emotional impact. And some people HATED it. How did the smoke monster work, exactly? Were they dead the whole time? Why wasn’t Mr. Eko in the church at the end? For those who cared more about character, the ending was great (at that point, all I cared about was Sawyer and Juliet being reunited). I don’t need to know why pulling that strange stone plug out of a pool underground made the smoke monster mortal. It did, that’s what mattered. For those who wanted to KNOW, they had more questions at the end than ever.

So:
End of Matrix – finally! Who cares if it was the machines or the Architect or whatever. The humans lived. Good. Moving on.

End of Lost – What?! So were they dead? Were they dreaming? So was the island real? Did they die in the first plane crash? What about the smoke monster? Have you ever hated anyone as much as Benjamin Linus?

If you don’t get the balance just right, you will leave half your fan base angry and unsatisfied.

Many successful science fiction movies are set in the future – far enough away that you should expect for things not to make sense to your poor, feeble 21-century brain. With something like the Matrix, you have to explain why the world looks like ours but isn’t, and how it’s going to end, but it’s already ended 5 times before, but this time it’s different. Lost had six years and two timelines of strange happenings, and chooses not to give many details on most of them. But we know A LOT about Jack, and Kate, and Sawyer and Hurley and Mr. Eko and Sayid and Juliet and Ben and Locke and everyone else.

Comic books (and regular book series as well) have the luxury of drawing out the universe, painting it and describing it and making it real and believable and understandable, for years and years and pages and pages, without the obligation to tie all the loose ends or finish every sub plot at the end of each book/year/story arc/what-have-you.  It can create a place, pose 10 questions, answer 3 of them, and then continue on, asking more questions and answering a few here and there.  This freedom from deadline (at least in theory) is part of the reason it is hard to quit reading them.  One story may end, but the universe is still there, having other stories being told all over it.

Okay, so I don’t know exactly what it all means. But it seemed interesting. To me, at least. I wouldn’t presume to speak for all of you.

Bonus epiphany: theme of both Lost & Matrix = Love conquers all. Okay, so it’s a common theme. So what? It just occurred to me, so that makes it a super-amazing realization. And probably the reason I liked both of them. Well, that and cute boys.

His Roots and my roots

I just finished watching the two TV mini-series based on the books of Alex Haley, Roots and Roots the Next Generations.

When I was 7 or 8, I remember seeing parts of the first one from my attic bedroom with my sister, peeking down the staircase after we were supposed to be in bed (and I remember getting caught, after which they moved the TV and made it harder, but we could still watch it).  Turns out my memory wasn’t that good, but it was enough for me to (finally) get the DVDs from the library and watch both of them (28 hours, I think?) over the last few weeks (no, I do not have a life, thanks for asking).

Some of it could have used some editing. Some of it was obviously cleaned up for a mainstream television audience (and in the 70s, when they were stricter than they are now). But – wow. Most of the acting is incredible. Some if it – even cleaned up, and cut away at the last second, and condensed  –  is so painful to watch, and listen to.  I can build up a head of righteous indignation for the unfairness of someone cutting in line at the grocery store, so watching human beings treated like cattle, and pets, and half-wits, and contagious diseases for fully half of all the scenes they showed… well, that was hard to take. My chest would fill up and I’d be choking on all the things that no one was saying. But I have to say… I’m so jealous of Alex Haley.

The effort that his family put in to making sure that they stayed together, and knew where they came from, who they were.  Seven generations – from a man stolen from everything he knew and taken half-way around the world. Brought to a place where no one spoke his language and they beat him for believing he was fully human. But his four-greats-grandson was able to find the village he had been stolen from, and cousins who still lived there. I can’t even go back three generations and have names for everyone. I know a few tiny facts about that generation, and nothing from before that. Neither of my parents seemed to give a hoot about any of it. And then they moved away from their entire family, on both sides, and put as many miles and silences between us as they could and still be in the same country. So I sit out here, like a rock thrown into the ocean. And I wonder which mountain I fell off of, because I didn’t grow here. I came from something else, somewhere else. And I wish I was on bedrock, not this sandy soil. Alex Haley’s family was bought and sold and beaten and cheated and raped and cheated again – but they always had each other, and they even had a name and a few words from Africa.