What I'm Reading Now

I am now in the process of reading Little Bee.  I have never once in my life flipped to the back of a book to see how it ends (unlike someone I know) but I might have to do that with this one.  There is so much mystery surrounding the contents of the book that it's driving me to distraction.  I can't enjoy or even concentrate on the current story line because I'm so anxious to know what it is the author is hiding.  It's certainly well written and intriguing though.  We'll see how I feel by the end

Just Read

Water For Elephants


 I love the circus! I am very impressed by authors who can write convincing first person narratives in the opposite gender.  Wally Lamb is a perfect example- I felt almost cheated when I found out that the author of She's Come Undone was a male.  My thoughts on the books I've read recently are dominated by the imminent movie releases.  I just saw "Winters' Bone" which stars the actress slated to play Katniss Everdeen.  I haven't seen previews for Water For Elephants yet but I don't have high hopes

Just Read

I just finished the third and final book in The Hunger Games (author Suzanne Collins).  I started the first one on Thursday, and had to resort to buying the third one in e-book format.  Is there anything better than staying in all weekend reading? And anything worse than tearing through the first series of books that has gripped you in a way no series has since Harry Potter?

Harry Potter Things We Wish Really Existed

"Ron, you're making it snow," said Hermione patiently, grabbing his wrist and redirecting his wand away from the ceiling from which, sure enough, large white flakes had started to fall. - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter #06), page 514 (US Version)

Just like Hermione, we're sick of snow too. If only we could just ask Ron to make it stop... Or, you know, modify the bad behavior everyone begins to display as the winter wears on. Trudging through the narrow snow-clogged streets only to have a perfectly-normal-looking woman decide her backpack belonged in our lap on the subway and then become enraged when we suggested she hold it herself (not.making.this.up), we began to wish some of J.K. Rowling's inventions were real. (We're resisting suggesting any of the Death Eaters' curses were real, but really, some fellow subway riders apparently need to be scared into realizing the trains do not run solely for them.)

APPARITION
Yeah, OK, Harry thinks apparition is uncomfortable. He thinks it's suffocating and it does risk loss of small appendages. But when it goes well, it's more or less immediate. If he had to rely to public transportation to fight Voldemort, he'd probably enjoy apparition a bit more. And if we could apparate,  our feet would be much drier upon arrival at work - or, for that matter, our arrival anywhere in the world, because we wouldn't be limited to traveling places the subway goes.

Plus, despite Harry's complaints, we bet we'd arrive everywhere happier. Because as long as all our limbs showed up at our destinations, no one along the way would be, say, cleaning their ears (seen on the subway), or deciding that our laps were good seats for their belongings (seriously, have people been taking manner classes from Umbridge?).


MUFFLIATO
Who doesn't hate winter at this point? Everyone has wet feet, a runny nose, and really would rather snack all day rather than work. Well, our co-workers have lately brought their bad behaviors to work. One spends the day alternatively chewing bag after noisy bag of Cheetos with his mouth open and making bodily noises we wouldn't be surprised to hear coming out of an angry elephant. Another coworker has decided to take out her anger at the winter by attacking her keyboard with each furious keystroke into G-Chat (that is, when she isn't busy calling friends and families to complain). It's probably a good thing that our workplaces don't use memo-owls: loud typing probably doesn't hold a candle to squawking owls but we still think a well-placed muffliato spell would be helpful.
 

It was good enough to keep Harry and Hermione's tent-bound conversations from Death-Eaters' ears through most of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #07). We certainly think that a well-placed muffilato would make us more productive at work!
And, if that doesn't work, we could always be in the market for a VANISHING CABINET!

What exists in Harry's world you wish were real?

Autistic Narrators, Day Three: Marcelo in the Real World

Without planning for it to be, this week has somehow become devoted to autistic narrators in recent fiction. I'm not sure I can think of another example after today, but I do have one more recommendation in this sub-sub-genre: Marcelo in the Real World.

Marcelo is called autistic because the specialists he's seen all his childhood can't think of a better diagnosis. He's really only interested in pursuing activities that fit into his hobbies, and his hobbies narrowly revolve around music. But he's about to graduate from high school and his father wants him to have experience getting along in the real world.

Almost more sheltered than autistic, Marcelo comes of age assisting his father's law firm for the summer. Marcelo's real world matches the real one. Because he views the world through a narrow lens, the dishonesty of some co-workers, sexual appeal of women, and duplicity of his family is a unique revelation to him. Marcelo is a gentle introduction to the thinking of an autistic person, and an interesting one.

Autistic & Unreliable Narrators, Day 2: Curious Incident of The Dog in the Nighttime

Yesterday's post was about a heavy-handed Asperger's narrator. Want to read a good exploration of autism? In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time the main character just happens to be autistic. Unlike Mockingbird's main character, there's a plot beyond the autism aspect.

Of course, through his autism, Christopher John Francis Boone - Curious Incident's protagonist - sees the world differently. Emotions confuse him so he still buys wholeheartedly into his father's lies, even at age 15. The dead neighbor's dog is an injustice in his highly logical world (the chapters are numbered in chronological prime numbers because he likes math). But because he loves Sherlock Holmes, Christopher wants to solve a mystery: why did the neighbor's dog die? Because the book starts as a mystery with an unusual narrator (and it is now said that Sherlock Holmes himself would be diagnosed with a form of high-functioning autism), it is wonderful. The author isn't trying to make a point about autism. His autistic narrator has a journey to explore. His youth and sheltered world-view make that journey unique. Curious Incident is an unusual hybrid: coming-of-age mystery. And it is highly recommended.

Autistic & Unreliable Narrators: Mockingbird

Mockingbird won the National Book Award. My reaction? Strongly negative. This is an "issues" book gone over the deep-end. Supposedly we're reading about an Asperger's elementary-school girl dealing with her brother's murder during a middle-school-shooting.  That's a lot to pack into a short book: 224 short pages with large print, including an author's note that's partially diary entry, mostly mea culpa. (The more I think about the book, the more I find fault.)

That the narrator's mother is dead barely warrants more than a mention. Autistic and Asperger's children may have trouble communicating their connections to close family, but that doesn't mean they don't value them. The young narrator is practically socipathic in her lack of emotion connected to her dead mother. Plus, geez: a murdered brother, dead mother, and "Asperger's"? Mockingbird suffers from an overload of after-school-special sentimentality.

Perhaps calling a disabled narrator unreliable is unfair, but it certainly limits readers' view of the full story. Combining that with a tough issue for readers of any age, let alone very young ones, could be very interesting. But there is no depth to the book: there's too much to explore and then the narrator's disability is much more severe than a diagnosis of Asperger's allows. She behaves much more like a moderately-functioning autistic child. I'd like to know how this discrepancy fits with the author's note that her own daughter has Asperger's. Who misunderstands whom?

Mockingbird struck me as a book that got accolades because it is daring: Asperger's and school-shootings are rarely seen in children's literature. But just being first to the scene is not enough to make something wonderful.

Agree? Disagree? Whatever your thoughts, we'd like to hear them in the comments.