In-between reads, then back to business.

Whilst waiting for a package from my mom containing some childhood faves, I passed the time with Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners (about which I can say nothing I haven't said about Link before: SHE IS BRILLIANT. READ HER NOW) and Donna Tartt's The Secret History, which charmed me from the first appearance of the central characters, a bunch of dissolute classics majors, as they discussed Greek cases. Yay for aorists!

The package arrived, laden with goodies: I decided to read them in chronological order of publication. First up, The Borrowers, by Mary Norton (1952). I guess it's not surprising that children love worlds in miniature, as a way of imagining adult roles through play, but MAN, did I ever love miniatures when I was little! The Borrowers' repurposing of blotting paper and safety pins and cigar boxes. Colleen Moore's fairy castle at the Museum of Science and Industry. The dollhouse my grandfather built, white with blue trim.

And I am so excited to learn that Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli has adapted the book, for a summer 2010 release! Although I still have fond memories of the mid-90s miniseries with Ian Holm as Pod.

Now, speaking of miniatures, I'm reading 1960's The Cricket in Times Square, by Gary Selden, with illustrations by Garth Williams. I need to take a picture of the bookplate in this one: the handwriting on it's positively embryonic. I must have been four or five when I decided this was a book worthy of being belonged.

"For Anna, Tesser well."

Madeline L'Engle was the first author I ever met. I don't remember the exact year (though I know it was during elementary school), or the place--I remember waiting in line, and clutching my book to be signed (a Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover in its 46th printing, 1987, which puts me tentatively at eight), and the nervous excitement of seeing someone in person who'd created a world that was so important to me. Though bookselling now puts me in the path of all kinds of writers, I'm not sure any subsequent signing has produced the same awe--I try to think of who might do it--Kelly Link? Yoko Ogawa? Oh, Connie Willis, for sure. But of course, you never forget your first.

I've reread L'Engle's Time Trilogy (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet) many, many times, and it never fails to be mind-blowing. The great children's authors, I think, expand the possibilities of thought, create new pathways for the imagination; and trying to put my finger on exactly these three books in particular did for the younger me, I'm struck by how elemental the battle between good and evil is in them, and at the same time, how specific and unique.

Uniqueness and individuality are paramount in L'Engle's worldview. The horror of Camazotz is that everyone is the same, that all decisions are decided for you. The abnegation of responsibility, while it seems comforting, is the negation of the self, however flawed. Meg's stubbornness is what saves her father and Charles Wallace (yes, it's also heartening to have a girl rewarded for tenacity and spunk, even 45 years on). Similarly, in A Wind in the Door, the power of Naming, which sets each farandola and human and cherubim and star apart from the others, is what preserves the individual from "Xing," the ultimate, irreversible negation that the Echthroi (Greek for "enemy"; L'Engle is full of classical nods like this) seek. And time and time again, the efforts of one or a few change everything.

But in what might seem a paradox, the interdependence of all creatures is as vital to the universe as each creature's singularity. In A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Charles Wallace occupies several lives, but it's the connections between them that spin the thread that changes history. A Wind in the Door's mythical (well, for all we know thus far) farandolae that sing inside each mitochondrion (and yeah, I though these were imaginary until I got to high school biology; thanks for sneaking in all that science!) commune with the galaxies. Size, and distance, and time are all immaterial. Community and communion--both from the same root. And what makes such disparate entities one is love--the Christian agape, but also the Sanskrit ananda, the name of a dog in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, defined by Charles Wallace as "that joy in existence without which the universe will fall apart and collapse."

Weighty, yeah. The books aren't pedantic in the slightest, though--through the macrocosm, the microcosm, and time itself, they're three grand adventures; and headstrong Meg and otherworldly Charles Wallace are marvelous characters, hyperintelligent but relatable misfits who, yeah, remind me of myself and my family. Rereading, I can always recapture that joyous trepidation I felt, with book in hand, waiting to meet a creator.

FOR MILO, WHO HAS PLENTY OF TIME.

New resolution-type project: I'm rereading some of my absolute favorite books from elementary school. My co-worker Steph is close enough to my age, and was as relentlessly bookish a child, that we have a lot of touchstones in common, and talking about with her has made me hungry to re-experience them. Not to say that I never read anything dubious in my youth: I shan't be rereading any of the 50+ Baby-Sitters Club novels I devoured, despite the enormous pleasure I garnered from them the first time, and my attempt to get back into the Nancy Drew books a while back imparted the rueful knowledge that the writing wasn't exactly, well, good. But hell, I never ate sugary cereal or watched Saturday morning cartoons: compared to those, reading mountains of innocuous pulp was pretty harmless.

First up, Norton Juster's incredible The Phantom Tollbooth. I think this book, more than any other, introduced me to and created my passion for metaphor. The concepts I read about here first--Short Shrift, the Awful Dynne, the Dodecahedron and the Doldrums--that I can't think of without imagining Juster's personifications! The marvelous similes (the tastes of letters, the sights of sounds, particularly the handclaps of clean white paper)! Middle-Earth and Narnia and Hogwarts are quite all right, but I would say I'd rather live in the Kingdom of Wisdom, were it not for the knowledge that it's already where I spend my days.

Pynchon, Pynchonesque.

The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon: Pynchon is, I think, one of those polarizing, love-him-or-hate-him authors, also tainted by an overserious and undercritical male following. Me, I love his work to absolute bits, ever since reading V. in eighth grade (though both then and in my rereading ten years later, I skipped the excruciatingly detailed nose job scene entirely).

The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem: Epic coming-of-age novel (like everyone feels their coming-of-age to be) set in 70s Brooklyn, during the morphing of Gowanus into Boerum Hill. Apparently Lethem's another divisive novelist--this book in particular, to judge by Goodreads reviews, is either THE BEST EVER or A PIECE OF SHIT. "Pretension" was a common and frankly baffling accusation. I have to assume these detractors' pop- and high-culture experiences differ widely from Lethem's own and his characters'; to me, writing from within what's comfortable for you can never be pretentious, and The Fortress of Solitude reads with the confidence of comfort. One commentor complained that there were too many adjectives and similes in his prose; to me, this is saying, "Yeah, those descriptions were way too vivid! I hated knowing what the sights and sounds and smells of the narrative were! And figurative language just confuses me!" Perhaps Lethem's just firmly in my bailiwick, with his adorable sweater vest (when he read at WORD in November) and comparisons to Pynchon? And yeah, I got a kick out of knowing, down to the block, where the book takes place.

YAP.

Once a Witch, Carolyn MacCullough: Pretty good. About a girl from a family of witches who has no power of her own (or does she?). Family secrets, burgeoning romance, and a fantastic climactic setpiece in Grand Central Station.

Lips Touch: Three Times, Laini Taylor: Far and away the best of the lot, in spite of the aggressively stupid title. It's three novellas, loosely centering on the motif of a life-changing kiss. The language is amazing, and the three entirely separate fantasy worlds she creates are richly detailed. For instance, in the center story, "Spicy Little Curses Such as These," is set in India during the Raj, and begins with the daily meeting, over tea, between an elderly widow and a demon, wherein she pleads with him for the souls of children. And that's just the premise. Plus, each story is preceded by a brief, wordless illustrated narrative, depicting a peripheral scene from the story. Its significance only becomes clear as you read on.

Ash, Malinda Lo: Ehn. It's billed as a YA lesbian retelling of Cinderella, and it is that. I mean, the Cinderella stand-in falls in love with and ends up with a woman. Beyond that, the characterization is flat, and the romance as sterile and take-my-word-for-it as too many heternormative teen reads. Gay girls deserve better.

Russian front.

Have I really been reading Solzhenitsyn on the subway all month? Yeesh. It's marvelous, of course; the Great War (as I insist upon calling it, cause it wasn't just a prequel) is one of my pet fascinations, and I've read novels and poetry and memoirs from Brits and Frenchmen and Germans, but hadn't previously gotten the Russian perspective. Horrible, incompetently commanded, meat-grinder stuff. In less than ten pages, though, I'm off to another of my increasingly frequent YA paranormal breaks, henceforth referred to as YAPs. I've got three titles lined up this time: witches, goblins, and a lesbian retelling of "Cinderella."

Catsup.

Etymological aside: the word ketchup/catsup comes from the Malay word kechap, itself a version of a Chinese word describing a pickled fish sauce. While Americans associate it purely with tomatoes, it is in fact the spices & vinegar that define the substance--the English used to make ketchups out of oysters and walnuts, and banana ketchup is super-popular in the Philippines.

Aaaand a flurry of updating:

Doctor Fischer of Geneva, or The Bomb Party, Graham Greene: a decidely minor, black-comic entry in his oeuvre.

To the Wedding, John Berger: lyrical, but emotionally slight.

Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud: a classic, obviously, and useful to a text-obsessed reader like me. Whenever I read graphic works, I'm never sure if I'm spending enough time looking at a given page, especially if there aren't words on it; I've enjoyed David Small's Stitches, loved Posy Simmonds' Gemma Bovery and Tamara Drewe and the more straight-up comic-book stylings of Joss Whedon's Fray (my Halloween costume two years running) and the Buffy Season 8 series, but I still often feel out of my depth, like I'm not getting something. Understanding Comics helped a bit. (Though you know what? I will never like Watchmen, ever.)

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs: a novel written in alternating chapters by two founding Beats, with an afterword by my cousin James (first, once removed; Burroughs' longtime secretary and executor). I read and enjoyed On the Road, read and shrugged at The Dharma Bums, never read any Burroughs--and I have a chip on my shoulder about the whole Beat movement, as it has been used as an excuse for so much terrible, sloppy art since. But this was engaging, and surprisingly cohesive for being written by two people.

Behind That Curtain, Earl Derr Biggers: read somewhere, earlier this year, that our knee-jerk assumption that the Charlie Chan mysteries were racist isn't really true. And yes, having read one now, Charlie does dabble in flowery humility, and his attitudes towards women are not at all progressive, but he's well-respected by almost everyone he meets, and the ones who do bluster about being bested by a Chinaman are, basically, idiots. Plus, this was a great mystery: long-vanished ladies! Enigmatic clues! Quite enjoyable.

American Nerd: The Story of My People, Benjamin Nugent: a good "ethnography" of the history and subtypes of the nerd, including the roots of the type in the Romantic rejection of reason as what sets man apart in favor of emotionalism--hence seeking rational and rule-based means of discourse (which something like D&D has at its base) made one less than human, instead of more so as the ancients would have believed. He also theorizes that the fake hipster nerd is an attempt to attain authenticity by allying oneself with the artless outsider--really kind of the same way the Beats co-opted black jazz culture, and just as annoying. It's not as boring or scholarly as I make it sound; while I could have done without some of Nugent's self-flagellation for abandoning his nerd friends when he got to high school, it's a fast and oddly heartwarming read.

About to start Solzhenitsyn's August 1914! 700 pages of sheer delight, no doubt.