What I'm Reading: Smoke and Mirrors

Today, caught in the death grip of whatever was wrong with me this morning, I wrapped up Sorcery and Cecelia by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer (fantastic book that I will talk about later and in Googling, found two sequels that I have just ordered from Amazon) and picked up Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman. I'm likely running the risk of Gaiman-ing out my readers but (shhh, don't tell them) I don't care. I have yet to be unimpressed by his writing which is a really passive way of saying that his writing impresses me. Were I ever to meet him, I would ask him if he knew how great he was. (Side note: If I ever spoke to Patricia Wrede [again], I'd ask the same question.)

So anyway, Smoke and Mirrors is an amalgam of his short stories and a few poems that have been previously published in anthologies and other collections.What I enjoy about this book is that it seems to be a really great representation of the things that have inspired and influenced Gaiman as a writer and professional imagination-man. There are stories here that touch on H.P. Lovecraft and traditional fairy tales and classic horror films but all with Gaiman's personal twist on them. Some are uncomfortable to read but possibly only because I am Minnesotan and discomfort comes easily to me. My only problem with this collection is that when I read the pieces that mention Larry Talbot (the wolfman) by name, I can't help but envision Lon Cheney Jr. in the role, with his perpetually stricken face. Again, more of a personal problem.

I definitely recommend Smoke and Mirrors to anyone who likes a story with a good twist or someone who doesn't have a lot of spare time to read and wants a quick payoff. Short story collections are great for that and this one in particular never fails to deliver.

So here's the blog schedule, as I promised:
Sunday: What I'm Reading
Monday: Character Profile
Wednesday: Quote of the Week
Friday: Author Spotlight

I'll be running occasional polls of authors and characters (though Character Profile days will start with Nancy, Scout, and Clare as promised) and other miscellaneous things. Feel free to comment whenever with requests, suggestions, or anything.

The Infinitely Quotable

I've had this strange habit all my life of writing down the things that people say. I have three ring binders full of quotes from movies, songs, and books. There are pages in those binders full of quotes from family vacations and parties. There are even some pages in the Mall of America FranklinCovey store planner filled with strange things customers have said. It's always just been a compulsion of mine to keep track of things that touch me, inspire me, or make me laugh. My binders are somewhere in my parents' garage but I do have a number of books here (of course) and the delightful internet at my fingertips, so here are a few of my favorite quotes:

"To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!" -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Always do right. That will gratify some of the people and astonish the rest." -Mark Twain

"The human race has one really effective weapon and that is laughter. Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand." -Mark Twain

"A person with a new idea is a crank until that idea succeeds." -Mark Twain

"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured." -Mark Twain

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." -Mark Twain

"A cauliflower is just a cabbage with a college education." -Mark Twain

"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight." -The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

"Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are." -The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

"I'll never be certain, of course, but I think he meant to bring me up against the realities, to guide me across the river and to take me to the edge and to stand a kind of vigil as I chose a life for myself." -The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

"If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote." -The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

"And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen." -The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

"What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again." -The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

"All fire burns, little baby. You'll learn." -Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

"'Good luck,' whispered the Angel Islington. There was a rushing sound like a wind soughing across a lost forest, or the beating of mighty wings." -Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

"Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?" -The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

"Sometimes he would rock her to sleep in his arms, and read her left to right, and know everything he needed to know about the world. If it wasn't written on her, it wasn't important to him." -Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

"He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad." -Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

"Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for." -Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

"She felt a total displacement, like a spinning globe brought to a sudden halt by the light touch of a finger. How did she end up here, like this? How could there have been so much--so many moments, so many people and things, so many razors and pillows, timepieces and subtle coffins--without her being aware? How did her life live itself without her?" -Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

"He knew that I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else." -Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

"God loves the plagiarist. And so it is written, 'God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them.' God is the original plagiarizer. With a lack of reasonable sources from which to filch--man created in the image of what? the animals?--the creation of man was an act of reflexive plagiarizing; God looted the mirror." -Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

"Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody." -Mark Twain

"After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her." -"The Diary of Adam" by Mark Twain

"Wherever she was, there was Eden." -"The Diary of Adam" by Mark Twain

"My, you're full of many-faceted questions this morning."

Final book tally for the year: 103.
Including re-reads: 107.

Admittedly, a lot of this was garbage. I read almost every free trash novel I could get on my Nook. It's full of classics now that haven't been touched and it's my goal to read them all before anything else this year.

That is, before everything other than War for the Oaks by Emma Bull. I've started reading it again making it my first book of the year for four years running. It's an incredible modern fairy tale (yes, the '80s are still modern) set in Minneapolis about a rock guitarist named Eddi and her role in a war between two factions of the Folk. There are few books that can truly make me laugh out loud and this is one of them. It also makes me cry, every time I read it. The music and clothing are dated but they don't distract from the story at hand. This book is going to wear out long before I'm finished re-reading.

And when I look at the acknowledgments, I find that so many of my favorite authors are tied together. Bull thanks Patricia Wrede, an author I admire for her strong female characters and humorous prose. She also mentions being half of the Flash Girls, the other half being the Fabulous Lorraine, Neil Gaiman's assistant. Three authors I adore, all tied together.

With no further ado, I present my favorite books of 2010, in the order that I read them:

1. War for the Oaks by Emma Bull: I think I've been pretty clear about why I love this book.
2. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood: Atwood's dystopian novels are always chilling and intriguing and entirely too possible. Oryx and Crake is no exception.
3. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman: A ghostly retelling of Kipling's classic The Jungle Book, sure to become a classic in its own right.
4. Stardust by Neil Gaiman: A great story about a boy and his quest to bring a star to his beloved. Alert: Madness ensues!
5. Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer: Post-WWII author visits an island that was occupied by the Nazis during the war. It's one of the best epistolary novels I've read.
6. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane: Thrilling and chilling. It really was an interesting insight into old psychiatric practices and it had some great twists.
7. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane: I actually hadn't seen the movie before I read the book this year. I've experienced both by now and can happily say that the book is better.
8. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett: An angel, a demon, a witch, and a witch-finder try to avoid the apocalypse. I really want to read more Terry Pratchett now.
9. American Gods by Neil Gaiman: This is one of my favorite books ever. I have lent it out numerous times and nobody's come away disappointed.
10. Public Enemies by Bryan Burrough: You've seen the movie, now read the book! It goes into much more than just Dillinger and it's far less romanticized.
11. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood: A fictionalized version of the story of Grace Marks, a maid convicted of murdering her employer in 1843. Atwood humanizes Grace and fills out her story.
12. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry; Let the Circle Be Unbroken; and The Road to Memphis by Mildred D. Taylor: These books were great when I first read them as a child. They're even better and more nuanced now that I'm older.
13. His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman: Again, great when I first read them when I was younger and much better now.
14. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut: This man is the master of funny-because-it's-painfully-true.
15. Monster by A. Lee Martinez: A loaner from a friend at work, it's a really funny novel about mythical creatures in our modern world.
16. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman: Incredible story about an alternate universe underneath London. I love this novel so much.
17. The Millenium Trilogy by Steig Larsson: An intricately lain story about violence against women. The heroes of these novels are very, very human and at times it can be difficult to cheer for them but cheer you will.
18. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby: Another Hornby classic about people trying to save themselves and ultimately saving each other.
19. Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett: A sweet little boy charms his curmudgeonly grandfather and then all of England.
20. Mairelon the Magician and The Magician's Ward by Patricia Wrede: Regency London but with magic! Kim is one of the best, strongest female characters I've ever encountered.
21. Scott Pilgrim 1-7 by Bryan Lee O'Malley: A series of graphic novels celebrating video games, love, music, and stupid boys. I laughed repeatedly while reading these.
22. Casting Off by Nicole R. Dickson: A woman travels to the Aran Islands with her young daughter to escape her past only to find her future.
23. Snow White and Rose Red by Patricia Wrede: More strong females! A retelling of the original Snow White story.

Clearly I'll be writing more about Patricia Wrede sometime in the near future. Her Enchanted Forest Chronicles series is another great read and one that I didn't get to indulge in last year. There's always 2011!

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"Oh, I know that, my sweet, but dangerous to what portion of you? Your physical self? Your sanity? Your immortal soul? Or, perhaps, your heart?"
Eddi couldn't help but flinch a little at that. "Don't be annoying. You know what I mean."
"Yes," he sighed, "I do. But are you certain you don't want the answers to the others as well?
"No. Not from you, anyway."
"I didn't really think you would. No, my iris, you may go dancing fearlessly and with the utmost lightness of foot. You will be as safe as if you were at home with me."
"How safe is that?" Eddi asked.
The phouka's gaze was measuring. "My, you're full of many-faceted questions this morning."
-War for the Oaks by Emma Bull

As Slow and Transparent as Glass

Okay, I'll admit it: I haven't been reading The Pillars of the Earth. I've actually been trying to gear up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) by brainstorming plots and characters. And by "brainstorming plots and characters" I really mean that I've been haunting their message board, watching to see if there would be any write-ins near me. I may have to organize one myself. It all kicks off on Monday, which I just happen to have off from work. I'm still not sure who or what I'm going to write about, so I picked up No Plot, No Problem by NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty today. It's really good; he's got a great sense of humor in his writing that makes me laugh but doesn't diminish the points he's trying to make. We'll see where I go from here but I'm already more excited now than I was last year.

One medium that intrigues me is the comic book or graphic novel. I don't have the drawing chops to pull it off by myself but I'd love to team up with an artist sometime to create a comic. While it seems like the focus is much more on the art than on the words, if the dialogue is lacking then the whole book goes down with it. I say "book," but really there are so many different formats that comics come out in now: strips, books, webcomics, graphic novels. And so many ways to access them!

It's also a really versatile medium that lends itself well to lots of different topics. Art Spiegelman created Maus to tell his parents' experience during the Holocaust. Neil Gaiman, with various artists, wrote the Sandman series about the Dream King and his siblings: Death, Destruction, Destiny, Desire, Despair, and Delirium. And Scott Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim series takes a love story and sets it to a video game soundtrack. These are all stories that could have been told completely in words but the graphic aspect of each strengthens them. Spiegelman uses the "Jews as mice" theme set up by Nazi propaganda but subverts it brilliantly. The artists of Sandman built a world that Gaiman, talented as he is, couldn't have stirred up in my imagination. As for Scott Pilgrim, an ode to video games, rock music, love, Canada, and youth is perfectly expressed to my generation through comics. We grew up on television, computers, and Nintendo (and/or Sega). We're incredibly visual.

It's a magical thing, to be swept through a story frame by frame. When an author can work with an artist (or create his or her own art) to show us instead of tell us, we as readers get a very unique experience. It's almost like a peek inside the writer's head--I know how I see this, but how do you see it?

I'm a day late in posting and approaching brain dead, so I'll wrap up with a question: What's your favorite comic?


-Bridget

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"Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting."
- The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Stories Are for Those Late Hours in the Night

My favorite scary book is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I first read it after Mr. Gaiman was generous enough to donate an autographed copy to a benefit that I was organizing (no, I didn't read the autographed one--I bought the ebook on my Nook). It's a Newbery medal-winning retelling of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book set in a graveyard and it is incredible. When you first encounter the man Jack and his dripping blade in the beginning, you know you're in for a creepy treat. In true Gaiman style, the fear is broken up by well-timed (and clever) laughs but it's never far off. Nobody Owens is a wonderful hero and just how I imagine a cemetery Mowgli would be. For a spine-tingling Halloween, I highly recommend The Graveyard Book.

Stories are meant to transport us from our real lives. If we are willing and the story is strong enough, for a few hundred pages we are elsewhere, being somebody else, doing something more interesting than what we're stuck with day-to-day. It's truly a beautiful thing, the interaction between a book and its reader. If it weren't for stories, many of us would be leading "lives of quiet desperation" without knowing what to call them. In one of my favorite books, The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien explores the qualities of truth, war, and writing. (I also noticed, when looking for the link, that there's a CliffsNotes and a SparkNotes version of this book. I feel sick. O'Brien is a truly masterful writer and I can't imagine really understanding TTTC without his language. That's a topic for another day, though.)

I especially enjoy the concept of story-truth that O'Brien introduces in this novel. In stories, the important factor is not factual truth but the feelings of the situation. A successful storytelling makes the reader or listener feel the emotions of the characters or the situation. O'Brien's argument is that it is story-truth that is important and it is through stories that we can start to understand life and to understand ourselves. He writes, "What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at, I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again." We can achieve these things through telling a story the way it's meant to be told, with an emotional truth that the facts can't cloud over or line up into neat columns.

And to bring things full-circle, it's story-truth that makes scary stories so frightening. The villain may be a ghost or a member of a murderous secret society or a man possessed by the rage of a hotel or some one or thing equally as unlikely. And yet there's something sinister, emotionally crippled, cold, calculating, and ultimately distressingly familiar about this character that tells you: I am. Maybe not in this particular form, but I exist. You've seen me on television, in the eyes of people on the street, and you fear me. If there wasn't a familiar quality in Jack Torrance, Elspeth Noblin, or the man Jack (a little shout-out to the two of you who responded last time!), we wouldn't be afraid because we simply wouldn't be able to suspend our disbelief.


Bridget

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"Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are."

-The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

The Beating of Mighty Wings

Maybe it's because I miss English classes or maybe because I simply don't want reading to be a solitary occupation anymore, but for some reason I'm driven to blog about books. Ones I've read or ones that are begging to be written, either way. I've been reading so much lately, charging through trash novel after trash novel and I think I've been hoarding all of these happy endings to combat my stress. I suppose that's okay for a while but it's time and past I was back to real, substantial books. Ones that make me think more than just "awwww" when I'm done. It's time and past I started writing again, not just stories but about stories. A dialogue, even if it's just between my fingers and my brain, about what I've just read.

I know where I'd like to go with this blog; I have lofty goals for it. I want to organize read-alongs and writers' discussions. I want to ask my favorite authors about their favorite books and why they love them so. First, though, I have to get started. (And get some followers, that might help.)

A friend from work has loaned me Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth and I've been neglecting it in favor of easier fare. It's probably also unfortunate timing due to the five boxes of books I just had shipped to myself from my parents' house. My goal now is to have it finished by the end of the month so I can go into NaNoWriMo suitably inspired. It's intriguing so far (and I'm not very far in yet) so I'm interested in seeing where it will go from here.

Wish me luck in finishing it--I have one week! And since my deadline is Halloween, I'll ask my first followers this question:

What's your favorite scary book or story?

I'll let you know mine on Tuesday!

-Bridget

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"'Good luck,' whispered the Angel Islington. There was a rushing sound, like a wind soughing across a lost forest, or the beating of mighty wings."
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman