more vampires
April 14, 2008
Even though I didn’t like I Am Legend with its vampires I read Stephanie Meyer’s vampire triology next. My first exposure to the triology came this summer past. My sister, who is fifteen years younger than I, came to stay at my house for a week while she visited the university and applied to school there. One evening we visited a book store and she pounced on Eclipse (2008) which had not been out long at all. We returned home and after visiting with me about fifteen or twenty minutes she retired to her bedroom for good. Ian came home from work around 4 a.m. and told me later that morning that her light was still on. She stayed up to read the whole book through.
I cannot blame her, for Meyer’s writing is simple and seductive and so easy to sink into. Her storytelling is fabulous and no doubt, that is the greatest appeal of her books. Her characters are complex, too. But, it is high school, after all. So high school. Isabella Swan is the protagonist. She moves to Washington to live with her father, the sheriff, of a small, gloomy but green, town. Her mother remarried a baseball player who travels frequently and Isabella felt as though her living with her mother placed a hardship upon her since she couldn’t tag along on new hubby’s travels.
Basically the first book, Twilight, is about Isabella getting used to her new town, school, and friends. Her father is mostly absent, but she cooks dinner for them each evening. She makes new friends easily and eventually befriends a passel of vampires who belong to the same family. She falls in love with Edward, and he feels the same for her. But it’s tough dating a vampire. He’s so cold. And has to control his blood lust around her. And some of the vampires have special powers. Like Alice, Edward’s sister, can see the future. The excitement comes near the end of the first novel when they encounter three other vampires. Almost forgot: These vampires are vegetarians, of sorts. They don’t prey upon humans. They only drink blood from large animals like bears, cougars, etc. The three other vampires the family and Isabella encounter do drink human blood. And they all want Isabella. Throughout the entire trilogy (and there’s a fourth book coming out this summer, so what does that make it?) Isabella struggles with her desire to become a vampire. Sometimes she is conflicted, but for the most part, she is sure that a vampire’s life is for her.
In the next book, New Moon, Edward decides that Isabella cannot live a normal life with him in it. And so he leaves. His whole family leaves Washington for greener pastures. Isabella falls into a deep depression and only goes through the motions of life. Finally, there’s a break in her depression and she spends more and more time with Jacob. They’ve known one another for years. He’s a few years younger than she, and an American Indian who lives on the local rez. She has him repair two motorcycles that she bought with the hope of living on the edge. Mostly, she’s suicidal at this point because she cannot live without Edward. So high school. But then Jacob starts acting weird and won’t take her calls. He avoids her. Readers can put two and two together quite easily if they remember the story Jacob told Isabella in the first book about werewolves and vampires. Eventually Isabella guesses that he’s a werewolf. The problem, of course, is that werewolves and vampires are mortal enemies. So how will Isabella juggle her friendship with Jacob and her feelings for Edward? Oh, Edward returns to her life. The story takes a dramatic turn when Edward thinks that Isabella is dead and he goes to Italy to have the uber vampires kill him, put him out of his misery, for he cannot live without Isabella.
Somehow, I’ve forgotten the third book entirely. Eclipse is filled with Isabella’s woes about finishing high school and moving on to college. She disdains normal human experiences and aches to join Edward and the Cullen family as her own vampire self. One of her major problems is that she’s aging. She turns 18 in this book and doesn’t want to get older than Edward. Edward wants her to go to college and have all those experiences that he missed out on when he was human. Then there are tons of murders happening in Seattle that have Isabella’s father and the Cullen’s out of sorts. The Cullens suspect it’s a pack of newborn vampires going through the city’s population. They prepare for an attack, for they are certain, given Alice’s special powers, that the pack will soon descend upon their town. There’s a bit of negotiating between Isabella and Edward regarding her becoming a vampire. She wants it done soon. He wants to wait. Then he extracts a promise from her that they will marry before she becomes a bloodsucker. Naturally there is a huge fight between vampires when the newborn pack reaches Forks, but surprisingly, the werewolves agree to fight alongside the vegetarian vampires. They fight. Some die, some don’t.
Now I await for the release of the fourth book this summer to see how things turn out. I feel that Isabella won’t become a vampire. Frankly, Jacob, the werewolf seems a better match for Isabella, and one of the struggles she faces in the third book is the realization that she loves Jacob more than in a “just friends” way. The vampires are glamorous and lovely and drive sports cars, but otherwise, they’re boring. Go werewolf, go!
horses, of course
April 23, 2007
Of Women and Horses (2000) was a big coffee table-ish book. There were photos. There were essays. Some were more interesting than others. GaWaNi Pony Boy asked dozens of horsey women to contribute to the book. And that’s what it is: Lots of women writing about their personal and professional relationships with horses. Helen Crabtree, for example. And I certainly enjoyed Gabrielle Boiselle’s gorgeous horse photography. Not to downplay Boiselle’s talent, but I wonder how one could take an ugly photo of a horse?
I’m skeptical when I read about how women are innately better at something than men, and vice versa. Contributors to this book wrote about how women’s sensitivity and patience and caretaking of others transfers easily to working with horses. And I don’t deny that, I just think there are plenty of men who have the skills to work well with horses, too. In fact, GaWaNi Pony Boy is a perfect example of that. His comments were interspersed among essays. He usually addressed what one of the women wrote about, perhaps her trouble with getting her horse to be submissive, or the spiritual relationship that develops between woman and horse.
Anyway, it was a lovely introduction to the special relationship between women and horses. After all, as someone once said “The West was hard on women and horses.”
Also started Mary Twelveponies’ There Are No Problem Horses, Only Problem Riders (1982). Probably won’t read this one straight through. Mostly picked it up to figure out my own problem with riding Jules. I can’t get him to go. okay, he’ll go for a while. Then stop and I can’t get him started again.
Obviously am sending him mixed signals and hope I have in my head how to work out those problems. And am so glad I didn’t fall back on my tried and true way to a man (or horse’s) heart: Via the stomach. I planned to offer Jules apples, carrots, or peppermints to make him mind me, make him love me, but Twelveponies says that’s not effective.
What with all this equine interest I may shake a tailfeather at the Western genre. Might read some Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, and Elmore Leonard. Get caught up on horse lore. I love reading about the culture of horsemanship. Also love picking up valuable bits of horse psychology. And the history? Oh, the history of horses.
alaska to utah and around the world
March 22, 2006
Another lovely thing: While I was away Carolyn, an officemate, repotted last year’s shamrock plant for me. It’s been in a bright yellow ceramic pot for months, but I hadn’t gotten around to bringing in dirt, etc. Last I left off, I was into And She Was (2006), fiction set in southwest Alaska. Did I say I ended up liking it a great deal? The back and forth between the white narrator and the native women worked out better than I thought. That lead me to scour my shelves for books about the Bering Sea land route.
Naturally I thought of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (2005). I bought three copies at christmas. One for me, one for Dad, and one for father-in-law. They’ve both read it and enjoyed it. Lord, it was lengthy. There were times when I wasn’t sure where the author was headed. It was well-written; no stumbling over grammar or sentence structure. And I absorbed a great deal of information. Basically, Mann wrote the book because there were all these new theories about the pre-columbian world that were not being taught. His child learned the same incorrect information about the origins of north & south american indians. Columbus et al didn’t cause massive deaths when they came to the Americas because epidemics had already wiped out millions of people populating those land masses. And, there’s new evidence that the Americas were settled millennia before western europe. Jungle-covered population centers in central america were discussed. But one of the most interesting arguments Mann made was that the Amazon and other “natural” areas, had been tended and altered to suit the needs of their inhabitants. That throws this idea of “virgin wilderness” out the window. Environmentalists and ecologists are not happy about that. Really an excellent book, if rather long. I recall lots of notes in the back, and an extensive bibliography.
almost a reading frenzy
February 25, 2002
Finished True & authentic history of Jenny Dorset (2001) yesterday afternoon. It was just okay. Not as fabulous as I’d hoped it would be. A truly interesting story, though it was quite long…494 pages. My favorite part was taken from Jenny’s diary which read:
I saw Andrew with his trousers down in a Private Act and was curious about his system but could not ask. I presume it is like horses (74).
Yes, parts were quite funny, but I think the humor was lost on me, perhaps I should pick up another of Philip Lee Williams’s books to see if I like him for real.
Next, I ripped through Almost (2001) by Elizabeth Benedict. I think this was the first bit of her writing that I have read. Again, it was just okay. The story was interesting, but perhaps I just didn’t like her style of writing. It is about a woman, estranged from her husband, who returns to do damage control after her almost-divorced husband dies. Was it suicide? Did he die of natural causes? And, what about that dog? Honestly, (sorry for the spoiler here) I thought for sure that once she found the dog that they would learn that he ate his master (the corpse wasn’t found until several weeks later). Guess I’m just too used to the more grisly story. I muddled through it okay and it seemed to get a bit better, there was a bit of mystery to the plot, so I guess that’s what kept me reading on. It was a short book though, just 258 pages, and not the standard hardback size. I’m always looking for good library quotes, and she did favor me with one on page 31:
She wore glasses with tortoise-shell frames that she needed for reading, and she suddenly looked official, like a university librarian.
Then, I read Goose Music (2001). It too was difficult for me to get into at first. Maybe I just had an off day of reading, perhaps I’m choosing bad writers. Sometimes I forget where I hear about books, I suppose I should consider the source more seriously before investing such time in these books that are just okay. Well, Goose Music reminded me a bit of Tom Robbins, who I really used to love. I never could seem to finish Half asleep in frog pajamas, so I believe that I left that age (or stage) where I found his writing appealing. But, Richard Horan managed to blend elements of Native Americans, the circus, tattoos, and wild west exhibits….and a few libraries and librarians for that matter, into a unique book. It did hold my interest and devolved into the zany at times, yet cannot quite compare to Robbins, though it’s likely the same genre.
Wow, I just learned that Robbins was born in Blowing Rock, NC and lived in Burnsville–both less than 30 minutes away from here– as a child, then later on to Virginia, Seattle, etc. I always wondered about his origins.
Several times throughout Goose Music librarians were mentioned. Here’s a sample from page 74:
Ms. Jane Reardon, MLS, head librarian of the Baraboo Public Library. She was the first woman to have sexual relationship with your brother and the second to bear him a child. She has much power and knowledge.
Another one from page 134 is:
You can’t go wrong at the library. The shoes always fit there.
And then of course there is a longer description of Jane Reardon, MLS on page 139:
…could perhaps be described as two parts Circe and one part Lucille Ball. Attractive, yet comedic. Eager to please, and yet pompous. With her baby-soft skin, black button eyes, silken black hair, tremendous breasts, and double-wide hips that swayed from side to side like a Grand Canyon burro, Ms. Jane Reardon, MLS, head librarian, was a seductress in the “librarian-next-door” sense….she sat on the edge of her seat as if on the verge of getting up to attend to some other business.
It is so nice to read such positive images of librarians. Kudos to Horan for investing his library heroine with such verve.
I began Straight Man (1997) last night and finished it up during my lunch today. Again, I had trouble truly engaging with Richard Russo’s work. The trouble seems to be that this book in particular was so dense, that I was hesitatnt to get drawn in. And, it was quite long as well. The characters were elegant, plot was good, writing was good, but…..it just seemed to take such an incredible amount of time for the plot to unfold. It was painfully odious at times, though I cannot say that I disliked it in its entirety. Mainly about academic life in the English department at an underrated state university, it was comical at times.
Jane Smiley’s Moo (1995) comes to mind, but really this Russo novel provides a more detailed depiction of academia. The thing that concered me most was that there was absolutely no mention of the library or librarians. So terribly sad. I did like that he made 2 cultural references that I’m particluarly fond of something about how you’re liking them apples? and leaving a cake out in the rain. I am suddenly at a loss though, for what shall I read next? I have several library books to look through for that answer.
a librarian quality
February 16, 2002
Thursday night I also finished reading Cherokee Women, yippee, and hip hip hooray. Come on, gimme three cheers. Oh, it wasn’t so terrible. But, glad to be done with it. Then I also read Steve Martin’s Shopgirl (2000), which had waited ever-so patiently on my bedside table for a week or two. It was interesting reading, but I’m not so sure that I approved of his characterizations of women. They were quite tired, boring, and old. Perhaps that’s what he’s surrounded by and doesn’t know any real women on whom to base his characters. They were just so shallow and were either madonnas or whores. His character development lacked complexity. But, the story was cute enough. Or novella, I should say. Had I realized that’s what it was I probably would have not read it. I don’t do novellas or short stories. I’m not sure where my problem lies with them, but I really avoid them, and poetry too. However, he also seems to have certain notions about librarians (p. 13):
Mirabelle wears her driving glasses as she grips the wheel with both hands. She drives in the same posture as she walks, overtly erect. The glasses give her a librarian quality–before libraries were on CD-ROM–and the ’89 Toyota truck she drives indicates a librarian’s salary, too.
So where’d he pick up those ideas? It’s not likely that he personally knows any librarians, anyway. Do librarians hang out with Hollywood comedians?
Last night I read far into Wilma Dyekman’s French Broad (1965), but did not complete it. But, the chapters I read were essentially worthless to me. They were all about the Civil War in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, which is fine to read about, but I never could keep her cast of characters straight, so I was lost as to who was Union and who was Confederate. And she kept talking about Knoxville (oh, i should have kept it with the typo for it really is Knox-Vile!) entirely too much, though she did mention the bridge burners, something that I’m familiar with. The Civil War is such an unknown subject to me. It’s overdone, and boring and well, just doesn’t interest me much at all.
Sharyn McCrumb’s Songcatcher is resting on my bedside table, awaiting its turn. It may have to wait quite some time because I’m trying to rapidly finish up research on Margaret Bourke-White, Josephine Baker, and Gloria Steinem, so I have several of their biographies and memoirs to muddle through first…. well, er actually, skim through.
not avon calling
February 14, 2002
Finished another quickly this evening after dinner. Victoria Calling Cards: Business & Calling Card Design. It’s something I looked at in a store but really didn’t want to purchase, so I had my library borrow it from another. This one traveled far, it’s from Birmingham public library. I usually like Victoria’s publications, they speak to the romantic hiding deep within my crusty librarian shell. It was short, and had many illustrations, that is the only reason I was so quick about it. I did however go through my stack of library books and cull them. Once whittled down to 8 or so books, they’re much more manageable. I’ll return the other 15 or more tomorrow. I don’t mind paying fines since that’s really the only way that I can truly support my library because they get to keep that money and do something wonderful with it.
And, I’m almost finished reading Perdue’s Cherokee Women (1998). I have another chapter or two to go, and hope to complete it tonight. It’s really a wonderful book, just filled with all sorts of useful and historic information. The problem is that I have such an interest in American Indians that I’ve done much leisure reading on the topic already, so this book, though especially wonderful, is intellectually redundant. But, I am committed to finishing it for several reasons….. First, it’s required for the course I’m taking this semester. Second, it is well-written, and third because I’ve already read at least 100 and something pages into the book and I’m not about to just cast it aside after such an investment of my time. That’s just not my way with books you see. My rule is that if the book cannot engage me within the first 30-45 pages (I certainly make allowances), then I chuck it. So many books, too little time. My motto, perhaps it should be my epitaph, now there’s a thought. That would be a tough decision since I really love Cicero’s “life without learning is death” but I cannot seem to find the Latin for it at the moment. Enough, time for reading. Let the pleasure begin!
enter courtney…
February 1, 2002
The Cobain book has picked up a bit that Miz Love has entered the picture. I had to stop at page 182 last night because I was quite suddenly drifting off into never-never land. And, from what I’ve gathered, he was a very disturbed human being. It’s quite frightful some of the things he does, creates, and imagines. Still, I look forward to the Hiaasen book, which I will likely devour this weekend.
Then I have that Stella Gibbons biography to read, and well, I really should finish up the two books I’ll be tested on Tuesday (Cherokee Women & French Broad). A busy weekend ahead, and there’s talk of snow in the air, so perhaps I’ll be all snug and cozy by the hearth while I read read read and then read some more.
oh yeah, word freakiness
August 7, 2001
Gosh, started Power (1998) by Linda Hogan, but couldn’t really get into it. It will sit on my bedside table for a few days until I feel like I can go back to it. Guess it’s just too lyrical, poetic, filled with imagery, and I like a one-two punch kinda book that’s pretty straightforward. But I’ve really enjoyed her other books Solar storms and Mean spirit. I found a Linda Hogan bibliography, too.
Also tried to read Cane River (2001) by Lalita Tademy, but just couildn’t get into it, either. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but my patience for books is really low right now.
Now I’m reading Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players (2001). It’s pretty engrossing, especially since I’m a Scrabble addict, myself. My only criticism of the book thus far (p.149) is that Stefan Fatsis doesn’t investigate or analyze the gender inplications of the game. Only one woman, Rita Norr has ever won the national championships, and at one point in the book Fatsis says,
it’s a fact of scrabble that the novice and intermediate ranks are heavy, literally and figuratively, with middle-aged women; twenty-five of my thirty-one opponents will be of the opposite sex, maybe one under age thirty.
So I’m wondering if the nature of Scrabble is more masculine, or if it’s just that misogyny permeates matches, or perhaps it’s just the author’s projection. Although he frequently mentions all the male freaks he encounters at matches, he doesn’t disparage them in the way that he does women (saying that they ‘chirp’ and referring to them as blue hairs).
