There is no frigate like a book

So, because of all the running I've been doing lately, I've been listening to lots of audiobooks. My first week I tried to listen to music, and I got slower and slower and more and more bored. So I tried Dickens. It changed everything. Each time I have a book I really like or really hate, I think--I must write a review of that. So here are my reviews, in some cases written long after the fact. Enjoy them or not--this is mostly for me. 

Non-fiction:

I have discovered that really good nonfiction is just as good at transporting me to new places as fiction is.

Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand. Stunning, compelling, inspiring. The best non-fiction book I have ever been a part of up until that point. I loved every minute of it. Louis Zamperini is my new hero. I cried at the end.

Cleopatra. This probably would have been better to be read than listened to--difficult to remember all the funny names. My copy didn't get all the way dowloaded and I was left in the mausoleum with Cleopatra over Marc Antony's dead body. I was pretty sure she killed herself (spoiler!), but I borrowed a copy at Barnes and Noble just to check. She did. I was pretty interested in the story as a whole, but

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, was much better to listen to. Less speculation, more letters and verifiable events. I'm still in the middle of this, but I've loved it. Right now, I'm upset with Catherine because she dumped her Polish boyfriend and put him on the throne of Warsaw to be a puppet, so she could keep her military boyfriend. I think she's making a mistake, but she isn't listening to me. Anyway, I'm living in imperial Russia right now--that's what I'm saying about nonfiction being transporting.

Teacher Man. I quite liked it at first--by the end I was a little bored. I liked the discovery of Frank McCourt's teaching voice in the classroom. It did make me miss teaching, but not as much as I was worried it would.

Is Everyone Hanging out Without Me? And other concerns. This was not as funny or inappropriate as Bossypants--should I be admitting that I read/listened to either of these? Bossypants made me laugh so hard I was lizzing. I didn't actually listen to it--I borrowed it from the library.

Fiction--This has not been as successful for me.

Our Mutual Friend: This is a librivox recording--read by volunteers, which makes for uneven listening. The books itself is lovely, one of my favorites of Dicken's. I come back to this book when I'm in between the other books.

A Christmas Visitor and Death Comes to Pemberley. These two mystery novels, both by people who ought to be good at their craft, were super duper disappointing. A Christmas Visitor was probably the worst book I have ever listened to. I knew the moment they met with the killer it was him, and spent the rest of the novel thinking all the characters were idiots and the author was an idiot for thinking her readers were as stupid as her characters for not figuring it out immediately.

I should have known better than to listen Death Comes to Pemberley. I have long since given up on Austen sequels--they are invariably ridiculous, and this one was no exception. Elizabeth has lost all her zip. And don't try to come up with your own timeline for a novel and connect it to a novel that actually has one--Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice don't take place at the same time and there is no sense saying they do.

Both these novels were "dithering novels." Basically, nothing ever happened on the stage of the novel--it was a like a Greek tragedy. All the events happened off stage and then everyone would spend chapters relating and rerelating what had happened to each other and wondering who could possibly have done the terrible thing that no one actually saw. Neither of the authors knew what was going on in their own novel, so they spent all their time ordering food and servants about, instead of organizing their own narrative. I was concerned that my eyes would actually stick in the permanently rolled position as my mother warned me they would.

The end.

In Other News

I have decided to read the complete works of Dickens. And by complete--I mean all the novels--not the random in between stuff. I've begun The Pickwick Papers this week and I'm enjoying it. I remember beginning it when I was too young for Dickens, and I didn't understand one word in twenty. But I think I am old enough for Dickens now--old enough to understand when his tongue has been fused to his cheek.

Speaking of old, I am also watching Ian McKellen in King Lear. I am not liking it quite as much as I had hoped I would, but it is still a good waste of time.

In which I wax Rhetorical (badly)

I became so intrigued by a recent facebook discussion (32 comments long!), that I was more tempted than I ever have been before to participate in a facebook discussion. However, my own generally introverted, cooler head prevailed, and instead, I write here, in my ivory tower of blogging--I much prefer it this way. Real disagreement, real confrontation, I still can't handle.

So anyway, here are a few observations I make--the subject of which you will possibly be able to discern before I am through but which I actually refrain from coming out and declaring my own position on. (Although I began this blog committed to keeping my own discussion respectful and entirely logical, as I progressed, I became more and more impassioned, and as a result, my rhetoric suffered--even in an unknown blog, the dialogue disintegrates.)

1. You will never convince anyone who disagrees with you of anything over facebook. Try as you will, you will only devolve into correcting someone's grammar--they must be wrong, if they confuse its and it's; their, they're and there.

2. Personal experience will nearly always trump anything else. Those who have read about or experienced the exception will cry out that information in dark corners of the internet, attempting to drown out the overwhelming majority of the rule. 

3a. Because of the vastness of the internet, you can find information supporting virtually any claim you were so inclined to make. So, with "proof" to be found everywhere, how do you decide what is credible and what is not?
 
3b. I have not done a lot of research on this particular subject--mostly because generally I trust the authorities which some say I cannot trust under any circumstances. But I can tell you, that if I were to begin doing a research project, I would begin with credible sources--credible meaning scholarly, research-based, peer-reviewed journals grounded in the presentation of scientific evidence.

3c. In short, as a teacher of rhetoric, you will never ever convince me that the British Medical Journal is a less reputable source than an individual's private blog. Just as I hope that no one would ever quote anything that I say on here, I would trust a peer-reviewed, scholarly source far above the words of an individual vomiting his or her own opinions into Blogger or Wordpress and publishing them for credulous people to quote on facebook.

4. As the daughter, sister, cousin, friend, and (most importantly) wife of quite a few doctors and doctors in training, not a single, solitary one of them has ever come home and said, "Hi--today I learned that I should lie to my patients  in order to get a payout from pharmaceutical companies." And, while I don't know all the doctors in the world, I would venture to suppose that the majority of them are well-intentioned people, committed to "do[ing] no harm," which includes obtaining the best information possible about the preventative care they recommend their patients. Doctors are taught "evidence-based medicine" in schools, which means that they distill all the research that has been done to determine the best treatment or preventative treatment.

5. Not every researcher, not every doctor, not every medical school, not every government health agency is in the pocket of a pharmaceutical. Indeed, that would be a vast conspiracy if they were. Most researchers are committed to finding the truth--and they generally publish their discoveries in peer-reviewed journals--so that they can get tenure, as opposed to vast payouts from large corporate entities.

6. But if we truly cannot trust the guardians of our health--if we cannot believe what decades of education, research, and regulation have proposed to be the truth, we really are in a sad state of affairs. If we spit in the face of those who have worked hard to prove their trustworthiness, and instead turn to untrained individuals who sneak under the gatekeepers of printed publications, no one will know anything for certain. It would be dizzying and debilitating.

Getting over Mr. Crawford

Not that it matters to anyone in real life, but I have always had a book crush on Mr. Crawford of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. I think I would not have been like Fanny Price had I been given the chance. I probably would have been like Julia Bertram. Foolish and perhaps impetuous, I would have fallen for him against my will, realized that he wasn't interested, and then tried to extricate myself with what little grace I had left. I have always thought that Fanny is an idiot for choosing pokey old Edmund over him (Edmund does have one great line, but really only one: "I like the glossy spots--" admiring Fanny's dress one night).

Well, I think I am finally over him. It took me a long time to realize it (and, isn't that the fabulous thing about Austen? I who have been reading and rereading and rereading this book for at least 13 years or so, finally "got it." Perhaps that isn't the genius of Austen so much as the stupidity of Amanda).

But at any rate, my getting over Mr. Crawford has come on gradually. The time before last I began to notice what a great actor Mr. Crawford is--in the scenes when they are actually acting. Even before Fanny receives any attention from him, she sits, transfixed by his performance of Lover's Vows--and for him, and for Maria Bertram (who eventually leaves her husband to run away with Mr. Crawford), vows really are only a performance--nothing to do with real life.

Anyway, this time through sealed the deal. Early on in the novel, when you are still getting to know Mr. Crawford and Maria, they go to visit Maria's fiance's house (Mr. Rushworth is his name)with a large group of people. I never understood the point of this section until now. In Mr. Crawford 's attempts to "improve" Rushworth's house, they take a tour of the grounds and park with Maria (Fanny is present here to see all of this). At one point, they cannot enter a certain part of the grounds because it is locked behind a gate. Maria sends Mr. Rushworth back to go get the key and he rushes off. But Maria still isn't satisfied.

I'm just going to paste the whole passage in here. Maria is speaking here:

But unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and
hardship. 'I cannot get out,' as the starling said." As she spoke, and
it was with expression, she walked to the gate: he followed her. "Mr.
Rushworth is so long fetching this key!"

"And for the world you would not get out without the key and without Mr.
Rushworth's authority and protection, or I think you might with little
difficulty pass round the edge of the gate, here, with my assistance;
I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and
could allow yourself to think it not prohibited."

"Prohibited! nonsense! I certainly can get out that way, and I will.
Mr. Rushworth will be here in a moment, you know; we shall not be out of
sight."

"Or if we are, Miss Price will be so good as to tell him that he will
find us near that knoll: the grove of oak on the knoll."

Fanny, feeling all this to be wrong, could not help making an effort to
prevent it. "You will hurt yourself, Miss Bertram," she cried; "you will
certainly hurt yourself against those spikes; you will tear your gown;
you will be in danger of slipping into the ha-ha. You had better not
go."

Her cousin was safe on the other side while these words were spoken,
and, smiling with all the good-humour of success, she said, "Thank you,
my dear Fanny, but I and my gown are alive and well, and so good-bye."

Of course, I'm sure that everyone else who read the book has already figured out that this foreshadowed Maria's eventual vaulting of the restrictions and "hardship" of matrimony, with Mr. Crawford's help and assistance, but I never before realized it so clearly. Fanny is aware of both her and Mr. Crawford's true characters, aware that they would vault the gate and think it not prohibited, and bid goodbye to her despite any potential danger. So, although she may have pretended to have been surprised by their ending, I should not have been, and I let my literary affections get all tangled up.

I still maintain however, that his complexity, his "almost could have been happy" story makes him one of the best-written characters of Austen's novels.

Poem

I've been going through boxes, putting Christmas away, and I discovered a poem I wrote after Sam was born.

I've never written a poem before, don't know how, and don't really want to learn. I take my definition of poetry this time from Wordsworth: "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." I did not revise this poem, I just wrote it, and few read this blog anyway, so that's why I post it.

Asleep

across my lap
you sprawl
one small fist raised
as if
to acknowledge
the wonder of your own
existence.

inside your ear
i find
tiny red veins
--or are they
arteries?--
and i marvel at
what power in me
made you.

i stroke your cheek
you flinch squint smile
back at me.
together
we find strength
in our
creation.

Writing Metaphors

At the beginning of every semester that I taught, I would have my students do an exercise where they came up with a metaphor for writing. I always did the activity with them, and came up with new metaphors every time, usually reflecting the current state of my masters thesis. I liked them, and want to keep them, so here they are:

1. Sep. 5, 2008

Writing is like jumping into a pool of water belly first and then realizing you can't swim. As you sink to the bottom, overwhelmed with your own stupidity for thinking this was a good idea, you suddenly remember a stroke you learned from your swimming lessons and the community rec center when you were six years old and your mother had to force you to jump in the pool because you were worried you wouldn't make any friends. You recall these friends and the swimming you did together and begin to struggle upwards, finally reaching the surface, and then discover what it is like to breathe, as if for the first time.

2. I don't have a date, but it was probably Jan. 5, 2009

For me, writing is like standing in stagnant, warm water--mud between my toes. I want to move, want to write, but the water is too warm, the mud too squishy, and I stand still, not writing, not moving. I can hear a tidal wave coming, can feel the breeze as the water picks up speed, but for now, I am stuck, know that before the water reaches me, I will begin to run.

3. The next day, (after I began my thesis)

To me, writing is like a frightening dog you promised to watch. You try to run away from it, but you've sworn to take care of it--feed it, play with it, and despite your terror, your duty is clear. So slowly, hesitatingly, you step up to the dog, reach out your finger--and he licks you, tackles you--and you find it is not as hard to do your duty as you had feared it would be.

4. Today

Writing is like a great big elephant that someone gave you. You are pretty sure it would come in handy, could be eminently serviceable and useful, if only you could figure out what to do with it. You and the elephant stare at each other, eyes locked. Then you look away and the elephant meanders off, presumably to find someone who actually knows how to take care of it.

I'm not sure what this metaphor reflects.

The end.

Reconciliation

This post is not a reconciliation with Frances Burney, who decided that having her heroine nearly die at the end worked so well in Cecilia, that she should do it in Camilla. It did not work well either time--female deathbed scenes are like our modern-day car/aiport chases in the rain.

Instead, this post is about my senior dinner dance, when I went to Barnes and Noble with a group in order to escape the dancing. In an attempt to impress the company, I came up with a metaphor--that books are like certain pieces of underwear, sports bras for example: you probably might share them with family members or close friends, but you wouldn't borrow a sports bra if you didn't know where it had been. Similarly, you wouldn't borrow a book from a library if you could buy it new. It was a question of hygiene, really.

I was so taken with my own clever thought at the time that I seldom returned to a public library since then. Yesterday, Sam and I went to the Durham County Public library with some friends.

I walked in the door, looked around me, and was immediately struck with the force of my own betrayal.

How could I have forgotten?

How could I have forgotten the first thing I did every summer was go the library, stack up books as high as I could carry, and read them until my mom suggested I ought to attempt to do something productive with my summer?

How could I have forgotten the bright colors in the children's section, the out of the way corners perfect for curling up in in?

How could I have forgotten that books are often meant to be displayed with their plastic protected covers facing outward because in some cases you actually can judge a book by its cover--or by the fact that a librarian recommended it?

And how could I have forgotten that sometimes books really are more enjoyable when they have a history, when the pages are soft with use?

Here I was, thinking about doing a library science degree. And I honestly believed before yesterday that it was because I liked my books to be organized.

Yesterday, the public library and I were reunited. May we never again be so long apart.