No time for fun, dammit!

If you're wondering why I haven't posted in over a week, it's because I haven't finished anything new. I've done virtually nothing but work, dammit! It sucks. But I'm popping on to share some of the book-related news in my own life:

Dedication sucked. Big surprise, right? I read the first three chapters and decided that it wasn't worth my time. Already, I could tell it would be plagued by the same problems as Citizen Girl: an underdeveloped/unsympathetic main character; failing to strike on the right side of the fine line of getting your readers to laugh with, rather than at, your character's mistakes; a lame plot that is neither believable nor an enjoyable fantasy. So I chucked it.

Currently reading Innocent Traitor, which turned out to actually be a novel, not a non-fiction book someone misplaced. More on this later.

Over the weekend, my BF visited. It was a very quick visit, and we didn't get to spend much quality time, but we did hit Barnes and Noble briefly. He wanted to get some reading for the train (he chose Last of the Mohicans, a surprise to me) but he also got me a book for my birthday, in addition to the nice planner and fancy pen he'd already given me. I had several in my hand, but he chose Grace Eventually by Anne Lamott. I've been wanting to read it for a long time. Maybe one day I'll get to. For now, it's shower time, and maybe some more of Innocent Traitor later. Back with more soon. Until then, good night...and good luck.

Trapped

I had two books due on my last library visit, both unread. I returned Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but something told me to keep Little Children by Tom Perrotta. I'm glad I did. I just finished it tonight.

Little Children is a very well-written book. I didn't realize that he was also the author of Election and Joe College. Based on this book, I'll definitely be checking out the others.

The book, which was recently made into a movie starring Brad Pitt and Kate Winslet (choices which I wholeheartedly support after reading the book), is set in a suburban Massachusetts town and documents the long, hot summer in the lives of several people in their early 30s. Sarah is a former women's studies major, former Starbucks employee and ABD who is surprised to find herself the stay-at-home mother of a three-year-old. Her husband, Richard, is much older than she is and is on his second marriage but prefers the company of his favorite webmistress, Slutty Kay, to his wife and daughter. Todd is a stay-at-home dad who is attempting to pass the bar exam on his third try. His secret is that he hasn't studied for months and doesn't want to be a lawyer anymore. His wife, Kathy, is a documentary filmmaker for PBS, but their financial issues, plus Todd's lack of motivation, is creating some serious strain on their marriage. Sarah and Todd meet at the playground, and begin an affair.

Mirroring their stories are that of Larry and Ronald, each a poignant reminder that there is always someone worse off than you. Larry had been a cop until he shot a teenager who was pointing what proved to be a toy gun at him. Now, he's retired due to PTSD stemming from the incident, and his marriage is disintegrating too. The presence of convicted child molester and all-around loser Ronald in the community has given Larry a frightening degree of focus: he devotes most of his time to driving by the house Ronald lives in with his aging mother and honking the horn, passing out fliers warning others about Ronald, spraying graffiti on the house, and leaving the occasional flaming bag of dog shit on the porch. Ronald is deeply depressed, after failing to find a job, being shunned by everyone but his mother, going on a disastrous date with a woman close to his own age, and fighting off his sexual proclivity towards younger children.

The story doesn't exactly end the way you hope, but by giving you a glimpse into each character's psyche, Perrotta manages to transform each one into a sympathetic person, shaped by circumstances larger than themselves. Even caricature supermom Mary Ann, in the final pages of the book, shocks readers by turning into a real person, bewildered at where she wound up, unhappy to be so far away from what she'd always imagined. In the end, that's what the book's all about: not choice, but the lack thereof, the way life makes its own plans and all you can do is bob along. Yet, for all of that, it's not a depressing book. The early pages, in particular, actually made me laugh out loud. I give this one a high recommendation. It's the perfect mix of seriousness and fun, exactly what you want as the weather's still nice but the end of the summer is beginning to close in.

Current library haul, and goodbye to some old friends

It's amazing how many books you can accumulate. My father is a retired history teacher, my mother is a retired English teacher and elementary writing aide, and my sister is working on her PhD in children's lit, so you can imagine the amount of books we have. Tonight, I took two boxes of books that have repeatedly failed to sell at garage sales to our local library. They have a used bookstore, with the proceeds benefiting the library, so I hope they sell there. We have about six more boxes out in the garage, so they'll see us again soon.

I looked around a bit tonight, after finally admitting that I'm not going to read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, at least not right now. I did renew Little Children and picked up the following:

Goodnight Nobody, Michael Knight
Lit Life, Kurt Wenzel
Innocent Traitor, Alison Weir
Dedication, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

All but Lit Life are new books, so we'll see how many I actually finish before they're due. If past experience with McLaughlin and Kraus holds true, Dedication at least should be an extremely quick read. Goodnight, Nobody isn't very long either, and is all short stories. But I've never been able to stop myself in libraries. Perhaps there's a bit of the feeling that all these books are free, and it's too good to be true, and the whole thing may be gone when I come back so I'd better take advantage. I generally wind up getting as many as I can carry out!

Harry Potter Retrospective

Lately, I've been re-reading all the Harry Potter books. They always make me feel better when I'm feeling shitty. I'm going to write to JK Rowling and tell her that someday. Harry is kind of an inspiring character. He is in many situations where he's forced to do an impossible task with little support, and always manages to keep going. In the fourth book, for instance: he's forced to compete far above his level in the Triwizard tournament, and everyone just wants to see him fail. He's suffered many losses and grew up starved for love, but it never makes him bitter or hateful. And I think I've mentioned before, in those dark days when my ex dumped me and my job ran out of money to pay me and my cat was dying and it just seemed like everything sucked, how I pulled through by reading the scene from the end of Azkaban, with the dementors, over and over again, and actually using a similar method (I mean, without the magic) to fight my own growing depression.

But really, I was also hoping that there would be tidbits scattered throughout the series that could be viewed differently in light of the last book. 1/4 of the way into HP6, I'm disappointed to say that I haven't found many yet. Two so far:

At the beginning of HP5, Harry and Dudley are attacked by dementors. Aunt Petunia astonishes everyone by demonstrating knowledge of dementors, and their position as prison guards at Azkaban. She elaborates that she heard that horrible boy telling her about it years ago. Harry (and the readers) assumed the horrible boy was James. It was actually Snape: when Harry looks into the Pensieve, one of the memories he views is a pre-Hogwarts conversation between Snape and Lily on this topic.

The Vanishing Cabinet, which allows the Death Eaters entry to Hogwarts in HP6, makes a throwaway appearance in HP2: Peeves smashes it at the request of Nearly Headless Nick, to distract Filch's attention from punishing Harry.

Do you have any?

The Seventh and Final Installment in the Epic Saga of Harry Potter

First off, let me state to my loyal readers: if you have not yet completed the book, and don't want to see any spoilers, please stop reading now. Otherwise, scroll down.































OK. I hope I've gotten it far enough down so that those who don't want to see any spoilers have been able to opt out. I received my copy from Barnes and Noble at 1:15 AM, and finished reading around 6:15 this evening. I really do believe this was the best installment in the series, and brought it to the perfect conclusion.

For nearly two years now, I've been bragging to anyone who would listen that I knew the whereabouts of one of the Horcruxes Harry was looking for. I was pleased to see that I was right: the locket had been stolen by Sirius's brother, Regulus A. Black, and was kicking around Grimmauld Place (the Order encounters it at the beginning of the 5th book, when they are cleaning the house.) It, in turn was stolen by Mundungus Fletcher, who used it as a bribe for...well, it's not that important. The point is that I was right. I am very clever!

Or maybe not. I was one of the very few in the anti-Snape camp. I thought he was just being himself when he killed Dumbledore. The truth is that "himself" was sadder than I'd ever imagined. The pro-Snape crowd was right about him. A sad and lonesome life he led, and the full story will cause readers to view his actions in previous volumes much differently.

Other than the location of the Horcrux, I really didn't know what was going to happen in this book. I couldn't even speculate. While I couldn't see it ending with Voldemort triumphing, I knew from previous installments that Rowling would not flinch from killing Harry if she felt that was the way the series needed to end. My one prediction was that this volume would have an extremely high body count, and it did. I count nine deaths on the Order side alone. As any reviewer will tell you, or any mildly observant reader will know, the books get progressively darker, and it's all been leading up to this, to war. Right from the beginning, it's clear that playtime is over and that the Death Eaters are prepared to be more aggressive than at any point in their shameful history. Harry suffers a loss right away, and a terrible loss for the Order follows quickly on its heels.

One strength of this series is that it presents Harry, and the other heroes, as human. They fight. They demonstrate remarkably bad judgment on many, many occasions. Sometimes, they act selfishly and thoughtlessly. One hero, however, had always seemed to be above it all. Albus Dumbledore was a mix of the ideal teacher, the ideal parent, and even a bit of God himself thrown in there. He was wise, kind, and powerful, an asset to anyone on his side and a threat to anyone who wasn't, not just in terms of strength but in terms of morality. Dumbledore seemed to be an ideal to which the rest of us could only hope to aspire, yet in this book, it's revealed that he was not so perfect after all. He, too, had selfishness and pride in his past that led to the death of an innocent.

Good fantasy needs to be about more than the artificial world in which it exists. To me, the take-home message of this series is the power of love, all kinds of love. All kinds are demonstrated in this book. There's the love that exists between friends. There's the love that comes from a warm and loving family. The slavish, hero-worship love for one who's saved you from a terrible fate, that would cause you to lay down your life for that person. The kind of ill-advised, ill-conceived, wildly romantic love that, on occasion, ends up working out despite all odds. The love that you develop for one you respect and admire. Even the unrequited, desperate love that you're alone with in the dark can be a powerful and remarkable force. Given the situation in my personal life right now, which is still very much on my mind and which has another half which I haven't posted about here, it was a message that helped me a lot and made me feel better.

I think that most Harry Potter fans will be satisfied with the conclusion to which his saga has come. I suspect that I'm not alone among fans, however, in saying that I'll miss all this. I can't think of anything else in pop culture that has really generated this same type of excitement, at least not in my lifetime. Everyone from kids who barely outweigh the heftier installments of the series, to stuffy-looking stockbrokers, to grandparents, have gotten in on it. I will miss the excitement and the anticipation, but I loved the journey. I sincerely hope that we have not heard the last from JK Rowling.

The Countdown is into Its Final Hours!!!

In just over 24 hours from now, we will all be holding the new Harry Potter book in our hands!!!! I am going to attend the Harry Potter party at my local Barnes and Noble. I may also sneak across the street -- I believe the Borders Express at the mall may be holding a Deathly Hallows ball. I will post pics here at some point over the weekend.

Another blog that I read a while back (I can't remember who, I'm really sorry!) called the Harry Potter books "the ultimate loss leader." I see the loss part -- as a B&N member, I got it for $15 below list price. But the "leader" part worked on me tonight.

Until I moved back here, I didn't realize how much my old life sucked. Living alone, with no friends or family in the area and no opportunity to talk to anyone at work (literally none -- I went days without seeing my co-workers, and when I did, we'd just talk about generic work stuff.) It took its toll on me, I think, and made me kind of emotionally dead to the point where I'd be able to wander through Barnes and Noble, like to buy someone a present, without even being interested at the other books.

Tonight I saw lots of interesting books. Bright Lights, Big Ass by the author of Bitter is the New Black. Dedication by those who brought us the train wreck that was Citizen Girl (they do know how to make them look appealing). The new Augustyn Burrows. The sequel to the Tales of the City series (just the title, Michael Tolliver Lives, made me happy).

But the one I took home with me was a nonfiction. I don't expect to get to it for a while, but I will eventually. Ironically, I found it in the art section, which I was pretending to look at because I saw a guy through the window and I wanted to see if he was cute or not. He wasn't, but this book looks pretty good. It's called The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest Museums. Well, I'm pretty sure they left out the museum I work at, but the rest of the world's greatest museums. Call me a freak, but I like the dark side of anything, including my chosen profession. I will keep you posted. And, like everyone with a book blog, look for a post on the end of Harry Potter sooner rather than later.

Resurrected from the Dead: In Memory of a Relationship

Where do relationships go when they die? Looking back on my own boyfriends, I see that I have even forgotten the broad outlines of some of those relationships, let alone the feelings that inspired them. I can remember thinking that I'd love those boys forever, that I'd lay down my life for them, that I'd never love anyone else. I can't remember why, sometimes, though.

But there is an exception lurking among my past relationships. The one that got away, that left me after a tumultuous, passionate year for another woman, a woman that (I just learned this week) he married and moved to Scotland with. When he left me, he wasn't doing well in many ways. His mother had died a few short months beforehand. He was only 19. He'd lost his job, he was very depressed, and he'd told me he'd thought about killing himself. I'd worried about him for many years. I googled his name. I tried to contact his cousin to find out what became of him. I did a deed search on his old house. I even paid $19.95 for one of those reports. I'd resigned myself long ago to never knowing the end of the story, so it was a real shock to hear it this week, just casually, from a co-worker who is the mother of his best friend. To me, it was like he was resurrected from the dead.

If a new ending to the Lord of the Rings series had been uncovered and printed in the paper, the first thing fans of the series would do after reading it would be to go back and re-read the rest of the books. And so it is with this relationship. I've been thinking, all week long, about things I haven't remembered in years.

I remembered going up to his family's camp in upstate New York, the fun of riding ATVs together (the only time I ever have), and how romantic it was to drink hot chocolate and dry out our clothes by the campfire later on.

I remembered sneaking beers out from a reception at work, and sneaking them into the drive-in and drinking them and watching the movie under a blanket in the back of his pickup truck.

I remembered hiking down by Devil's Hole with him on our first date. Romantic, and original as hell. Most guys just take you to Applebee's or something.

I remembered our very first kiss, during the fireworks at the Labor Day fair, and kissing for hours in the car in my driveway.

I remembered buying a sexy nightgown for the hotel room we got the night of our company Christmas party, and how little sleep we got that night.

I remembered getting all dressed up to have lunch at his house before work when we first started dating, even though I knew my outfit would get totaled at work (I worked with developmentally disabled people; open-toed high heels are not a good thing to wear to work).

I remembered eating dinner together on the river at the turn of the millennium, and pulling over in the middle of nowhere at midnight to kiss.

I remembered hanging out with the cousin I later tried to contact, and his friends, and how they got scammed into buying a bag of oregano on Main Street and his cousin wouldn't admit it and smoked three bowls of it by himself.

I remembered how I bought him a bonsai tree for Christmas, and then learned that he'd bought himself the exact same tree from the same place at the mall. When I went on a fishing expedition to make sure it was him who'd mentioned the bonsai and not some other friend, apparently, it reminded him of how much he wanted one and he bought it for himself!

I remembered going to Planet Hollywood in Niagara Falls with him, and how he ordered some badass manly drink with whiskey or gin or some damn thing, and he took one sip of it and couldn't finish it. I shared my fruity girly concoction with him.

I remembered all the times we walked together over the Rainbow Bridge to Canada, and how I never got tired of how terrifying and romantic the Falls were; they made every night special.

I know I made it sound perfect, and made him sound like the perfect guy. It wasn't, and he wasn't. We broke up twice before the last time, and the stress of it all made him be horrible to me sometimes. I was having trouble adjusting to life after college, and I'm sure I was horrible to him on occasion too. The way it ended, of course, was a horrible and painful shock. I think I helped him through everything, though, and that's not a small thing. I'm glad he's happy now, although part of me continues to wish that it had been me.

But despite the way it all ended, I'm glad I had it at all. If I could do it again, knowing that I couldn't change the outcome, I would.