The Diamond in the Window

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www.marcialerner.com/blog

A Note into the Void

It probably LOOKS like I'm not posting as the pandemic deepens into a terrifying miasma of despair. Not at all! Well, OK, I am not posting, but that is only because a very smart and capable human is revamping the blog! And the website! And other stuff maybe, like the way it connects or something! And I don't want to ADD and ADD and ADD to all of the stuff that will have to be ported over. So I have kept mainly mum.

I can tell you that I just finished reading The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel, and it was lovely and extremely mournful. Dare I say elegiac? I do! And you can buy it here, and help support independent booksellers, which you probably want to do.

How are you? Here in New York City, life is generally pretty terrifying, but we move ahead with guarded hope. I also hope, less guardedly, that any and all who read this are well and surviving as best you all can.

I am still navigating the narrow "engaging but not too taxing or terrifying" strip of literature I can bear reading right now. But soon there will be a pretty new website/blog/"online presence," and I hope to see you there. And by then, it is just possible the sugar snap peas currently unfurling will be producing excellent peas, and we will all be less afraid and able to see one another once again.

 

A Guest Speaker With a Book List for Coronavirus Sequestration!

My illustrious sister has a beloved friend Carol Van Strum—who is also the author of A Bitter Fog—and has contributed this ode to the wonders of reading aloud, along with a list of books that lend themselves to it.

 

Here’s a revolutionary and truly subversive way to stay home with kids during this pandemic: start reading aloud.  People used to do this all the time, so it’s nothing new, just an outdated custom suddenly very useful again.  As today’s kids may not be experienced in being read to, best to start small and don’t read directly to them.  Any of the books below are such fun to read, you can read them to other adults in the household or over skype or the phone to a friend or relative, doing so in the hearing of your kids but not directed at them at all.  Before you know it they are listening in, wanting to hear more, and the fun begins.

If you’re not used to reading aloud, start with short chapter books, picture books or rhymes – the most important thing is to read something you truly enjoy, and never anything smacking of morality or life lessons!  The point is to have and make it fun, with no other redeeming value.  

Books for little kids and others:

Arnold Lobel, Frog and Toad series

Margaret Wise Brown, Goodnight Moon

Hildegarde H. Swift, The Little Red Lighthouse

Marjorie Flack, The Story About Ping

Virginia Lee Burton, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

Robert McCloskey, Make Way for Ducklings Blueberries for Sal

Dr. Seus, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins; Bartholomew and the Oobleck; The Lorax; and others.

Janette Sebring Lowry, The Poky Little Puppy

Tasha Tudor, Corgiville Fair and others

Beatrix Potter, Peter Rabbit; Jemima Puddleduck; Jeremy Fisher; and all the rest

Maurice Sendak, In the Night Kitchen; Where the Wild Things Are; and others

Hank the Cowdog series by John Erickson

Custard the Dragon by Ogden Nash and almost everything else by him

Books for kids 9-113

These are all books I still go back and reread every year or so and never get tired of them.

I'm presuming your librarians can recommend any current books such as Harry Potter, so these are older books that have never lost their appeal when I've read them to kids.  All of these are great for reading aloud, as we did without fail up until my youngest son left for college.  He's now a biology professor but is the most current “kid” I have, and these are all books he loved both to listen to and to read himself, though he's not exactly typical -- I don't know what reading skills public school kids have any more.  There's a great range here, though.  Some of these are out of print or only published in England, but I list them anyway because they're well worth searching for, and some enlightened libraries or even e-book publishers might still have them.

Freddy the Pig series, by Walter R. Brooks – Freddy is a Renaissance Pig, well versed (or at least trying!) in every possible activity – detective, cowboy, poet, politician, space traveler, football player, magician, etc.  There are 26 books, which I think were recently all reissued in paperback, and they are priceless, the humor and satire as fresh today as when they were written in the '40s & '50s.

No Way of Telling by Emma Smith.  This is an oldie, but well worth the trouble to find.  It's one of the most exciting, well-written, and provocative books I know: the story of a young girl in snowbound Wales, forced to choose between saving a terrifying injured foreigner or betraying him to two elegant skiers claiming to be police.

 

Books by Robert Lawson: Rabbit Hill; The Fabulous Flight; Mr. Twig's Mistake; Ben and Me; Mr. Revere and I; Captain Kidd's Cat, etc.  These are all-time favorites.  Lawson's love for animals and his portrayals of human folly and kindness appeal strongly to kids (and others who never grew up).

 

The Children of Green Knowe, series by Lucy Boston.  These are incomparable, haunting and thrilling tales that incorporate deep issues of death, racism, friendship, ageing, etc. subtly and unforgettably.    Tolly, a small boy feeling abandoned by his father's remarriage, meets his ancient grandmother and through her shares the adventures of the “ghosts” of children who lived in her house hundreds of years ago. 

 

The House at World's End series by Monica Dickens (who is Charles Dickens's grand-daughter and well lives up to the name).  These are sadly no longer in print in this country but might be in England – especially wonderful and realistic adventures of four children living on their own while their mother is hospitalized after a horrible accident.  Their attempts to deceive dreaded school authorities and social workers, their unexpected allies in the countryside, the bizarre collection of animals that come to live with them, and especially the older kids' refusal to allow their extraordinary little brother to be treated as retarded, are hilarious and exciting. 

 

The Island of Adventure series and Famous Five series by Enid Blyton: two series about kids plunging into hair-raising adventures in gloriously portrayed locales – from the coast of Cornwall to mountains in Wales, the Adriatic Sea, and North Sea islands.  I don't know if these are in print in this country but they definitely are in England.  I couldn't get enough of them as a kid and still love them.

 

Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome.  More all-time favorites (well, I do have a lot!).  These I think are all reissued and still available in Godine paperbacks in this country.  I grew up reading and re-reading them, always finding something new, and still do today.  Like the Monica Dickens and Enid Blyton books, Ransome allows kids to venture into the world on their own, making their own mistakes and fixing them, blundering into danger, and learning when and how and whom to ask for help.  The Swallows and Amazons are the crews of two small sailboats on a huge lake in England's Lake Country; their adventures and encounters with the “natives” -- farmers, charcoal burners, doctors, houseboat captains, native (and wonderfully independent) children  – are superbly realistic and exciting. 

Discworld and related series (Amazing Maurice; Wee Free Men) by Terry Pratchett.  There is simply no end to the ingenuity and humor of Pratchett's alternate universe, a looking-glass world that parodies every foible of humanity from politics and economics to music, sex, religion, and crime.  Pratchett deservedly has won the Carnegie Medal and just about every other award for both children's and adult books, and he was knighted for his lifelong work.  His books are laugh-out-loud funny, but as with the best humor, we're laughing at ourselves.

 

Biggles series by W.E. Johns.  These are also only available in England, I think, but some were published in the U.S. at one time.  These are adventures in the Boys' Own tradition, and truly exciting as well as infinitely informative.  Biggles lies about his age to join the Royal Flying Corps in World War I, and is sent into the air in wood-and-canvas planes to fight over France with only a few hours' flight experience.  The books span both world wars and peacetime flight adventures in between, and are extraordinarily detailed and accurate portrayals of both the aircraft and the battles of those times.  They are thrilling without glorifying either war or killing, and bring history vividly to life.  (It was these books that inspired my son at a young age to learn – or devour – the entire history of aircraft and the geography and tactics of two wars, making him impossible to watch war movies with!)

 

And two series that I always refused to read aloud because they are graphic (cartoon) novels that inspire even the most recalcitrant readers to persevere because they are so funny:

 

Tin-Tin series by Hergé: these are all available in English translations in this country, I think.  Tin-tin, the boy reporter, has hair-raising adventures all over the world from London and Tibet to North and South America and China, as well as the moon.  The adventures are vehicles for outlandish characters and humor enough for a lifetime, and the language is unforgettable.  

 

Asterix the Gaul series by Goscinny & Underzo.  I don't know if these are available through U.S. distributors, but they are available in England and worth the expense of importing!  Like the Tin-Tin books, the translations are magnificent, the characters vivid, and the humor timeless.  In 50 B.C., a single small village of indomitable Gauls holds out against the might of the Roman conquest.  These books present ancient history from the underside, and the Roman Empire will never seem the same again!

Mistress Masham's Repose by T.H. White (better known for his The Once and Future King, but Mistress Masham is far far better!).  Today Maria would be labeled abused and sent to therapy, but back in her day, her abusive guardians were all-powerful.  They are, however, severely handicapped by being adults, and Maria escapes their tortures with the help of an absent-minded professor and the small but extremely Civilized population of Lilliputians-in-Exile that she discovers.  I've been rereading this book since I was a kid and discover something new in it every time.

Blitz Cat, by Robert Westall:  Lord Gort is a pilot's beloved black cat who leaves home to find her master when he flies off to fight in World War II.  Her travels take her from doorstep to doorstep across England, befriending the lonely and comforting the grieved, but always moving on.  Tracking her master to an airfield, she becomes mascot of a bomber crew, flying missions over enemy territory until she and her rear gunner pal bail out over occupied France.  Passed from one clandestine group to another in the Spanish and French resistance, cat and man make their way back to England, where Lord Gord finds her master at last. Just by being what she is, Lord Gort brings out the best in people during the worst of times.

Jip: His Story, by Katherine Patterson.  Jip is a mixed race child running from bounty hunters in the days of slavery, befriended by a crazy old man and helped on his way by a variety of good but frightened people.  Like her other historical novels (Lyddie; Bridge to Terabitha; and others), Patterson's Jip is a hair-raising, historically accurate portrait of likeable children in desperate times.

 

Chronicles of Prydain (The Book of Three; The Black Cauldron; The Castle of Llyr; Taran Wanderer; and The High King) by Lloyd Alexander.  These lively tales – based loosely on the Welsh Mabinogian myth cycle – are as full of magic and adventure as the Harry Potter books but far better written and with much more humor.  (Lloyd Alexander has written many other books and I've never read one I didn't like – he's truly a writer to cherish.)

 

Dragons in the Waters and Arm of the Starfish by Madeline L'Engle (author of the Wrinkle in Time series, of which these are later extensions).  L'Engle's great gift is to weave science and spirituality into truly thrilling tales, with vivid characters confronting both physical dangers and moral dilemmas. 

 

Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher – and anything else by Crutcher, whose work with kids as teacher and therapist gives his writing a strong immediacy.  With great humor and a sensitive touch, his stories freely and bluntly raise issues – racism, sex, cruelty, abuse, competitiveness, loneliness – that are too often hidden away to fester. 

Hoot; Flush; and other books by Carl Hiaasen.  Hiaasen's books for kids are almost too insanely funny to be allowed.  Like the best kids' books, they're subversive as hell, pitting the wit, common sense, and ingenuity of ordinary kids against adult greed, stupidity, and violence. 

Bud, Not Buddy, by Christopher Paul Curtis.  Bud, a 10-year-old black orphan in Depression-era Michigan, runs away from abusive foster homes and sets out to find the man he believes to be his father, jazz bassist Herman Calloway.  In truly Dickensian fashion, Bud encounters the best and the worst of both people and places, finally finding his “father” and being rejected by him but welcomed by the rest of the band. A compassionate and hopeful look at a time we may be destined to repeat. 

The Hungry City Chronices (Mortal Engines; Infernal Devices; A Darkling Plain; Predator's Gold)  series by Philip Reeve.  For all ages, these are impossible to put down: as if Ray Bradbury and Ian Fleming collaborated on thrillers set in a horrifying future where mobile cities devour each other in the reign of Municipal Darwinism. 

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series by Joan Aiken (and all her other books!).  We've never tired of re-reading these tales set in an invented historical period sometime before Queen Victoria.  The language alone is a feast, the settings vivid, the adventures hair-raising, and Aiken's characters – 9-year-old street child Dido Twite, goose herd and forest sprite Simon, the evil Miss Slighcarp – find their way into family lore forever.

You Can Send Books Secretly to Friends! (And Other Covid-19 War Tactics)

First off: love and healing to all. This is, as we are all aware, fucked beyond belief, but we are all trying to do what we can: to help our parents, our kids, ourselves, others. Here are some awesome and (at least somewhat) literary-adjacent options, many of which have been stolen from Ron Charles's delightful newsletter. I am fairly certain he won't mind my pilfering.

1) Support your favorite bookstores AND your friends! At Bookshop.org you can send, through a variety of independent bookstores, to anyone you like (or you can go directly to your own local bookstore's site—here's mine—and have them mail books to those who sorely need a lift). I have already sent someone a gift of Shining Through, and will think of more. Imagining them getting happy package makes it all even better.

2) Take a drawing class with Mo Willems of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus (god we love that book). You, your kids, your parents—anyone can do these and they are so fun.

3) Awesome writing exercises abound on Lynda Barry's Tumblr, often writing and drawing together (you can search for them in her search function).

4) Listen to books! You can borrow through your library and also Audible is offering some free.

5) If you sew, you can volunteer to make hospital masks, which are sorely needed.

6) Any other ideas? Put them in the comments! And stay inside, wash your hands, don't touch your face, and be well.

What to Read in a Pandemic

Well. 

Well, well, well.

Things have come to a pretty pass, have they not? And all the things I meant to write about have flown right out of my head as I try not to touch my eye, except there is SOMETHING IN MY EYE, and it's driving me crazy, and I grew up right outside of the Containment Area in New Rochelle, and wait—where was I?

Friends, it's reading season, and I'm saying this as someone for whom it is always reading season. You will be stuck in your house most likely at some point in the next month, and while what I mostly wish for you (and all of us) is good health, health of your loved ones, and a functioning government, I also hope you have something really good to read. So, in a show of almost unparalleled hubris, I will endeavor to recommend some books, in the most relevant areas I can come up with:

FOR THOSE WHO ARE UP FOR SOME TERRIFYING VIRUS READING

The Stand. It is the virus book by which all other virus literature will be judged, the first half especially has his signature weird hyperreality, I loved it when I read it as a kid, I love it now, yet it is a little...close, you know?

Station Eleven, oh how I loved this! It's profoundly humane and interesting and engaging. Also, yes, terrifying. But if you're up for virus talk, you go!

FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO READ SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY, BUT SERIOUS

The Last Chronicle of Barset (also that link is to free e-book!). OK, full disclosure, this is part of a series, and it's not the first one, but just wipe that information out of your head because it's SO GOOD. Sad and moving and funny and strange (to me anyway), this book broke through the outer crust of my heart a few years ago, and it is very, very far from where we are now.

Yes, Moby-Dick, and yes, that was the craziest cover I saw (not counting the ones that had a...non-white whale, which...what?). Want to go somewhere far, far away? You go—go far, to another world, this one is just too messed up. Check back in when you're ready.

FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO READ SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY, BUT SILLY, OR AT LEAST, LIGHT

To those of you who have not yet read this book, oh how I envy you! Shining Through is almost unbelievably wonderful. Sex! Spies! Nazis—and we're against them! So, so good, also so funny. Wow, I may have just convinced myself to reread it yet again, it's so freaking good WWII good in all the ways something can be good—heart, spirit, mind.

Oh how I hesitate on this last one. Things that have gone through my head: Rich Men, Single Women. Scruples. The Patrick O'Brian novels. The Robert B. Parker Spenser novels.

But what I really think you should read is...anything you want. The book you love but are embarrassed to buy, the romance from the drugstore if that's your fancy, the Agatha Christie you already know the end to, the Little House on the Prairie series if that's what works. No one is watching—no one was ever watching, and if they are or were the hell with them. Follow your reading heart and find something you love. It's one of the few healing things I can imagine right now. 

Other than this, which is on my desk:

Stay health, everybody.

Bookstores You Must Go to, Part 1 of 1,000,000 (I Hope)

Long-time readers (and of course, friends and family, who probably constitute the bulk of long-time readers) will remember that this blog began by chronicling the reading exploits of two excellent children, Chestnut and Diana.^*

While they are still, of course, my children, they are no longer technically children: Chestnut is 18, Diana is 20. Their reading (and other) adventures have gone far beyond the abilities of this blog to approach. 

However. They still have much to offer. Case in point: did you know that there was a bookstore in Sonora, California, called Legends?

And did you know that this bookstore ALSO has an ice cream parlor as part of it? And that you can get Unicorn Milkshakes there?

And did you know that in the basement of this bookstore there is AN ENTRANCE TO A SECRET CAVE?!?!?!?

Behold:

This crucial information comes courtesy of Chestnut, who has been there and tasted the milkshakes and explored the premises and bought the books, and pronounced the whole thing excellent.

The worst part? I was JUST IN SONORA and did not know of this bookstore, nor did I find out about it. Now I am on the other side of the whole dumb country. Don't let this happen to you.

Also: this seems like a feature worth repeating, right? There are lots of excellent bookstores out there. E-mail me about yours and we will go see all of them!

 

*Not their real names. But you knew that, didn't you?

Recalibration, or: Why Sometimes It's Worth It to Read a Book That Wears You Down

You know how you're supposed to keep your phone and/or computer alive by letting them/it run completely out of power? And then the device is supposed to come to a fuller understanding of its capacity (sort of); it recalibrates and once again knows the meaning of "empty" and "full" and "dying as you are trying to text your family."

Well, I have been slogging and slogging my way through the end of a book that I did not love at all, thinking (as I read): Why do I make myself read to the end? Even if it's for my book group, shouldn't I somehow give myself a pass? I have only so many hours on this earth... (etc etc).

And then I did finish it. And guess what? I was recalibrated! The next book I picked up (The Overstory, which I will blab on about in a while, I am sure) I met with unbridled joy! Never mind that I sometimes find Richard Powers compulsively cerebral. It was fun to read again! I plunged through pages, fast and happy. I was renewed!

Anyway, that's how I came to believe in recalibration for reading. And my extremely terrible illustration at the top (it's an empty gas tank of course!) is my newest attempt to avoid running afoul of various copyright issues and to be truer to what's in my head. Sorry that it looks like the Nightmare Before Christmas, we all have our troubles.

Novels by Poets

Image courtesy Wikipedia.org.

It appears that I had a lot of mean backed up in me, for which I apologize. But...this has been gnawing at me a long time, so here it is: I have a problem with novels by poets.

There are about one million caveats I should make here, which I will skip. I will, however, try to make clear what I mean. I'm talking about Ben Lerner and Valeria Luiselli and Michael Ondaatje, thoughtful, intelligent novels. So it's probably obvious that the problem lies with me—all of these are clearly brilliant and talented etc etc.

I have thought about WHY this particular version of book bothers me so much. One of the warning signs is when the flap copy mentions "lapidary prose." Beware! And then I think: what's the problem with lapidary prose? I like excellent words as much as the next reader on the couch (I think I do?) but I feel I have finally located the source of my trouble, the pine needle in my sock: It bugs me to read a novel in which the writer cares more about the words than the story.

I feel this is probably a weakness in me. After all, it's not one or the other, right? And yet...the feeling comes to me strongly when I read them. It makes me (unreasonably, I know) angry that the story, which is just as much of a magical unreasoning mystery as the perfect words are, doesn't get its proper respect (and love).

There, I've said it. All ye who go the other way, be warned.

Cup of Tea

There are some books I like that are not good. For instance, Rich Men, Single Women. This is not, by almost any measure, a good book. And yet, I am there for its sordid charms.

The thing that is harder for me to grapple with is the (equally large?) number of books that I don't like that are good. Case in point:

I might as well get out of the way my first (and probably lamest) complaint: The cover. Come on now! Only put a tornado on the cover if you have a tornado in the book. Tornados are terrifying and fascinating, and I am a sucker for them, so don't just tease me.

Beyond that, this book more or less endlessly pissed me off with its intelligent, thoughtful, deeply considered prose. I'd read and fume, read and grumble: Oh come on, no one is this committed to conversation. Or, Not everything has to be endlessly considered! Except then something would shift to address my concern, and I would be left with the same irritable sense until it dawned on me: I do believe this book is not my cup of tea.

I love this idea. But—is it even a thing? Really? I fear saying that is much like, "Well, it was very well done" type of remarks: saying basically that you didn't like it but don't want to own up to it. And anyway (full, damning disclosure): I don't even like tea.

I suspect that in my heart I don't really think this is a good book at all, I'm just loathe to disagree with the world when I can see perfectly well that the world will definitely think this is a very good book.

But—do I really believe that my not liking something means it's not good? That can't be true, can it? Ugh, I am sure there was a class at some point when I should have been paying attention and I would have learned the true answers to all these questions. At any rate: I didn't like this book, I can say that for sure, and even admit that this decision felt almost personal and grudge-filled. I found the book chilly and stiff, prone to examining its motives to a tiring degree, though there were moments of tension and interest. Is the fault in me or in the book? Apparently, I have no idea.

 

The Horror, the Horror...or, an Idiosyncratic Guide to What to Read (or Possibly Watch) as Your Country Disintegrates

Waves, I tell you. These things go in waves: sometimes I sit down to breakfast, (dead tree) newspaper in hand, prepared to face everything it brings, and I go ahead and read that thing, taking in information like a champ. Other times, especially lately, it's more like driving by a bloody accident, where I allow myself to catch one headline from the corner of my eye, then quickly look away, or turn the page—and keep turning—until I have gotten to the arts section and the crossword puzzle (and the kenken!).

So what to read in these uncertain times? When the world is a mess (is the world always a mess? probably), I go with a "like dissolves like" approach. Which seems off: I know that in the 1930s, silly happy musicals really worked for people wanting to forget the Depression, for instance. For me? Now? Reading scary books is just the thing.

I have always, sometimes unwillingly, been a Stephen King fan, but right now I'm reading The Outsider (I know, I know, the show is supposed to be great, I can't quite go there), and...it helps. I have a bunch of half-assed theories as to why this should be so—you look at terrible things that you can say aren't real! Some people in the book aren't terrible! A book offers hope for resolution! Fear makes you focus, so you don't think about...other stuff.

But the main thing is that these books are working, and I'm leaning into them.

My old way was to have people write in here to We Recommend, and I would give them the perfect* book for the person they wanted a book for. But now, in this new foray into the blogosphere, I'm thinking: I should ask you. What comforting horror can you offer me? What will simultaneously scare the crap out of me and also reassure me that there is good in the world?

*No book is perfect. But if you know of one, write it in the comments! If comments are still a thing!