The Diamond in the Window

Reading and Learning

A few bloggy things:

1) Chestnut is going to be posting reviews here soon, so that's something to look forward to. She is, as are so many 15-year-olds, a merciless critic, uncompromising and astute.

2) What even is this blog? Well, I've been asking myself that very question. And one of the things it is came from talking to my mother just now about managing our frustration and horror at the current political situation, who said "You have to find somewhere—for me it's the zoo [where she volunteers]—when I walked in today, my blood pressure and tension just dropped." I think for me that place has always been reading, and I am going to redouble my efforts to find books that take me to another place, so I can lose—at least for a while—this constant sense of frustration and anxiety.

Reading to me is in some ways an escape, but it's also a return, really, to a place where the things I believe in live, where I can grapple and question and experience big questions of morality and responsibility and everything that is giving me such stress these days. Oh how I love it.

Here's something I read recently:

Full disclosure: I found out about this because my agent (shh, we're trying not to jinx anything) represents this writer, and as part of my self-serving due diligence, during which I read a lot of novels, I read this. So I am somewhat biased. But—it was terrific, gripping and dark and funny. I love a civilian type detective.

I will try to pass along any books I read that give me (kids books too, keep 'em coming!), for one blessed moment, relief from myself and the ongoing anxiety the threat of fascism has thrust me into. Do the same, my readers, and we can all help each other along, through this. Because that's how we're going to get through this: together. And reading.

Weird, or the Benefits of Continuing on With a Book You're Not Sure About

So many—perhaps too many—feelings about the word weird. 

I spelled it wrong for a long time.

I vacillate (or vacillated) between being shamed by it and viewing it as a badge of honor.

I spent some time acknowledging that it is a useful word, and frightening, because truly some people, things, occurrences ostentatiously don't fit into our expected experience, and there is a deep fear with leaving that behind.

I want to accept all weird things, in part because I know myself to be at least somewhat weird (though I believe I generally pass as not weird, but I could be wrong about this).

But sometimes the weird scares me. And I retreat from it.

So I read a book for my book group, one I highly doubt I would have picked up had I not been in a book group.

When I first started reading it, it made me mad. Defensive, somehow, as though I was being accused of not being smart enough, or hard working enough, or ambitious enough (in the large intellectual sense). I wanted to put it down, and I would have put it down had I not been reading it for book group.

But I didn't, and things began to change. It hit me, perhaps one third of the way through, that she was weird. I mean, really weird. Weird enough to connect to a guy in the book who is completely and totally weird, and they were weird together. Weirder—at least as far as I can tell—than I am.

And I wonder: is that part of it? Like, weird is OK if you're as weird as I am and no weirder? Except, isn't that pretty much running from weirdness? Because if everyone thought that, no one would really be OK with weirdness at all.

I'm not being as clear as I mean to be, in part because I'm still grappling with the ideas in the book, which are wide reaching and interesting and surprising. The book made me think anew in all sorts of good ways, it reminded me that the world is larger and allows far more than we ever really take or acknowledge.

Maybe it begins with not saying weird? With somehow not typing or labeling behavior at all, merely witnessing it? Is that even possible? What do you think?

The Difficult Thing About Novels

So I read Purity. I know there is a lot of talk flying around about Jonathan Franzen, and it's all too likely that he is a terrible asshole I am sure (so many of us are). But I really liked The Corrections a lot, and I thought The 27th City was pretty good, and while I didn't like Freedom, certainly 2 of 3 (one of which I liked a lot) was good enough odds. 

And so I read Purity.

I started out skeptical (due to Freedom no doubt), and stayed skeptical, even hostile, for about 200 pages. And then, oh reader, it was fun! It flew!

There's something so thrilling when a story rounds a bend into the open country and start galloping. God, how I love that soaring feeling. 

There are whole long stretches of this . And then—I don't know how to say this other than: the feeling went away. Is it me? Is the story? Is it a strange atmospheric disturbance? I don't know. I only know that I hit the ground with a thump (yes, sorry, I'm going to extend this metaphor just as far as it will go) and had to walk most of the way back.

I look for this soaring feeling everywhere. I've found it in opera (I saw Pagliacci this past year, for the first time, and there are some notes that seem to actually ring out inside me). I find it in books. Sometimes when swimming.

But the terrible thing is that when you find it in a novel, and then the novel lets you down, you can't believe in it as a novel any more. At least, I can't. It's not that I would say it was bad. In fact, I think it was good, if flawed (oh the humanity!) and I am now urging Strider/Aragorn, Son of Arathorn/the Ranger to read it so I will have someone to talk to about it.

But in truth, I fear that when a novel has part that is broken, the whole is broken. Which seems both unfair and difficult. Does this make any sense to anyone?

Resistance Is Futile. But Relevant.

Whenever I read a novel with a tough-as-nails protagonist, I wince. Or really, it's more than wincing. I lower my head (metaphorically) and glower (also metaphorically). It always seems like posturing to me, particularly when it's first person and involves a lot of sleeping around and drinking. Particularly, I have to shamefacedly admit, when the protagonist is a woman doing these things. It feels a bit "I think thee doth protest too much." I feel, too, in my self-centered defensive way, like the character is indirectly calling me out, saying "You're weak and soft." 

So it was with great resistance that I got through the first chapter of the terribly titled The Scamp.

First of all, let's look at what an image search for The Scamp turns up:

Now let's take a look at The Scamp I actually read.

Yes, in addition to a terrible title it is a terrible cover. (The faint of heart should be assured that The Scamp in fact refers to the name of a camper type trailer, not to a person.)

But here's the thing: the tough-girl voice pissed me off. The cover pissed me off. Everything about this book pushed me into a state of powerful resistance, which meant I had to complain to poor Aragorn, son of Arathorn, "I hate this book, it's just the kind of book I hate. I mean honestly, fine, so you drink too much, so you're really cool and tough..." while he (maybe not so patiently) wondered why I kept reading it then.

But I kept reading. And at some point I must have let my guard down, because I ended up being captivated by it. It's sort of a mystery, but not really a mystery. It's a love story and a road trip and a strange and compelling voyage through a world I don't know or understand at all. And all of a sudden I was in that place where I kept looking for moments when I could read it some more. 

This is why I read every book all the way through—in the hopes that I'll find out the problem is really me, and once I open myself amazing things can happen. Note: Your results may vary. But still. It's just nice to get over yourself every once in a while, isn't it?

Freeing Your Daughter, and Yourself

This is a novel written for adults.

However.

I can see that it might be just the thing for girls who are torturing themselves, in one way or another, about their weight, as so often happens. For them it will either be the wakeup Feminism 101 call so many people experience in college, or...or I don't know what. Maybe it will be their doorway to enlightenment. Or maybe they'll just think it's funny and great. Maybe it will be too much for them? But for most teens, I don't think so.

Enough dithering: the book is Dietland.

 

It's a coming-of-age, coming into one's own story of a revolutionary. And the revolutionary? She's a fat girl. This book traces her funny yet rage-filled journey from self-hatred, to dawning consciousness, to rage, to self-acceptance, to POWER.

What I think is awesome: We don't talk so much about how our culture views fat, and fat people, especially fat women. And it's important to see it, own it, and understand it. And we don't hear so much about how it feels to be fat, fat enough that people comment on it, and I am so glad to get that voice out there. We also don't get to see so much rage coming from girls and women, and it's (for me) incredibly refreshing. The book goes far—so far!—in its radicalism, and while I don't know that I could throw myself behind every one of its precepts, I am so gratified that Walker did. She committed herself fully and thoroughly, and that is inspiring. Also the ending: what an ending! Hooray for good endings! Hooray for exciting and unexpected books!

What was not so awesome: Some of the rage splatters a bit. When lashing out at the hurtful world, our heroine sometimes went for what read to me as homophobia, and it bummed me out. There was no narrative acknowledgement of how this might be problematic—she accuses some nasty men of wanting to be with little boys, and it just—it just felt bad to me. There are some patches in the writing where it felt more like notes rather than a fully fleshed out novel. Sometimes the book felt like a great kind of raw, and other times it felt like "this could be more cooked" kind of raw.

All in all though, it was fun and interesting and somehow thrilling to read. I would be all for leaving it out on the coffee table for any girl (or boy) to read, fat or not, because like all good books it will increase their world. 

I haven't run it by Chestnut or Diana yet, as I gave my copy to my best friend. Which says it all right there.

When I get another copy, I will leave it out for them to read. I can't wait to hear what they will say.

What We Lost When We Lost Print—Uncensored!

OK, it's been a decade or two of adjusting to vanishing newspapers, dying magazines, and the steady ant-like forward march of e-books. And I like to think I haven't been too big a baby about it.

I still get my newspaper delivered to the house like the old days, sure. But I read the newspaper online too, during the day sometimes. I can't get with the Kindle, but I've downloaded a book or to to my phone. I'm trying, OK?

And I try not to bitch about it too much, mostly because I think revolution can be a really good thing. I write so many more emails to my friends than I ever did letters, and I am grateful for that. 

Still, I hadn't realized—until yesterday—what we were really losing, until I was sitting on the couch with Chestnut, reading my alumni magazine of all things, and I started to read aloud to her from the personal ads.

Remember the personal ads? And don't start with the whole OK Cupid/Tindr/Craigslist, because THE WHOLE POINT (to me, anyway) is that with the olde tyme personals they were right there in the paper! Or the Pennysaver! Or The New York Review of Books! (the best and saddest ones). You didn't have to go searching them out. And they weren't just people looking for each other either (though those are great), but also crazy job postings and bizarre research requests and, and, and...everything! And these ads—you just came upon while reading about other things.

That's what I miss. I know it's easier now to find things, but it's harder to stumble across them. You have to go down long dark internet halls, when things used to just turn up on random pages of the paper you were reading. I miss that. I miss the hodge-podge of it, the ridiculous inappropriate disjointedness, the mix you'd come up with. 

I feel a certain randomness is gone, and oh how I miss it!

HOWEVER. May I recommend you start your teens, particularly the soft-hearted ones, on the personal ads in the New York Review of Books, your alumni magazine, or any other PG venue? If Chestnut is any guide, they'll immediately begin trying to match the letter writers up with each other, and it will rocket you back to everything tender and painful about being 13, and the two of you can hang out together and it will be excellent.

Mad! Or, on Unresolved Endings

When I was little, my babysitter was Mrs. Clancy, who wore polyester pantsuits (with the top part sleeveless, over a turtleneck) and a rhinestone letter A necklace (she was Alice Clancy). SHe smoked Kools, menthol. She was old and a little bit crotchety but in the most loving way imaginable, and she used to watch her stories in the afternoons and play solitaire at the table, and she was altogether the best babysitter in the world. I think of her often, but I think of her now, because she once told me that when she read Gone with the Wind, when she got to the last line, "I threw that book against the wall. Ooh, I was so mad! 'I'll think about it tomorrow?' What the hell is that? I wanted to know what happened!"

See, Chestnut read My Real Children.

I'd brought it home from the library, and she snatched it off the coffee table and proceeded to devour it. She read it upstairs and downstairs and she carried it and read it walking down the street—you know the drill. And then the next day she came downstairs, furious. "It ends, but she doesn't tell you how it ends! I'M SO MAD!" She was the unwitting victim of...lack of closure.

There's a lot of lack of closure out there. You've got Eleanor and Park, which ends ... tantalizingly. There's Inception. (I know, a movie, but still.) What's your feeling on this? Personally, I like closure, it's so satisfying! We never get closure in life, at least I don't mostly, and it's weirdly reassuring to know what happens to those fictional people you fell in love with. But I know, too, that there is a case to be made for loose ends. And lifelikeness (I know, not a word). 

What do you think? Do you get pissed off, like Chestnut? Are you more easy-going, like no one I know? What does it mean for a story to end anyway?

Old? Or GENIUS?!?!?!?

Many of you wrote in on our previous post suggesting Agatha Christie mysteries as perfect for the heavy-duty reader who wanted more sophisticated fare but not teen romance, or YA.

I think this makes a lot of sense. A lot of teens (and others) are ready to take on a mystery, but less ready to confront sexuality, relationships, and all the rest of the messy human condition, even in fictional form. I LOVED mysteries as a kid, and I still do—Nancy Drew of course, and then Agatha Christie was a perfect followup. Despite their being about, you know, murder, they were curiously nonthreatening, puzzling but not terrifying.

And I could never figure out who did it.

At the time, I thought this was just how mysteries were, it was the whole point, really, that the writer could skillfully hide the murderer in plain sight, and you would be thrilled, convinced, and blind-sided, all at once. Some people, I knew, figured it out, but they were special "other" types, living in a rarefied realm I could only admire from afar.

But a few things have happened since:

1) We were watching a romantic comedy with Chestnut (a great one, In a World, which we all really liked, though it's a little bit racy for some kids maybe?). The tension was really tense for Chestnut, and towards the end she was on the edge of the couch and cried out, "But what if the nice guy and the cool girl don't get together?" And I remembered that there was a time when I didn't know how romantic comedies were going to end, and that it was wonderful time.

2) I'm reading a lot of mysteries, and all of a sudden I  know who the murderer is. Often.

It started with my first Jack Reacher book. And I thought, huh, well that's a fluke.  So a while later I read another Jack Reacher book.

It happened again.

I got nervous and a little excited. Because, what if I'm changing the kind of person I am? What if I know everything now? I will win every bar bet! (Except I don't really go to bars.) I will be able to come up with knowledgable and cutting retorts! (Except that hasn't happened yet—but it could!)

Then I read a Dennis Lehane book a few days ago: Darkness, Take My Hand, and I knew. I KNEW WHO DID IT.

So here's what I think. Either I am a genius (highly probable), or I have just been around for so long that I've seen it all. An even darker possibility: I had secretly read all those books before and forgot I read them and then think I know the killer because, er, I read it before? Oh dear.

I will let you, fair readers, be the judge (s).

 

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Advanced Readers/Little Kids

When Diana was an advanced reader early on, I had the amazing good luck of going into a now-gone bookstore in our neighborhood, and saying, "Help! My daughter's reading the Metro section of the newspaper, but she's really little." Into our greedy little hands she put Betsy-Tacy, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, The Cobble Street Cousins, and more, and the Golden Age of kid reading began.

I think of this now because we got this in our in-box recently:

Our daughters are similar ages. My daughter is 11, almost 12 and in 6th grade. She is in middle school and is an advanced and capable reader. She loves to read. It is her most favorite activity and the one material thing she values most are her books. I am struggling with the fact that she feels youth fiction is too "basic or boring". I however am struggling with the young adult category. She is intrigued by all sorts or books but I struggle with the meaty topics and just not sure it is what as parents we want her exposed to. I know it is a reality and we do talk about all of these topics. But when I read these books I feel like they are just too much. She did read The Fault In Our Stars and then wanted to read Looking for Alaska. I read it first and thought it was too much. Any advice, thoughts, similar feelings?

Right now—and it has not always been thus—we let our girls read anything they want, with very different results. Chestnut, now 13, likes nonfiction (she LOVED How We Die) and realistic fiction (big fan of Rainbow Rowell, who we read together). Diana is deep into horror, fan fiction, fantasy (re-reading all of George R. R. Martin). Most of this came as a result of a conversation with a very smart writer and editor I know, who said his greatest joy as a kid was plundering his parents' bookshelves and reading every inappropriate thing there. Most of it went over his head, but it didn't matter—he was thrilled with the world that books opened to him. He then championed his own daughters' right to read anything and everything, something his wife wasn't crazy about but acceded to. 

When did this change? I'm not sure. I think it changed when Chestnut entered 6th grade.

There are really two questions here: what are the parents comfortable with, and what are the kids OK with? It's such a personal question. When Chestnut was in 4th grade, I was sorry she read The Hunger Games (in school no less), and discouraged her from reading the following books. But now? I put no limits on what she reads. I would probably feel differently with watching movies, but that question doesn't come up for us because neither girl cares for movies. I've also never read Looking for Alaska.

What do you guys think? What words of kind and supportive wisdom do you have for this reading parent? What is there for her advanced reader to read (a lot of old-fashioned books, is my idea)? How did you manage this with your own kids, if you did?

 

UPDATE: Really, this should have been a We Recommend, and I will maybe post it as such soon, but for now, can you guys offer up possibilities for her to read in the comments?

Why Isn't Everyone Reading These?

I mentioned (does mentioned make sense in a blog? Maybe) that I'd read Life After Life, and found it lovely and moving and strange. But what I didn't mention was that the "about the author" section noted that Kate Atkinson also writes detective novels.

I love detective novels. Not all of them—I'm not the hugest fan of the gritty tough guy aspects of the genre, and for some reason the two Jack Reacher novels I've read I figured out the mystery halfway through, which is really not my way—but the form itself is appealing to me. I like puzzles, and what is a better puzzle than a novel puzzle? It's two delightful things in one.

As a special treat, I went to the bookstore and bought the first one, Case Histories.

It was fun. I mean, a lot of fun. And textured and rich and deep, and I really loved it. And then I bought the other two I could find, and I read them too. And then I thought to myself: why isn't everyone talking about these? These are some of the most unbelievably pleasurable books I've read in a dog's age. How is it that people went on at length about The Goldfinch, but I haven't stumbled across these sooner? Have I been hanging with the wrong crowd?

All of which is to say, dear reader, are you ready for some fun? For wanting to leave the dinner table so you can get back to your book? For looking forward to your subway commute? Here you go.

Happy September.