The Reading Marches On!

I'm still reading slowly -- damn those Sims! (No, I don't mean that. I love my Sims. I'm going to go play with them right now.) and I fell behind in writing these books up, so I forgot the exact dates I finished them. Ah, well. I'll try to be better in the springtime.

11. Carrie Vaughn: Kitty and the Silver Bullet 3/6
12. Gahan Wilson: The Cleft and Other Odd Tales 3/I dunno
13. Jim Butcher: Storm Front (Sometime in March)
14. Kate Wilhelm: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang 3/27
(Started White Witch, Black Curse. Stopped to re-read the series, as I couldn't remember enough of the past plotlines.)
(Started The Joyluck Club, for school. Stopped because it was boring.)

Kitty and the Silver Bullet

Pick:
As much as I enjoyed reading Travels with Charley, it was still tough to get into -- mainly because of the twin pressures of work and Sim temptation, but still. So I wanted something fantastical and light, and here's this Kitty book that Toni liked so much, and I've enjoyed the first three in the series immensely, so what the heck?

Story:
This was a very nice book. I like how these books start out so seemingly light and end up very serious, at least in the paranormal plotlines; like the first book ends with a pair of murders, the second ends with Kitty changing on national television, the third ends with Cormac going to jail for killing the bad person -- and then there's this one, which ends with a pair of righteous killings. The difference was that this book pretty much starts out heavy and stays that way; the only light plotline is when Kitty is picked to reveal on The Midnight Hour that a certain very successful stage actress is actually a vampire -- and that plotline didn't stay light for long, as the vampire is revealed to be evil. Seriously evil. A bitch that needs a good staking, and I'm not making a sexual innuendo there. Where's Buffy when you need her?

I liked the war between Kitty and Carl, though Toni's right that the vampire war was a little too brief. The biggest problem there was that the old master's vampires just went along with the new guy being in charge, as far as we know. But I think the point is that we don't get to see a whole lot of the vampire politics, and after Arturo gives up and Ricardo takes over, they go back into the shadows and we're left looking at Kitty. But that's okay, because I'm not reading these books for the vampires, and I don't think the author is writing them for the vampires, either. The vampire war just made for a nice excuse to force Kitty into fighting -- though now that I think about it, what forced her into fighting was her mother's illness and the latest victim of the current pack leader. Rick doesn't really do much for her, in the end -- so why even include the vamps? Meh.

Thoughts:
Anyway, I liked the book, I like how it ended up, I love the concept of the Long Game, and I'm pissed that Carrie Vaughn is taking my ghoul idea of having a bar/safe haven for supernaturals. That's okay -- seeing as they made the reference to Casablanca for me, I'm already aware that the idea is not a new one, for me or for Vaughn. And mine will be -- not exactly what it seems. So that's okay.


The Cleft and Other Odd Tales

Pick:
I have had this one for quite a while; it was one of those fortuitous finds at a book sale. I got it because I have fond memories of reading Gahan Wilson's cartoons -- for those who don't know, Gahan Wilson has been drawing those single-panel cartoons, like political cartoons but not political in this case, that grace the pages of The New Yorker and Playboy, for what, forty years? -- in compilation books that my childhood friend Benjy Grossman had. So when I saw a collection of odd tales by the man who drew the original Addams Family strips, I couldn't pass it up. As for reading it right now, if it is not too much information, I thought it would make good bathroom reading -- short stories, strange but not too involved -- but halfway through the first story, I decided I just wanted to read the book. So I did.

Stories:
There were many that were odd, some that were utterly fascinating, and none that were bad. Now that's a good collection of short stories. The title one, The Cleft, is about a monastery in Tibet that can only be reached by climbing up through a chimney in the mountain atop which the monastery sits; the chimney -- the Cleft -- is so narrow that only one person can go up or down at a time, so the monks have designed a simple system to let someone know if there is already someone going up or down the cleft. The simple ritual becomes more and more complex, until it takes so much time and effort to walk up or down -- one must stop and pray at multiple shrines, while playing various musical instruments and carrying huge amounts of ritual material, and so on -- that one day, a monk finally snaps and makes a rope ladder. He unfurls the ladder down the side of the mountain, climbs down and walks away, never to return. The rest of the monks decide his statement shows unique wisdom -- and they immediately begin gilding the rope ladder in his honor, thus starting the cycle over again. It's one of the finest criticisms of organized religion I've ever seen, and yet it's only a few pages long, and funny to boot.

Most of the stories were gruesome and disturbing; some were even gratuitous, which can be fun. The Casino Mirago is a brilliant idea -- about a casino that only opens for a few weeks a year, and in which you can gamble whatever you wish, including your health, your youth, your status, etc. The Manuscript of Dr. Arness has a wonderful interpretation of immortality -- the Doctor discovers how to halt the aging process, but by so doing, he slows down his own reaction time so much that he appears to be a statue, forever young. Sea Gulls is an exquisitely written murder tale, and Them Bleaks has an outstanding twist. But the best two for me were The Sea Was Wet as Wet Could Be and Mister Ice Cold. The first is about a group of party people who run into the Walrus and the Carpenter from Through the Looking Glass, and Wilson manages to show all of the horror in that original poem by recreating it here; the second is just a fantastic, lyrical description of an ice cream man who carries more than ice cream in his truck. Mwa ha ha ha. I don't read a lot of short stories, being more of a novel man myself, but these are probably the best I've read since Stephen King.

Thoughts:
They were wonderful: great ideas, outstanding writing, some with a purpose, some just as vignettes. They span almost thirty years, so I'm not sure that Gahan Wilson has other books of short stories out, but this one is absolutely worth having and reading, and keeping and re-reading, which I will do, too.


Storm Front

Pick:
I decided to re-read the Dresden Files this year, as this still holds the top spot as my favorite paranormal series, yet I think I've only read the books once -- clearly this situation cannot stand! I love the way Butcher writes; I admire his ability to keep two series in two different genres going at once and make both of them excellent in their own way. Harry is also a great character, complex and honest and genuine, and I would love to go back through and find more details of his personality, hints and allegations that I'm sure Butcher snuck in there.

Story:
This one's pretty well-known, I would think, since the two people that I'm sure read this have both read these books and seen the Sci-Fi series based on them, which used this storyline as a season finale. For Hotpants, though, here's the basics: Harry Dresden is a wizard, a strong but still young and inexperienced caster of spells and concocter of potions. Being the brash and rebellious type, he has defied the usual expectations of secrecy and hung out a shingle in Chicago -- as a wizard. It says it on his door, it says it in his Yellow Pages ad. (Is that reference now dead, by the way? Does anyone under 20 still use a phonebook? Have any idea of the difference between white pages and yellow pages? If not: no great loss. I always hated phonebooks, for everything except laughing at the goofy names -- a pleasure I get now from my class roll sheets and the birth announcements in our local paper. Hey folks: stop naming your fucking kids Michaela, or Makayla, or Mickayla, or McKayla, or any of the other horrific variations on a bad theme I have seen over the past few years.) Harry does not get a lot of business, though, most of his calls being along the lines of either, "Do you do kids' parties?" or "Are you for real?" The answers, respectively, are no, and yes. But Harry does work for the police, who have recently formed a unit intended to solve the strange and incomprehensible crimes that sometimes pop up in a city the size of Chicago.

Like the crime that opens the book: two people, while in the throes of passion, suddenly had their hearts explode out of their chests. Both were in perfect health, and nobody else was in the hotel room at the time. So how did it happen? Magic, of course. So Harry is called in to investigate, and while he is investigating, he is himself under suspicion, because Harry has a rather checkered past in the wizarding community, having broken the First Law of Magic: thou shalt not use magic to kill. So Harry has to track down a powerful and immoral magician-murderer, while dodging the powerful and closed-minded authorities of the mages' White Council. Oh, and since the two people who died were a high-priced call girl, who worked for a vampiress named Bianca, and a mafia hitman who worked for the boss of the Chicago rackets, the issue gets pretty tangled, and odds end up looking pretty grim. Fortunately, Harry has help: a spirit living in a human skull, who has a perfect memory and centuries of experience working with human magicians, and so who knows more about magic than Harry ever will. His name is Bob. He is a lech. He and Harry are two of the best characters I have encountered in fantasy/paranormal literature.

Thoughts:
I liked this book even more the second time around, and I can't wait to read the rest of the series. Well, I can, since I have a few other books to read too -- but these are going to be my happy relaxing books for this year, I think. I'm so glad there are so many of them, with a new one coming out! Yay Harry!


Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

Pick:
I've been looking for a book to teach my Credit Recovery class. I was going to go with the Joy Luck Club, but I started reading it over Spring Break, and found out: it's a lovely work, but it's also pretty danged boring. I had looked into this book, Kate Wilhelm's Hugo-winning sci-fi novel, when I first got to St. Helens, because there are fifty or so copies in the textbook room, and I was looking for class novels then, too. But since the first page says "shit," and around about twenty pages in there is a -- "graphic" is the wrong word; perhaps "clear and indisputable" -- sex scene, between two cousins, I didn't feel comfortable teaching the book to ninth graders for my very first year at this new, fairly conservative, school. But hey, the class I'm looking for now is all juniors and seniors, and I'm more willing to be edgy now that my job is secure and all, so what the heck? I'd love to teach something a little more challenging.

Story:
It's challenging, all right. Not because it's so terribly shocking -- it is to some extent, as the incest theme intensifies rather than fading away -- but because the book is so dense. It starts with a large extended family in Virginia who are pulling in to the valley where they originated, like the fronds of a sea anemone when touched by a human hand. They are pulling in to the center because they can see the signs: the world is falling apart, through environmental disasters and societal breakdown accelerated by plague and famine worldwide. The family has been hugely successful, spawning doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs, and with their great resources and knowledge, they create an enclave that will survive the coming collapse. So right at the beginning you have themes of environmentalism, and social order, and isolationism, in addition to the question of love: two of the members of the family, who grew up together in this valley, have been in love all of their lives -- but because they are cousins, this is a love that can never be realized, and they know it. The woman, Celia, leaves home to study in South America, at least partially to avoid the heartbreak of seeing David every day, feeling as she does for him.

She has gone at exactly the wrong time: the impending collapse arrives, and Celia is lost in South American turmoil for three years. Meanwhile, David, who is a biologist, has been recruited to help his family build laboratories for genetic studies, so that the clan will be prepared for any diseases or blights that make it into their valley. Celia manages to come home, though she has suffered a near-fatal illness, and she and David at last consummate their relationship, since the end of the world tends to make former taboos moot. They are partially forgiven by the fact that there will be no children: not only is Celia ailing, her heart damaged by the virus she survived, but David has been studying the family, and has realized something: every man in the valley is now sterile. The women who were pregnant before the plague have miscarried or had stillbirths. There will be no more children, for anyone, perhaps ever again.

But the family is undaunted, because they have the knowledge and the technology to clone animals for livestock -- and David and his relatives set about trying to clone humans. They do succeed, and soon there are newer, younger versions of David, and his uncle Walt, and even Celia running around, often in multiples of two and three. But there is a problem: the clones are not reliably fertile, and past the third generation (the copy of a copy of a copy) they are deformed and genetically non-viable. So it looks as though the end of the human race has only been delayed, not averted. David continues to work, though, and to hope, and after a time he is assisted by -- himself, and himself, and himself again. And so we have the issue of cloning, both as a moral question and as a particularly freaky image.

Then things get even stranger: the clones, it turns out, are not exactly individuals. They have a sort of collective consciousness, a hive mind, with a quasi-telepathic bond similar to the well-known twin bond. And they recognize that their progenitors, the sexually reproduced and full-born humans, do not; therefore, the clones consider themselves different, albeit related, and when it comes down to it, they stage a coup and take over the valley, intending to reproduce themselves, solve the fertility and cloning problems, and repopulate the Earth with their species, not ours.

And that's just Book One.

Thoughts:
It is an interesting novel. The writing is quite lovely, particularly in the pathos of the various characters who take center stage, and the plot is intriguing and imaginative, to say the least. I think the book will be even better as a center of discussion than as an individual read, and I look forward to teaching it.

Though my students are going to suffer one major case of the wiggins. Heh. That just makes it more fun for me.