Fantasy fandom knows Fred Saberhagen through his more prolific series (Berserker and Swords) and perhaps to a lesser extent his Vampire books. In the late ‘90’s, he started writing about the gods of old; he focused on, but didn’t limit himself to, the Greek pantheon. In this installment [the fourth of five], Saberhagen chronicles the development of the newly-transferred Triton while telling Jason and Medea’s story, sort of.

Saberhagen definitely has no compunction in reworking the classic myths to perhaps tell a better story. I didn’t read the original original, and my memory of the general story is admittedly fuzzy, but I was surprised at who (and even more so, how) was brought down by the end. Saberhagen’s gods have their physical and territorial limitations, and their “powers” sometimes go completely out the window when when it comes to dealing with Giants; such is the hazard of being housed in a human host.

There’s only one left in the series, the reason for which I’ve read two explanations: 1) the publisher isn’t interested in more, and 2) the author was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer during or soon after the publication of the last book and hasn’t been up to writing more (for this series, anyway—I didn’t dig deep enough to see if anything’s been forthcoming). I do have to say that I enjoyed the first two (Mask of Apollo, Ariadne’s Web) over the last two I’ve read, but I think that the next one, set with the Norse pantheon, will redeem the series as a whole. I’m curious to see if Saberhagen actually wraps the “big picture,” or if he left it open for either his return or another’s efforts to continue.

I don’t remember when I signed up to receive this book (via BookCrossing), but I’m sure I thought I would receive a simple novelty/cutesy/feel-good read. I definitely didn’t expect to find inspiration in Selis’s introduction: ”...thank you for helping me find my ball,” (the ball representing happiness, of course). This wasn’t simply a photoshoot of the country’s canines, Selis touched on the many areas in which dogs have become part of our culture: the Iditarod, church blessings of animals, police and service dogs, fox hunting, dog beaches and parks, and monuments.

Having the roaming urge myself, Selis’s inclusion of his route made me consider which way I would traverse the country should I ever get the opportuity: West, then North, East, and South (does keeping things clockwise make it go smoother?)? Or would I have more fun with a wave pattern, say TX ->NM ->CO ->UT
->AZ, etc.? I don’t know the nation’s highway routes well, but I’m sure the latter would eat up many more miles/much more time. I’d have to save that trip for retirement.

This book also brought up memories of traveling with Persephone when we moved out here from California. The benefits at the time were obvious; no one was going to mess with me and risk tangling with her, and I would have that same security right away in whatever new dwelling I could find. The drawback didn’t manifest until we arrived at our destination, and it was completely my fault. Persephone hadn’t been eating during our trip out, and at our last overnight before Austin, I made the executive decision to give her some canned food (which she still can’t resist). After we landed in Austin, I went into Kmart to stock up on supplies I thought I’d need if we had to camp while I looked for a place to live, Persephone went-messily-all over the front seat she’d been on the entire way. Lesson learned-don’t try to outthink your dog’s bodily functions-you will lose.

I had to laugh a little when I read about Pahu (the Hawaiian drum dog)—Persephone has loved drum circles from the first time I was able to bring her to one. Drumming is something that I’ve had to let go of for now; I miss it, and I’ll bet she does too.

Selis’s end to the book (technically the back cover) was definitely a fitting one; filking “America the Beautiful” was just too darn cute, which is, of course, exactly what I was expecting. I hope this book has kept Otis in dog biscuits for a while.

[Originally posted to BookCrossing, March 2007]

I made the mistake of reading a few other reviews (and the resulting “I agree with you” commentary) before I cracked the spine on this book. Even though I had the negative impressions of the reviewers hoping to influence my own, I managed to find Babyproofing only marginally helpful for my own reasons.

Cockrell, O’Neill, and Stone come from and speak to a limited audience, which makes sense for book sales, but not as much for giving the self-help genre timeless and universal material. I realize that I’m crafting a fairly tall order for a book that isn’t required to be more than the flavor of the month. Their suggestions may work just fine for those who are otherwise psychologically healthy; in my opinion, the healthy ones don’t need this book, and parents who are dealing with some dysfunction will be frustrated with the authors’ attitudes.

The authors state that “the sex issue” was the main prompt for their efforts to write this book. Amongst other suggestions, they propose using “the 5-minute fix” to satisfy one’s husband’s needs for the oh-so-small sacrifice of “mild feelings of compromising yourself.” And that is where they lost me. The times I have complied, I have never reaped any of the benefits the authors claim to exist on their little chart. While this “fix” may work for people who have come through life without having suffered/survived abuse via sex, it is at worst a reliving of a painful past and at best an insult to those of us who didn’t escape what can be rightly called an epidemic.

As I was reading Babyproofing Your Marriage, I’d mention certain ideas to my husband. He scorned most of them, and after several attempts to communicate, I had to give up in order to keep the peace. Would this book have been more helpful if read before our son had been born? I find it hard to believe so.

The authors did have some good things to say about relationships with the new grandparents (although, thank goodness, very little of it has applied to our situation), having another child, and hope for the future. I especially appreciated that the authors (finally) included the best news I’ve heard in a long time: two-thirds of unhappy marriages right themselves within 5 years. If we (myself and my husband) can analogize this early childhood experience with a particularly challenging degree program, I think it will help us get through our rough patch.

[originally posted to http://texasbookwoman.blogspot.com/ March 2007]

McCrumb still delivers a few good hours of entertainment while providing wry commentary on pop subculture (although I’m sure the Scot enthusiasts wouldn’t appreciate that moniker).

While Elizabeth’s sleuthing skills are improving, I didn’t enjoy seeing her played yet again while solving the mystery. I still haven’t decided if this is a conscious decision on McCrumb’s part to characterize her sleuth as naive. I’m all for characters having human flaws, but this one pushes my “disturbed” button pretty hard. I guess my preference for stronger, mature female sleuths is needing a fix, and I get to feed it less and less each time I start a new series. I suppose I should be grateful that I have “fun” books to break up times when I’m having difficulty with some of the literature I’ve been reading lately. It looks like I have 4 more to go, and then the books appear to be getting longer, so maybe McCrumb is developing in a direction I’ll appreciate.

Well, Wolf may have done a good job describing the experiences of her generation (the “story” begins the year after I was born, so I can’t relate to much of the era-specific points) who grew up in a large, culturally hip (San Francisco is a much different environment on many levels from my conservative small town…which was only an hour and a half north of where Wolf was raised) city, and who had what appears to be a large network of friends to share the joys and pains of navigating their journey from girls to women. As I’ve already made obvious, I had a hard time relating to very much of her book, and when it wasn’t triggering short bouts of sadness, it served only as an account of a small piece of society that I could barely identify with.

That said, she did bring up some good points worth thinking about. The question, “how do we turn girls into women?”, is a valid one that all parents of daughters need to consider at every point in the child’s development. I believe that the best gift we can give girls is the strength and knowledge of their right to own their sexuality without shame and its accompanying labels.

I also appreciate the expanse of her research (across historical periods and cultures). What she misses in personal relevance she makes up for in scientific, literary, and cultural reference.

Reading List:

Schoolgirls, by Peggy Orenstein
Aurora Leigh, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Nine Parts of Desire, by Geraldine Brooks
Eunuchs For the Kingdom of Heaven, by Yta Ranke-Heinemann
Tao of Love and Sex, by Jolan Chang
The Chalice and the Blade, by Riane Eisler

A little yellow book of philosophy, silliness, and the Goddess. If you get impatient with the first several pages, skip directly ahead to page 49-50, then go back and compare what you “know” with their framework.

This book, according to some of the elders I know, had some significant influence in the pagan/wiccan movement after it was published. I appreciate the chance to catch a little bit of our history. While there were a few parts that I had to re-read several times, I found that this book went about explaining the “religion” in a much simpler manner than many organized faiths do today.

“I am chaos. I am the substance from which your artists and scientists build rhythms. I am the spirit with which your children and clowns laugh in happy anarchy. I am chaos. I am alive, and I tell you that you are free.”

“All things are perfect to every last flaw, and bound in accord with Eris’s law.”

“(little-t) truth is a matter of definition relative to the grid one is using at the moment, and (capital-T) Truth, metaphysical reality, is irrelevant to grids entirely. Pick a grid, and through it some chaos appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same chaos will appear differently ordered and disordered.”

“The words of the Foolish and those of the Wise are not far apart in Discordian eyes.”

I wonder if Rowling read this, and if she’ll incorporate the Turkey Curse into HP#6 (mandrakes and sexy giantesses, om I)

Random thought from my husband (even though he hasn’t read this yet): “this reminds me of one of those B-movies where a scientist stimulates his victim’s pineal gland, and they grow a third eye on a stalk in the middle of their forehead.” [update 2/9:name of the movie was “From Beyond”]

http://www.eur.nl/fw/staff/lokhorst/pineal.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineal_gland
http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/pineal_gland.html
http://www.crystalinks.com/thirdeyepineal.html

Basics of the story: Jean inherits a large sum of money from an uncle she barely remembers as a child. The bulk, however, is to be held in trust until her 35th birthday. In collecting the yearly capital, she gains the chance to prove her maturity to her trustee, Noel. She recounts to him her war story—how she was trapped in Malay when the Japanese invaded, how she survived being shuttled from base to village to port, never finding haven in a prison camp, and having to bury nearly half the women and children in their company. At one point in their journey, an Australian POW befriended them and paid harshly for it. Jean receives closure on this chapter in her life when she uses the money from her legacy to build a well in the village that finally took the female prisoners in. In speaking to the villagers, she finds her next mission [to tell any more would be a thorough spoiler].

What I thought: For a novel written in 1950, about an unfamiliar part of WWII, it kept my interest quite well. It isn’t deep in character development, but the author does enough to move the plot along. Shute also does well in describing the countryside, be it jungle or outback.
Found it refreshing to read a romance that didn’t read like a porn script or an unrealistic, generalized fantasy. This novel is a rarity—clearly set in the past, but with elements that engage the reader throughout the book.

A collection of 6 Christmas stories (3 were published previously, and one of those has been performed across the country in play form) by uber-funny man David Sedaris. I’d read this 6 years ago when the hardback arrived at my library.
My 2 favorites of this collection are
“Santaland Diaries” (his misadventures as a Macy’s elf in New York) and “Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol” (theater critic does elementary school holiday productions).
I hope to attend “Santaland Diaries” regularly, and may even start a “holiday story-reading” tradition around the campfire this Yule.

[originally posted on BookCrossing, May 2003]

Many theories about the mental state of a married woman are tossed up for inspection by the male characters in the book, none of them flattering. Most of the decisions the characters make depend on the opinions of others (whether to marry, to have a child out of wedlock, a salon visit) and then they wonder why those decisions don’t hold up in real life. And of course one has to wonder why Marian is so surprised that her body is rejecting nourishment when she has to get drunk in order to see her life for what it is.
I hope this book is dated (aside from the blue flashbulbs). I know that I went through a sort of spiritual life/death struggle while I was married previously. I think that today’s women old enough to face this choice have taken back enough strength and identity to get through it in sane fashion.

[originally posted on BookCrossing, March 2003]

I missed out on many classics, and this book has given me a starting point from which to explore, and it gave me a small boost to know that I’d already seen 19 of the 100 analyzed here. I’ll admit that 19% is a sad little number compared to those of several people I know, but I suppose it’s reassuring that I’m not a complete cultural idiot.

For the record, these are the 34 movies that looked compelling enough to rent:

The 400 Blows
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Belle de Jour
Broken Blossoms
City Lights
Days of Heaven
Do the Right Thing
Dracula
Freaks
Dr. Strangelove
Duck Soup
Exterminating Angel
Gates of Heaven
The General
A Hard Day’s Night
Hoop Dreams
JFK
It’s a Wonderful Life
La Dolce Vita
Metropolis
My Darling Clementine
Night of the Hunter
Pandora’s Box
Diary of a Lost Girl
Passion of Joan of Arc
Red Shoes
Peeping Tom
Seventh Seal
Some Like it Hot
Sunset Blvd.
Swing Time
Taxi Driver
The “Up” Documentaries
Woman in the Dunes

One thing I found odd: Ebert states that if one hasn’t seen “Some Like it Hot,” they should hear the curtain line for themselves, then he gives it away 11 pages later while reviewing “Sunset Blvd.” Um, hello? Editor go sleepy?

This may turn into goal #27 (watch these movies by the end of the year, assuming availability).