Two women and a movie

Two years ago, I read The Hunger Games on the recommendation of our school librarian. It grabbed me from the beginning, and even before I finished the first few chapters, I recommended it to my friend and colleague, Linda. She plowed through it as fast as I did and even bought and read Catching Fire, the second in the trilogy, before me.

I clearly remember the day she finished The Hunger Games.

“This would make a GREAT movie!”

And then, several weeks later, “They’re making a movie! I CAN’T WAIT!”

I was excited too, but two years is a long time to wait. In the meanwhile, I recommended the novel to every kind of kid in my classroom: the honors student, the reluctant reader, girls, boys, scifi/fantasy readers, realistic fiction readers, romance readers, kids interested in politics, kids who could care less about politics. I recommended the book to adults too. Word of mouth spread like wild fire…it always does with a good read.

After a while, I would ask, “Have you read The Hunger Games yet?” and three or four kids in the room would chime in with “OMG! That book is so good!”

Linda and I periodically discussed the movie, analyzing the choices as actors were cast, wondering how they would deal with various plot points and whether they would dial back the violence to allow a larger audience to see it. Our discussions always ended with “I CAN’T WAIT!”

Fast forward to yesterday, opening day. My boys, both of whom have read the book, bailed on me and went to the movie with other people. Bruce wasn’t interested, and Linda had other plans. My frustration reached a fever pitch around 9:00, and I had just decided to get in the car and go by myself when Linda called.

“Okay, I’m done with my stuff and Robert is dropping me off. Meet me at Wendy’s in 15 minutes with a corkscrew, some plastic cups, and a bag of ice!”

There is a reason why this woman is one of my closest friends in the world.

We chattered like excited school girls all the way to the multiplex and arrived in time for the 9:40 showing. Linda had a very large purse and brought her own refreshment into the theater. I was driving and opted for a soda and some $10 M&Ms from the concession stand.

Our movie started right about the time UK tipped off, and thanks to the statewide insanity over basketball, we had great seats. The lights went down, and Linda turned to me.

“I AM SO EXCITED!!!”

“I KNOW!! ME TOO!!”

The first preview was for a remake of Dark Shadows by Tim Burton with Johnny Depp. I LOVE Johnny Depp in bizarre roles with weird make-up. Seriously, read my review of Alice in Wonderland. The trailer for Dark Shadows was hilarious, classic weird Johnny Depp. Can you imagine him as a soap opera vampire?

I CAN’T WAIT!

We were frothing at the mouth by the time the previews ended and the movie started. I dispelled the froth with a large swig of Diet Coke. Linda uncorked the bottle in her purse, refilled her red solo cup, and read the opening text on the screen out loud…

North America has become Panem, a country composed of twelve poverty-ridden districts which provide resources to the ruling elite in the Capitol. Each district must send one boy and one girl between the ages of 13 and 18 to the Capitol to participate in the annual Hunger Games. The teens are chosen through a lottery called the reaping.

The movie opens in District 12, Appalachia, on the day of the reaping. District 12 looked exactly as I imagined it. The mountains were beautiful juxtaposed against the poverty of Katniss’ family home. The town reminded me of a 1950s era mining camp. Then, superimposed over that, was the stark dystopian future in which it existed with Peacekeepers reminiscent of Storm Troopers and large Orwellian telescreens.

From the beginning, Katniss, District 12’s female tribute, is the strong heartbeat of the story, and kudos to the moviemakers for getting her right. She is smart, courageous, resourceful, self-reliant, and self-sacrificing, imbued with a sense of responsibility for family and community. She is everything the heroine of another monster franchise which shall remain nameless is not. She is not defined by the boys in her life, nor is she rescued by them. She fights alongside of them, and more often than not, they look to her for rescuing.

And forgive me for editorializing, but hey, it’s my blog. Katniss is an image of femininity sorely needed in a time where politicians use women’s health issues as a lightning rod to obscure their lack of vision (or repugnant vision) for the economy and foreign policy, a time where pundits on both sides freely throw around pejoratives like “slut,” “prostitute,” and “bitch” when a woman has an opinion they don’t like. Katniss is the image of capable femininity that scares the living hell out of the kind of man who needs male privilege because he doesn’t have the goods to earn it fair and square.

But I digress…

Having said all that, I honestly thought Peeta, Katniss’ male counterpart, wasn’t quite strong enough in the movie. As a player, he can’t match Katniss’ skill in the woods, but he is wily and has a better grasp of human nature than she does. Josh Hutcherson just doesn’t have the chops to play opposite Jennifer Lawrence, and his Peeta came off a bit weak. Liam Hemsworth’s Gale is strong, and I look forward to the second and third films where he will have a larger role. I won’t post spoilers, but for those of you who have read the whole trilogy, the disparity in the strength of the actors playing Gale and Peeta poses a potential problem for those movies.

Woody Harrelson was an inspired choice for Haymitch, former winner and mentor to Katniss and Peeta, although my younger son thought they cut too much of his part out in the movie. I tend to agree. Donald Sutherland was excellent as President Snow, the epitome of the evil despot packaged as benevolent father figure. His conversations with Seneca Crane, the head gamemaker, gave me chills.

Most of the gore in the arena was implied and not explicit, making way for a PG-13 rating. I would still be wary of taking young children. Sometimes, what is unseen is more frightening than what is seen. I remember being particularly horrified by the tracker jacker scene when reading the book, and not seeing Glimmer’s body up close in the movie suited me just fine.

Explicit violence notwithstanding, I honestly don’t think the movie captured the tension of the book. The horror of using children to keep a country subdued and defeated just wasn’t there. There were glimmers, especially in President Snow’s scenes, but overall it was lost. Frustrating because there were so many opportunities to show it: Haymitch’s disappearance into a whiskey flask, the Avox servants, Cinna’s subversive packaging of Katniss and Peeta. Lenny Kravitz was wasted as Cinna.

One of the aspects of the novel that made it brilliant, at least in my mind, was the way it captured the zeitgeist of reality TV. Whether it be celebrity scandal, American Idol, or hard news, the media frames everything for us. They give us the storyline and tell us how we are supposed to perceive what they are presenting.

In the novel, Haymitch invents a star-crossed romance between Katniss and Peeta in an attempt to frame their story and make them more appealing to the audience. Audience appeal means sponsors. Sponsors mean timely help in the arena. Haymitch is the architect, but Peeta sells it because he really is in love with Katniss. Maybe it was because they cut too much of Haymitch or maybe it was because Josh Hutcherson wasn’t up to the challenge, but I thought that important storyline was muddled in the movie.

The movie is entertaining. It doesn’t suck, but as movie adaptations go, I’ve seen better. Both of my boys agreed with me that the book far outshone the movie.

Isn’t that always the way?

What did Linda, my partner in crime, think? Funny that. We whispered back and forth during the first part of the movie, but then I became engrossed and assumed she was as well.

After the final scene faded to black and the credits started to roll, she stayed seated, so I did too. Sometimes, when you wait out the credits, you are rewarded with an extra scene, a teaser, or something. Since she wasn’t moving, I assumed she thought there must be some little nugget. I like reading credits, and I noted that Suzanne Collins, the author, was listed as one of the screenwriters. I said as much. No response from Linda.

Finally, I turned and looked over at her, and there she sat, smiling beatifically and SOUND ASLEEP!

I had to nudge her twice to bring her to consciousness.

“Linda! How long have you been asleep?”

“I don’t know. She was running in the woods and I dozed off. Every time I opened my eyes she was still running in the woods. I knew she was alive and I went back to sleep.”

Two years of waiting, and she slept through the whole second half of the movie. Take what you will from that. Luckily for her, she is going again tonight with her girls. She plans to leave her big purse and plastic cup at home, so maybe this time she’ll see the end.

May the odds be ever in her favor.

Eye Candy and Car Porn

Is it possible to willingly suspend your disbelief in the face of a sketchy plot, eye-rolling dialogue, implausible stunts, and a total disrespect for the laws of physics?

Abso-freakin-lutely!

Fast Five is two hours of totally ridiculous awesomeness. It seems to defy all the rules of good storytelling, and yet I left the theater happy and thoroughly entertained. Why? Fast Five has at least one story element working on all cylinders.

This movie has fun characters, and hidden underneath all that flash and silliness is a good old-fashioned buddy story.

Dom Toretto and Brian O'Connor are likable tough guys. Sure, they're criminals, but they do have a code. Loyalty to each other and to "family" supercedes everything, and they manage to make their law-breaking seem almost righteous. Their criminal activities are aimed at an evil supervillain (okay, a drug dealer, but he's cartoonish in his evilness), and they avoid hurting the innocent, even the federal agents chasing them (unless they get behind the wheel of a car, in which case, whole city blocks full of innocent people are fair game).

Toretto and O'Connor's friendship is believable even if nothing else in the movie is. You can't help but root for their crazy-ass schemes. Their friends are likable as well. Roman is still talking smack, and apparently Ludacris has become an expert in safe-cracking since the second movie. Even more surprising, Han, the cool Japanese drifter, is back from the dead. In fact, unless you see someone take a bullet to the head, dead is relative in this series.

The funniest addition to the cast is The Rock. He strides across the tarmac when his plane lands in Rio looking like he just finished curling 50 lb dumbbells, slathering himself in baby oil, and then liberally spritzing water over his face. He probably needed the baby oil to get his shirt on because it was at least 2 sizes too small. He says very little, and when he does speak, it's something like, "I want to know everything about Toretto, including how many times he shakes it."

O'Connor describes The Rock (Special Agent Hobbs in the movie) as Old Testament Wrath of God -- the guy the government sends in when they just gotta get their man. And in fact, his character is a cross between Tommy Lee Jones' character in The Fugitive and Conan the Barbarian.

And yes....that is exactly as hilarious as it sounds.

Fun characters and a believable buddy story keep Fast Five from being nothing but unadulterated eye candy and car porn. But honestly, maybe that's the real appeal anyway. Of the five movies in the series (Yeah, I've seen them all. Don't judge me), this has the thinnest plot.

It is, however, set in Rio where beautiful bodies abound, and those beautiful bodies are wrapped around the sweetest cars in the world.

Whether you like American muscle or high performance European road rockets, you'll get an eyeful in this movie. I tend to gravitate toward American muscle. The first car I bought with my own money was a red Mustang with a manual transmission. I loved shifting through the gears and making the engine scream. I think I got three speeding tickets in the first six months I had it. Kids happened, and I had to start driving more sensible cars more sensibly, but oh how I loved that car.

Do you see why I like these movies so much? Yeah, the guys are hot, but for me, it's all about the cars. To harness and control a barely contained engine growling underneath me for a 10 second quarter mile...now that's a fantasy.

The next movie may have no plot at all, but as long as Vin Diesel and Paul Walker are driving sexy cars like maniacs, I'm there.

The Beaver

Are you intrigued by the title of this post? If so, then you might be interested in Mel Gibson's new movie. I honestly can't imagine myself interested in anything Mel Gibson does ever again, and considering I once loved Lethal Weapon and Braveheart Mel, that's kinda sad. In spite of my disgust, the trailer for his upcoming movie made me do a spit take.

Context first: Bruce and I saw Jake Gyllenhal's Source Code this past weekend. Big action flick...some plot holes, but not so big they detracted from my enjoyment of the movie. Overall...entertaining.

Also entertaining...the previews before the movie. You get a pretty good feel for the kind of movie you're about to see from the trailers at the beginning. We saw five trailers before Source Code started, and the experience was a blog post in the making. I actually pulled out my phone after Mel's trailer and made notes. I need to tell you a little about each one to give you some sense of how Mel's fit in. Or didn't.

Thor -- The Norse god of thunder is bringing his big ole hammer to earth, falling in love with a puny earth woman, defying his fellow gods, and blowing some really scary-looking monsters all to hell. The guy playing Thor is cute and all, but unless I'm looking to spend time with my boys, I don't imagine I'll race out to see this one.

Conan -- Oh yeah! He's back and he's bigger than ever! (Seriously, this guy looks like he's done some heavy duty steroids.) Conan beats some really scary-looking barbarians all to hell. His sword is almost as massive as his muscles. The production values appear much better than the original. In fact, it looks like they've eschewed the camp altogether and made an earnest action movie, and that's a shame. I suppose it doesn't really matter. Without Ah-nold, how good can it be anyway? This will also be a pass for me.

X-Men -- There was probably a subtitle on this one since it's the fourth or fifth in the series, but I didn't write it down. This installment takes the audience back to Professor X's and Magneto's beginnings. They used to be friends, but Magneto became bitter when the world rejected him. He acts on his hurt feelings by blowing some not-particularly-scary-looking ships and airplanes all to hell. Meh...the X-Men never were my favorite superheroes.

Mel's Movie -- Do you remember this from your childhood?



I love Cookie monster! And yeah, Mel's movie doesn't have the right number of cookies. I'm pretty sure Mel doesn't have the right number of cookies, but I digress.

His trailer was wildly out of place after the previous three. The only things that get blown all to hell are his relationships and whatever was left of his acting career. Every scene in the trailer is an intense relationship scene. His character is a screw-up (a real stretch for him), and his wife, played by Jodie Foster, and children have walked away. He's apparently hit rock bottom. Then, he finds redemption in a hand puppet, (I swear I'm not making this up) and it's not just any ole hand puppet.

It's a beaver!

He quits talking to people except through the beaver who explains that it creates emotional distance.

Okaaaaaay.

Several gut-wrenching scenes ensue after which Mel is finally able to talk without the beaver on his hand. The title scrolls across the screen while the deep voiced announcer says, The Beaver.

Very dramatic, right?

Yeah, not so much. Everyone, and I mean everyone, in the theater laughed. A few snickers turned into guffaws, and then we belly laughed like Mel had mined comedy gold. I'm thinking this wasn't the emotional reaction Mel was going for, but it should have been because, oh holy cow, the beaver jokes I heard all around. I can't even begin to imagine what the late nite comics will do with Mel's hand inside a beaver puppet.

And not only no, but Oh Hell No, I will not be paying 8 bucks to see this mess.

The Three Musketeers -- I have no idea what's going on in this movie besides the obvious, and neither does anyone else who was in the theater. This trailer had the misfortune of coming after The Beaver. I am pretty sure people got beat all to hell, but I was too busy exchanging ribald remarks about The Beaver. I like Dumas, so this one has the best chance of getting my summer movie dollar even though I missed the preview.

So, let's recap...and a pictorial recap might be useful here. One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just isn't the same.

Appsolewdly

I won't tell you what year (or even what decade) my fascination with Steven Tyler first blossomed. Let's just say the roots run deep. I heard him screaming those climactic last bars of "Dream On", and something inside me shifted and whispered, "yes...."

His first appearance on Idol this year reacquainted me with my inner 14 year old girl. I screamed a lot, eliciting much head shaking and muttering from my husband, and texted my bff, Pam, thru the whole show. She gets it.

His big ten inch...record incites sweet emotion. Some folks say the dude looks like a lady but I'd walk his way anytime. It's a monkey on my back. I'd ask what it takes to let it go, but I don't want to miss a thing. So the train keeps a rollin' and I'm still crazy, crazy, crazy for ya baby.

And speaking of crazy...guess what I discovered today??? A Steven Tyler app for my iPhone!!! I kid you not. It's called "Appsolewdly." (Of course it is. What else would it possibly be called. It's Steven freakin' Tyler.) It costs $2.99 at the app store, and yes, I ponied up the cash.

What did I get for my 3 bucks?

• A trivia game...meh.
• Some pics...nice.
• Steven's home video which is updated daily...now we're talking!
• And the absolute best feature??? SOUND EFFECTS!!

OMG...I can press a button and get "Yakakakau!" Or a cackle. Or "Oh yeah." If I want more than a scream, though I can't imagine why I would, I can push a button to hear advice from Steven.

I've waited all my life for pearls of wisdom like, "Who knows where the nose goes when the do's closed" and "You know I'd rather be sittin' all by myself on a pumpkin than be crowded on a velvet pillow."

Tru dat, Steven. Tru dat.

I decided to end this post with a video of Dream On, the song that started it all for me. YouTube has a veritable buffet of Dream On video. I waffled between a version performed at Fenway Park where Steven begins on a white baby grand way up over the scoreboard and the version I posted. The video below features a performance in Rio in which Steven and Joe Perry are shirtless. A no-brainer in the end.

A Good Beginning

Fade in...thumping music...Ne-Yo...Beautiful Monster. Camera pans up a pair of legs that go on forever and then pulls back to the gorgeous woman attached to them. She sits at a bar and nurses a martini, two olives. Close-up of the glass...then her face...then the glass.

Images of a club. Camera flits between patrons, and then rests for a long moment on a bearded man alone at a table. He drinks a beer in a tall pilsner glass. Close-up of the glass...then his face...then the glass. Camera searches the patrons again, this time stopping on another lone man, blonde, drinking something pink. Close-up of the glass...his face...the glass.

Back to the woman. She scans the room as if looking for someone...plays with the olives in her drink. Close-up of the drink and her long, manicured fingers stroking an olive.

A handsome black man enters the club. His clothes suggest money, lots of it. He wears a hat and slides his finger down the brim. The beautiful woman at the bar watches him all the way over.

"You waiting on someone?"

"I think he cancelled."

"His loss."

His eyes follow her fingers on the olive. The bartender sets a straight bourbon on the bar. Close-up of the glass. The amber liquid reflects the club's funky lighting.

"Classical or R&B? Fate or Free Will?"

She smiles with the glass at her lips. "Neither. Hard core rock."

He shrugs. "R&B. Free will."

"What if I had said classical?"

"Then I would say you believe in fate. Very structured. Each note and chord building to an inevitable end."

"Isn't that all music?"

He shakes his head, almost in annoyance. "R&B follows its own path..." His eyes follow a path down her long legs. Then he looks up suddenly.

"Excuse me for a moment."

He takes two steps forward, levels a 9mm at the bearded man. Two shots...head, heart. Turns amid screams to the blonde man. Finger on the trigger...camera follows the bullet to the heart, then the head. Changing it up. Whirls around to the bartender. Head, heart.

Finally, he turns to the woman, now cowering under the bar. Change to her perspective, looking up the barrel of the gun to his face. His finger moves almost imperceptibly.

Cue theme music."Out here in the field..."

The rest of the show was meh...Adrienne Barbeau was the villain...but it was still meh.

I watched the whole thing, though. A good beginning will do that.

Art, Influence, Sensuality, and Soul

Words! Mere Words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet, what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of the viol or lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?

Oscar Wilde celebrated the power of words in one breath even as he brushed it away in the next. In the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, he scoffs at the idea that books could influence anyone. “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” Regardless of what he believed, he wielded words like the sharp edge of a sword or like an artist, remaking the world in his image.

I first read this book when I was in high school. I know…a long time ago, but the book made an impression. We had a rousing debate in class. Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? It’s a debate that can make you crazy because it’s circular, like the chicken/egg question. There are good arguments on both sides, but neither can be proved. Of course Wilde said it is the spectator, and not life, that art really imitates.

He would.

I re-read the book after a conversation with my friend and beta reader, Amanda. My recent blog on Karma created the seed of a story that was pinging around in my head. I asked her if she could think of another story based on the idea I outlined (albeit vaguely) to her. She mentioned a movie, but the movie’s premise was different from what I had in my head. When I tried to articulate it on paper, I found myself writing in block letters, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY.

No. I’m not rewriting the story, modernizing it, romanticizing it or any other equally bad idea. Oscar Wilde has done it already. However, I couldn’t quit thinking about it, and it became clear I wasn’t going to conceptualize my idea or get words on the page until I re-read it.

Wow.

All I really remembered from high school was the whole art/life debate and Dorian staying young and hot while his picture got old and ugly. I forgot all about Harry and Basil which is to say I forgot the most interesting characters in the story.

Basil and Harry are the artists. Together they “create” Dorian, but they separate his body and his soul. Basil, the painter, is morality. His painting becomes Dorian’s soul, but Harry is the real artist. He molds and shapes Dorian in a way Basil can’t. Basil wants Dorian to be as good and pure as the painting initially reveals him to be. Harry wants to dominate Dorian…to remake Dorian’s spirit in his image. Harry indoctrinates Dorian to his Philosophy of Hedonism. “Nothing can cure the soul but the senses.”

Harry (Lord Henry Wotton) is the voice of the novel. His cynicism permeates the story. I hesitate to call him evil. He’s more amoral than immoral, but then, amoral can be scary as hell. He espouses hedonism, but doesn’t leave the trail of ruined lives in his wake that Dorian does. Harry grows old, but not hideous like Dorian. Of course, Dorian might be a reflection of his soul just as the painting is a reflection of Dorian’s.

Harry is smart and cynical and somehow damaged. Those qualities make him the most interesting character in the novel. He is certainly the most quotable. My Kindle app has a feature where you can highlight bits of text you find interesting. I highlighted the shit out of this book, and when I went back and re-read the highlighted quotes, they were all Harry’s. Here are some of my favorites.

On beauty and sensuality

• It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But it is better to be good than to be ugly.


• It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.


• But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.


• The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.
  

As a bonafide member of the he-man woman hater’s club.

• My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.


• Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.


• A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.


• A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.


• And in reference to the only woman in the book with a brain -- Her clever tongue gets on one’s nerves.

On romance and marriage

• The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.


• Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.


• Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.


• The people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failure.


• The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of faith and the lesson of romance.

Oscar would roll over in his grave, and I’m proving Harry’s point about women loving men more for their faults, but I think he would make a great romantic hero given the right catalyst. He has a past that has molded him as surely as he molded Dorian. No one is born a cynic. It would be so much fun to see him eat his words. He is absolutely certain in his cynicism, and as he says, “The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true.”

I’m not planning a romanticized version of Wilde’s story. Harry was consistent in his cynical hedonism from beginning to end, so as much as I would like to change him, I’ll let him be.

I could care less about changing Dorian. He is flat and ultimately uninteresting because he suffers nothing. He leaves a trail of shattered lives in his wake, but never experiences his own external consequences. The only internal consequence is being forced to suffer the painting’s existence, the fear that it will be discovered. How many sins can you commit with impunity before you become boring? There has to be something at stake for us to care about a character.

Dorian does serve an important purpose, though. He is the work of art, and through him, Wilde both emphasizes and contradicts his statements about art. Dorian emphasizes the “all art is useless” philosophy. Harry notes that Dorian has never done anything or produced anything outside himself. Dorian also emphasizes the idea that art is sterile. He loves a woman only in the context of her art, when she is on stage as Juliet, Rosalind, or Imogen. The moment the woman becomes real and the art/artifice is gone, he loses interest.

Ironically, as Dorian emphasizes the sterility of art, he simultaneously contradicts it. He no longer loves Sybil because she is real. His callous words destroy her, and the painting changes for the first time.

The idea that “Art has no influence upon action” is convenient, but Dorian’s influence ripples across his sphere like something poisonous being thrown into a pond. The work of art experiences no consequences, but everyone it touches does.

I think Wilde enjoyed yanking his audience’s chain with his comments about art as surely as Harry enjoyed yanking Dorian's. He doesn’t care if it’s true or not or if we believe him or not. He just wants a reaction.

The real truth is in his story. The very soul of his protagonist resides in a painting. “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.” Wilde paints a portrait of art as both inspiration and corruption.

Oscar Wilde is a cynic, and I am a romantic, and yet I am inspired. The Picture of Dorian Gray sparked my intellect and my imagination. Wilde’s story is not my story, but my story will be better because I read his.

Apocalyptic Headlines and Beach Reading

News of the weird...Anyone who has travelled on I-75 north of Cincinnati has seen what is affectionately known as Big Butter Jesus, a large pale yellow sculpture rising out of a pond and reaching its arms toward heaven. Last night, lightning struck Big Butter Jesus and burnt it to the ground. What does that mean? I don't know, but if you google "Big Butter Jesus," you can see the headline writers are having a field day. Here's a real news link. And here's a link to Heywood Banks' tribute. I warn you, though, if you click on it, you won't be able to get the song out of your head.

On a news video, a distraught bystander called the destruction of Big Butter Jesus a sign the end is near. I had to shake my head. The Gulf is being choked by raw crude, wiping out ecosystems and economies, and she thinks Big Butter Jesus is apocalyptic.

If you're looking for something to get your mind off of apocalyptic headlines, I recommend getting lost in a good book. Before graduation last Saturday, as the faculty waited in the wings, we talked about plans for the summer. One of my colleagues in the English department said, "I'm going to read trashy books with absolutely no literary value."

She said it belligerently with an "I-dare-you-to say-something" edge. I just laughed. Lots of people treat genre fiction as a guilty pleasure. English teachers are particularly secretive about non-literary reading habits. We are the keepers of the flame. We introduce young minds to Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bronte, Twain, and all the other great authors of The Canon. God forbid we read *gasp* commercial fiction.

The irony of that ivory tower attitude is that Homer, Shakespeare, and Twain all told stories for the masses. To the extent that commercial fiction existed in their day, they were it. I think they would hate the idea of being considered stuffy, literary geniuses read only in the hallowed halls of schools and universities.

It's summer, so let's get out of the hallowed halls and onto the beach. Here's to reading romance and fantasy, murder mysteries and sci-fi, political thrillers and horror without guilt. Since I read genre fiction year-round and completely guilt free, I have some recommendations. All of these books are either paranormal romance or urban fantasy...my genres of choice.

• The fabulous J. R. Ward released the latest installment in her Black Dagger Brotherhood series this past spring. Lover Mine is John Matthew's story. Loved it.


• Charlaine Harris' Dead in the Family is the newest Sookie Stackhouse book. Eric's dad and psycho little brother show up in this installment. If you're a True Blood fan and haven't read the books, you should.


• Laurell K. Hamilton keeps pushing the envelope in her Anita Blake series. If you haven't read any of the other books, don't start with Bullet. It'll freak you out. You need to work up to this one. Jean-Claude...Asher...whoa.


• Keri Arthur wrapped up her Riley Jenson series with Moon Sworn. Riley has to come to terms with Kye's death, her estranged family, and her relationship with Quinn. I hate that the series is over, but the last book was satisfying.


• Gail Carriger is a new addition to my must-read list. I reviewed Soulless on the blog a while back. Soulless left me wanting more. Be careful what you wish for because Changeless, the sequel, was crazy-frustrating. The story was fun, but the middle book in a trilogy is always the most frustrating because typically it ends in the most annoying possible point in the story arc, and you have to wait for resolution. Blameless comes out September 1.


• Karen Marie Moning just rocks. I read Beyond the Highland Mist recently. It's the first book in her Highlander series. Reading this series all out of order didn't interfere with my enjoyment at all. Her Faefever series is to die for.

I have a stack of paperbacks in my to be read pile. When I'm not writing genre fiction, I will have my nose in one of them. I suggest you do the same.

Old School Romance

I'm not sure how it happened, but I managed to get through a whole lot of literature classes without ever reading Jane Eyre. My high school Brit Lit teacher chose Dickens over the Bronte sisters. In my undergraduate work, my two favorite English professors specialized in Medieval and Renaissance literature and American literature. I don't think I read any nineteenth century British lit when I was an undergraduate.

Finally, in grad school, I met Emily Bronte through Wuthering Heights. I liked the novel immensely, so it makes sense that I would like Charlotte's Jane Eyre, but I just never got around to reading it.

My eldest son, a high school senior, was assigned Jane Eyre this spring. When I saw the book sitting on my kitchen table, I cringed. When eldest son reads (which, to my everlasting sorrow, isn't often), he chooses fantasy. Getting him through a Gothic romance was going to be a challenge, painful even.

And it was.

I'll spare you the gory details, the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the audio book, the chapters I read aloud. Suffice it to say, he needed the English credit to graduate, and I was going to get him through that damn book if it killed us both.

A strange thing happened as I dragged my son through the 400 pages of stilted, sometimes overwrought, nineteenth century British prose. I realized I liked it. A lot.

Okay, I should qualify that last statement. I did like the book, but it totally started in the wrong place. Charlotte Bronte would never have sold that novel as is in today's market. Go out there and read agent and editor blogs. Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants all that back story slowing the plot down and losing readers twenty pages in. And yes, all you purists out there. I know that living Jane's horrible childhood helps us understand the woman she becomes, but it's boring. The story doesn't get interesting until Jane leaves school as an independent young woman and arrives at Thornfield Hall.

But I digress. I realized I had been drawn into the plot when I was reading the chapter in which Jane saves Rochester's life when his bed mysteriously catches fire. My son was laying across his own bed, head hanging off the end, bemoaning being held prisoner while I read aloud. I was trying to figure out why Grace Poole would want to kill Rochester when I heard my son's voice.

"Mom! Earth to Mom! Are we going to do this or what?"

He was apparently listening enough to notice I had stopped reading aloud. I didn't even realize it. I guess I wanted to read faster than my mouth could form the words. Normally, I like reading aloud. I'm pretty good at it. I do it in my classroom to generate interest in whatever we're reading. Given the choice, my son would rather listen to me than the audio book, but the story had sucked me in, and I wanted to read for my enjoyment rather than his.

Bronte built the romantic tension between Jane and Rochester beautifully. When Jane thought Rochester was going to marry Blanche Ingram and she would have to leave, I actually shed a tear. I felt her pain. The major obstacle to Jane and Rochester's romance is a doozy, and when it was revealed, I had to put the book down for a day. Since I hadn't read the book before now, I'll assume there are others out there who haven't and might, so I won't give too much away, but overcoming that obstacle was hard for the characters. Because I was invested in the characters, it was hard for me.

The hallmark of a truly great book is one that stimulates my intellect and touches my heart. Jane Eyre did both. Jane was a heroine you could root for. She was a strong, independent woman who wouldn't compromise her core values even when sticking to them meant leaving the man she loved. She understood that happily ever after can't be built on a lie. I have nothing but respect for Bronte. Writing those scenes had to be painful. No tears in the writer. No tears in the reader.

The thing about those tears, though, is that the shedding of them makes the happily ever after so much more satisfying because it was hard won. I felt the joy at the end as keenly as I felt the pain that came before it. The only thing that would have made it better was if Bronte had included a love scene at the end. Yeah, I know. It was the nineteenth century, and the poor woman had to publish the book under a male pseudonym, but it needed that last love scene.

Of course, then I would have had to read the thing aloud to my eighteen year old son, so maybe not.

The Truth and Nature of Love?

Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!

We read these lines today in class. They're my favorite lines from the entire play. Listening to them got me thinking about romance and the very truth and nature of love.

Have you seen Shakespeare in Love? Will makes a bet with Lord Wessex that he can show the very truth and nature of love in a play. When Queen Elizabeth sees Romeo and Juliet performed, she declares Will the winner of the bet. I have a lifelong love-hate relationship with this play, and as I reach the end of it with another group of students, I have to disagree with Liz.

When I first read the play in high school, I hated it. I mean HATED it. In spite of the language which I've always thought was cool, the ending just ruined the whole thing for me. I've always been a happy ending kind of gal. In college, I read the play again. HATED IT...maybe more than I did in high school. By college, I'd experienced some of my own real life heartache, and I craved happy endings in my fiction even more.

Then I became a teacher of high school freshmen. Suddenly, it was my responsibility to introduce this play to students. I couldn't very well dive into their first meeting with Shakespeare by saying I hated the play. And honestly, as I immersed myself in the language, I realized I didn't hate the play. Okay, Romeo and Juliet were still totally whiny, overwrought, and self-absorbed, but the story arc was perfect. The pacing spot-on. The plot twists engaging.

And the words, oh the words. I read them five times every year, and I love them more every time.

The more acquainted I became with your average 14/15 year old (Juliet is not quite 14), the more I stood in awe of Shakespeare. Shakespeare's true genius is his understanding of the human condition. Real teenagers are totally whiny, overwrought, and self-absorbed. Lord, God Almighty, you should read the angsty love poetry I'm subjected to on a regular basis. Young adult literature's bread and butter is the emotional messiness of adolescence.

It's taken my whole life, but I love Romeo and Juliet. Really. I LOVE it, but I don't think Shakespeare captured the very truth and nature of love in this play. I think he captured the truth and nature of adolescence. Throw heartbreak into the middle of those hormonal, irrational, impetuous years and tragedy is a real possibility.

As adults, we poo poo young love. We poo poo it because it is so impulsive and overwrought. "It's high school. It's puppy love. Get over it." Most of us did. Although, I bet if I took a poll and got honest answers, a lot you reading this would admit to scars from a teenage heartbreak. Sometimes those scars haunt our adult relationships.

I've seen teenagers self-destruct over a high school relationship.

Romeo and Juliet isn't romance. It's rebellion and defiance. It's dangerous secrets. It's testosterone. It's the epitome of impulsiveness. Romeo and Juliet is youth in all its dangerous glory.

What Juliet really needed was a sassy gay friend.

In which I confess to an attraction to weirdness

I have a confession to make. I love Johnny Depp. He is one of those actors that will get me into the movie theater regardless of my interest in the movie. And here's the thing...the weirder he is, the more I love him.

I saw Alice in Wonderland with my friend Amanda tonight. I read the book a long time ago, and I've seen various versions of the story on film. Until today, I never viewed the Mad Hatter as a romantic hero. Even typing those words cracks me up a little. I mean seriously. Look at him. He has yellow eyes ringed by large red circles, bright red clown hair, and broken and bloody fingers. His accent shifts throughout the movie from a thick Scottish brogue to a light English accent. He moves with an odd, shuffling gait.

My favorite moment in the movie is the scene in which the Hatter walks through a dead forest with Alice on his shoulder. He recites "Jabberwocky," and it is wonderfully, deliciously creepy. His voice is mesmerizing. He knows exactly which words to emphasize, when to fall into that vacant stare.

As I watch, I'm thinking maybe I'm weird too. What else could explain my attraction to the Mad Hatter? But when I sheepishly admit it to Amanda, she totally gets it, shares it even. So this is my theory. Johnny Depp just exudes sex appeal, and no amount of makeup or weirdness can hide it. In fact, his appeal is enhanced by the weirdness. There is a chemistry between Alice and the Hatter that I'm quite sure Lewis Carroll never intended. When the Hatter asks Alice to stay in Wonderland, there is a heat in his yellow eyes that has nothing to do with friendship.

The movie had other fun qualities. I've seen mixed reviews, but I really liked it. Alan Rickman's hookah smoking caterpillar is a hoot. Imagine a really mellow Snape. Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen is also great. She's been criminally insane in the last three movies in which I've seen her, and each performance is different. The actress who plays Alice is believable and likable as well.

In spite of these other good performances, Johnny steals the show. Nobody does crazy better. He's certifiable in this movie, and I love it. Maybe that makes me a little nuts too, but as Lewis Carroll says, all the best people are.

Speak with Authority!

Janet Reid posted a link to this on her blog, and it like, totally wowed me, ya know?

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

I will use this in my classroom. The medium is very cool, but the message is better.

Soulless

I read the most delightful book today. I love, love, love it when an author puts a new twist on a familiar story. When she does it with a completely original voice, I'm a fan for life.

SOULLESS is an urban fantasy. Like most urban fantasies, there are vampires, werewolves and a kick-ass heroine. Unlike most urban fantasies, SOULLESS is set in a Victorian England where vampires and werewolves have been seamlessly integrated into the nobility, and are, in fact, responsible for the rousing success of the British Empire. Instead of wielding guns and knives, the kick-ass heroine, an aging spinster who has been "on the shelf" for quite a while, wields a parasol. She's 26 (ancient for an unmarried woman), smart, assertive, and cursed with the tan complexion and prominent nose of her Italian father (deceased). Alexia Tarabotti is also soulless.

Vampires and werewolves have an abundance of soul. This is what allows them to survive the bite of a hive queen vampire or a werewolf. Soullessness is the counterbalance. When Alexia touches a vampire or werewolf, they return to their human state. Though Alexia is persona non grata with most of the supernatural set, one of her closest friends is Lord Akeldama, one of London's oldest vampires and gloriously, flamboyantly gay. She is also enmeshed in a very Jane Austen-y romance with Lord Conall Maccoon, Earl of Woolsey, and alpha of the werewolf pack.

The mystery that drives the story is fun, but the characters (with last names like Loontwill and HisselPenny) and Carriger's droll British style absolutely made the book for me. Simple details like Alexia describing her mother as "prone to wearing yellow and engaging in bouts of hysteria" had me chuckling. I laughed hysterically more than once. I'd love to quote some of the funniest lines, but they would be major spoilers. Go to the amazon link here and read the sample pages.

SOULLESS has everything I love in a book: smart writing, humor, mystery, romance, and voice. I highly recommend it. I devoured the book in a day. It's one of those stories where you can't wait to see how it ends, but you're sorry when it does. A sequel called CHANGELESS is coming out next month, and I'll be first in line to get my copy.

Margaritas and Menopause (the Musical)

Last night, I hit the town with a group of my girlfriends, a fabulous group of eleven women, ranging in age from late twenties to sixties. We started at a Mexican restaurant recommended by one of our group. You really can't go wrong when you start your evening with chips and salsa and margaritas.

The service at the restaurant was oddly slow. Usually, Mexican restaurants are really fast, but we waited almost 45 minutes for our food. I'm not sure if it was a ploy to get us to order more drinks, but if it was, it was effective. Thankfully, we were very close the the Opera House because we arrived right at curtain. The show? Menopause the Musical.

I had heard from several sources that the show was funny, and it was. The slow service (and subsequent additional margaritas) at the restaurant greased the wheels, and everybody laughed. I noticed something interesting, though. Those of our group who had already reached menopause howled...and I mean howled with laughter. Those of us who weren't there yet...not so much.

The show begins when four women meet at a bra sale at Bloomingdale's in New York. "The Professional Woman," "the Earth Mother," "the Iowa Housewife," and "the Soap Star" are in the throes of menopause. They spend the day together at Bloomingdales celebrating the change of life in song. A good bit of the humor came from the songs, parodies of hits from the sixties and seventies. For example, the opening song was "Change of Life" done to the tune of "Chain of Fools." My favorite parody was "Puff, My God I'm Draggin'."

Honestly, while clever, the first two-thirds of the show depressed the hell out of me. The women sang tributes to hot flashes, night sweats, weight gain, wild mood swings, Prozac, and being replaced by younger women.

At one point, I looked at my friend Stephanie and said, "This is what we have to look forward to?"

And while I was thinking, "WTF. This isn't really that funny," the older women in the audience were laughing hysterically, until they had tears rolling down their cheeks. I guess it's one of those things where having survived something gives you a sense of humor about it. Teachers often laugh about things other people wouldn't find funny at all. So I kind of get that.

My discomfort probably says something about my own fear of aging. I'm still a few years shy of menopause, but it looms on the horizon closer than it used to. I like to think I'm comfortable with my age. I see the accumulation of years as accumulation of wisdom and experience. But for a while last night what I saw was a future where I physically fall apart. I was very motivated to get up this morning and go to Jazzercise. Thank goodness that's not where the show ends.

The last part of the show is a celebration of womanhood, and I liked that. One particular scene in which the housewife bemoans her husband's waning desire and the other women clue her in to "Good Vibrations" was fall in the floor funny. The actress wielded her pink microphone with comedic genius. Stephanie, whose grandmother was sitting two seats down, was mortified...which made me laugh even harder.

My personal aging issues aside, I would recommend the show. There were moments we could all identify with regardless of age. The Earth Mother's continual struggle for zen was both funny and familiar. The fact that each of the four women had labels instead of names was interesting. The tension between the archetypal behavior expected of them and their actions was pointedly funny. Sometimes it's hard to live up to the labels we carry.

In the end, if I have to think about the fact that in the not-too-distant future I'm apparently going to come apart at the seams, I want to do it with a group of smart, fabulous, funny women. I also recommend a couple of margaritas to soften the blow.

Words Matter

Bruce and I were riding in my car recently, and the radio was tuned to the top 40 channel I listen to when the boys are with me. Bruce almost always keeps his radio tuned to classic rock. While I like classic rock, I'm mildly offended by the idea that music from my high school and college years is now "classic." On the other hand, Bruce can't stand hip hop which comprises about half of a top 40 station's playlist.

We were talking, and the radio was just background noise, so for a while, it really didn't matter what was on. We hit a lull in the conversation just as Fireflies by Owl City began to play. I like this song. The melody gets stuck in your head, but it's a happy, nonsensical song that lifts my mood. I began to sing, and after a minute Bruce started laughing.

"What the hell is this song? It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

You can listen by clicking here, but consider the opening lyrics:

You would not believe your eyes
If ten million fireflies
Lit up the world as I fell asleep

'Cause they'd fill the open air
And leave teardrops everywhere
You'd think me rude
But I would just stand and stare

The song is about dreams, but you have to listen a couple times before it makes sense. Bruce began to sing along as well, but he made up his own lyrics about how a kindergartner could have written the song. (I wish I had a clickable link for that.) He didn't like the song at all because he thought the lyrics were dumb.

All I have is anecdotal evidence, but I believe this is a common phenomenon. I was driving to Lexington with my eldest son yesterday and heard a song called Carry Out. I recognized Justin Timberlake's voice, and I kinda liked the music, so I tuned in to the words. Like a lot of hip hop songs, it was blatantly sexual. Okay, whatever. Cleverly done sexual lyrics don't particularly offend me. Too often, though, rap singers think they're being clever when they aren't. See my infamous Salt Shaker post for more on this.

Carry Out is an extended metaphor comparing the object of the singer's desire to fast food.

You look good, baby must taste heavenly
I’m pretty sure that you got your own recipe
So pick it up, pick it up, yeah I like you
I just can’t get enough I got to drive through

(refrain)
Take my order cause your body like a
Carry out

The singer goes on about having it your way, supersizing, and so on. To hear the song, click here.

These lyrics don't come off as clever to me. Seriously, what woman wants to be wooed by having her body compared to fast food? And the idea of a "drive through" encounter isn't remotely sexy. The kicker is that the music is sexy, but now that I've listened to the lyrics, the song doesn't appeal to me anymore.

Bruce thought the fireflies were stupid. I was put off by fast food sex. The lyrics to a song are like the story to a movie. Without compelling words, it's all just spectacle.

My very own "Best of 2009" list

If you've watched TV or rolled through your favorite blogs in the last week or so, you've seen dozens of "best of 2009" lists. Cliched as the idea may be, each listmaker comes from a different perspective with different tastes, so I always stop and read. Here's mine.

Young Adult Fiction

1. Unwind by Neal Shusterman -- This one stayed with me a long time after I finished. You can read my full review here.
2. The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins -- These books made a lot of lists. Word of mouth has spread like wildfire among my students, so much so, I had more students read Collins the first semester for their independent reading project than Stephanie Meyers (Twilight books).
3. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher -- Another haunting book that examines the devastating snowball effect of gossip and rumors.

Mystery/Suspense

The Doomsday Key by James Rollins -- Rollins is always a lot of fun. I reviewed this book in my What I read this summer post.

Non-Fiction

On Writing by Stephen King -- I read this book for the third time this year. I get something different from it every time. The first half of the book is a memoir focused on King's path to writing. The second half is a toolbox for writers. The memoir is poignant, funny, and inspiring. The toolbox is exactly what it claims to be...a toolbox full of excellent information.

Short Stories

I teach a unit on short stories as part of my professional life, but I rediscovered them in my personal reading this year. Thank you iphone Kindle. I read two particularly noteworthy stories this year.

1. "The Wife's Story" by Ursula K. Le Guin -- This is a great story for anyone who likes the paranormal. The twist was delightful. I love being surprised.
2. "By the Waters of Babylon" by Stephen Vincent Benet -- Another engaging story with a twist. Click on the link and read it for yourself.

Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy

I read more of these two genres than I could possible list. When I shuffled through the large pile in the corner of my bedroom, I couldn't even remember what happened in half of them. I almost downloaded one of them onto my phone because the title wasn't familiar when I surfed through Amazon. However, three authors made a big impression on me this year.

1. Rachel Vincent -- I read two installments in her cat shifter series this year. Shift and Prey. Both devastated me. I discussed Shift at length in this post and Prey in my summer reading post. If you haven't read Vincent, buy Stray, her first book, and go from there.
2. Karen Marie Moning -- My favorite ending in a book this year was Faefever. It was a true "Oh Shit!" ending. I just read Dreamfever last week, and it has a cliffhanger ending as well. Moning's characters are ambiguous. The first person POV keeps you guessing as to who the true bad guys are.
3. JR Ward -- I'm a crazy fangirl. Ward can do no wrong. Read my review of Lover Avenged here. Her writing style is "in your face." Her characters are "in your face" badasses, and I love them. In addition to her Black Dagger Brotherhood books, she started a new Fallen Angels series this year. Covet was the first in the series. Fallen Angels is set in the same universe as the BDB, but the characters are different. You can buy BDB as a boxed set. Go now and get them!

My Family's Favorites

1. First born son: A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking -- My kid who hates school loves this book. He started a lot of sentences with "Did you know..." while he was reading it. No, I didn't know, but it was always interesting.
2. Young son: Gym Candy by Carl Deuker -- If you have teenage boys who like sports, buy them a Carl Deuker book. Son #2 has read every book Carl Deuker has written since reading Gym Candy.
3. Bruce: House to House by SSG David Bellavia -- This is one marine's account of the original invasion of Fallujah. Bruce read it cover to cover in a day or two.

There you have it...my best of 2009 list. I hope you have a wonderful new year filled with many excellent books!

Drinking the ebook Kool-Aid

I stuck my nose inside a book when I learned to read, and people have been trying to pull it out ever since. Fiction is my first love, but I've been known to step out with a good non-fiction on occasion. Books transport, educate, distract, seduce. The abstract (stories, facts, opinions, conjecture, philosophy, even blathering drivel) is made concrete in books.

I love books as physical objects. I love touching them, flipping through the pages, breathing in their scent. When I walk into a used bookstore or the stacks in a library, the smell of old books triggers the pleasure center in my brain, and my mood lifts. So when ebooks arrived, I held nothing but disdain. Pundits prophesied the end of print, and I laughed. Right...like I want to curl up in bed with my computer until I fall asleep. Ebooks weren't portable. They weren't convenient. The whole idea was ridiculous.

Enter the portable e-reader. For the last couple of years, I've listened to people wax lyrical about their Kindles and Sony e-readers, but I remained skeptical. Not for me, I thought. They're expensive...$200 - $300 expensive. Then you still have to pay for the content. Plus, it's not a book. It doesn't smell like a book. It doesn't feel like a book. You can't flip through the pages to get a literal as well as a literary feel for it. No thank you very much.

My aversion bordered on irrational. I'm not a technophobe at all. My most prized material possession is my iphone. Seriously, I love the thing. If technology can improve something, I'm all over it. Why was I so threatened by the ebook?

I believe nostalgia accounts for 50% of my ebook aversion. Books have always been a source of happiness for me. No matter what is happening in my life, I know a good book will provide a few hours escape. And while the experience of reading is primarily intellectual or imaginative, it is also sensory. The cover art is visually stimulating and often the first lure in checking out a new author. The smell of ink on paper and the physical sensation of touching and turning pages add to the enjoyment.

The other 50% has to do with the idea of permanence. Books have existed as physical objects since man started writing things down. Books don't require electricity or batteries. A virus won't corrupt the data. Yes, I know books can be destroyed, but ink and paper don't seem as fragile as bits and bytes. As an aspiring author, I don't dream of seeing my name underneath the title on an e-reader. I dream of running my fingers across the raised letters of my name on the glossy cover of a physical book.

I know you can't fight the future. We're all barreling into it at light speed, and clinging to the past won't slow it down. So, I dipped my toe into the pool. I downloaded the free Kindle app onto my iphone.

*Insert sheepish grin here*

I now have one more reason to love my iphone. Amazon has a service called "one-click ordering." You find an interesting book, click one time, and shazam! The book is on your phone. I can have any book I want whenever I want with one click. So dangerous...so very, very dangerous. You don't even feel like you're spending money because you entered your credit card number way back when you set the account up. There's no mention of a monetary transaction when you "one click order."

The text is easily readable on my iphone screen, and ironically, more portable than a physical book. My phone is always with me, so I can read anywhere...and I do. I have always had a book for doctors' office waiting rooms, the hair salon, and such, but now I read in the checkout line at WalMart, at the post office, the bank, anywhere I have to wait. My attitude about waiting is vastly improved because I don't feel like my time is being stolen from me. I'm using it to do something I enjoy.

Then there is the massive pile of books in the corner of my bedroom, a constant source of aggravation for Bruce because I refuse to part with them. There are four more large boxes full in the basement. I do lend books to my friends all the time, but with a few notable exceptions, I never pick most of them up again once I've finished. When I'm done with a book on my iphone, I delete it because Amazon keeps a record of what I've bought. If I want to read a book again, it's in my archived items, and I download it again for free.

Yes, I've not only drunk the ebook Koolaid, I've drunk deep.

I probably won't shell out $200 for a regular Kindle. The app on my phone works just fine. Amazon is not losing anything on me with my "one click" fascination. I'm still secure in my love of print books. They're not going anywhere. For the casual reader, print is still the best game out there. Libraries full of print books are a load-bearing support beam for a democratic society.

The smell of ink on paper still hits my brain like brownies baking, but for instant gratification, you can't beat "one clicking" an ebook.

Unwind

I just closed the pages of Neal Shusterman's Unwind. Usually, I like to think about a book a little...let it simmer...before I blog about it. This one had me heading straight for the computer.

I picked up Unwind at the urging of a couple of my students. Science fiction is not normally my genre of choice, but their book talks were intriguing. Unwind is a young adult novel, but that label is misleading. There is nothing lightweight or juvenile about this book.

The book takes place in the not-too-distant future after the second Civil War. Called the Heartland War, the fight was started by militant factions of the pro-life and pro-choice movements. Peace was finally achieved when the Bill of Life was signed. The Bill states that a child cannot be harmed between the moment of conception and its thirteenth birthday, at which time a parent can choose to retroactively abort their child by having it unwound. Unwinding is a process in which the child is harvested for body parts. Every single part is used, so the child is considered to still be "alive." Once a person reaches the age of eighteen, they are a legal adult and can no longer be signed over to the state for unwinding.

The premise is simultaneously intriguing and horrifying. I had not previously read any of Shusterman's work, and I feared the book might become a shrill political statement on the abortion issue, although I was uncertain on which side of the issue he would fall. Here's the interesting thing...I've read the book, and I still don't know. I have not yet gone in search of that information out here on the information super-highway, and I'm thinking I won't. I kind of like not knowing.

The novel follows three teens, Connor, Risa, and Lev, who have been signed over for unwinding. Connor, 16, suffers from impulse control and a hair-trigger temper. Throughout the novel, he struggles to think beyond the first thought that enters his head to the second, usually wiser, thought. In this respect, he resembles almost every teenage boy I know. His parents get tired of dealing with his poor choices and sign him over to be unwound. He runs away and is thrown together with Risa, 15, and Lev, 13. Risa has been a ward of the state, unwanted since birth. The budget for the overcrowded state homes is tight, so any ward without a talent that justifies the cost of their care is signed over for unwinding. Lev is a "tithe." His religious-fundamentalist parents take the call to tithe 10% of their possessions seriously. Lev is the 10th child. He is prepared from birth (read brainwashed) to be unwound when he turns 13.

The three meet other Unwinds on the run. Each story is more awful than the one before it. Hayden's parents signed him over for unwinding as the culminating act of spite in a bitter divorce. Each parent would see him unwound before allowing the other to have custody. Embry's parents died and left him money, so his greedy aunt signed him over. As I read, I thought, "Okay, Shusterman is pro-life. He's making the point that these parents make horrible rationalizations to justify terminating the life of their child."

It's not that simple, though. Shusterman also includes the overcrowded state homes filled with unwanted babies who become unwanted, unwound teens. Then there is "storking." Storking is a law which says a parent can leave their unwanted newborn on someone else's front porch. The person who finds the child is required by law to raise it whether they want it or not...more often than not a recipe for disaster. Lev's family was storked three times, making the decision to "tithe" him easier.

Lest you think the book is one big convoluted social comment, let me assure you it's also a page-turning rollercoaster of a story. The adults are baffling, and almost universally unlikeable, but the teen protagonists are real and round and suck you in. The stakes for these kids are high, and the suspense and sense of urgency keeps you reading. The inevitable scene in which we see a character unwound left me cold with horror. I fully expect to have nightmares tonight.

In spite of possible nightmares, I don't regret reading the book. The best adjective for the experience would be "haunting." Shusterman illustrates there are no easy, pat answers to the abortion question. His views on some other social issues are clearer. Society has replaced the terms "black" and "white" with "umber" and "sienna" to describe skin color, but the underlying racism still exists. One of my favorite secondary characters, CyFy, has two dads who are m-married, and they are the sanest adults in the story. And I cackled out loud when someone asks Connor why he doesn't know more about a historical event, and he responds by saying it was the last chapter in the textbook and they couldn't get to it because of state testing.

I have two teenage sons who routinely test my mettle as a parent. They are good boys, but sometimes they make poor choices. They have made me lay awake with worry, cry, and rail at the universe, but the idea of throwing my hands in the air and disposing of them is unthinkable. I can't imagine a world where it would be routinely accepted. Shusterman can. He opens the last section of the story with a quote from Albert Einstein.

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

This is It!

I saw Michael Jackson's This is It today. Wow. Forget any opinion you have about Michael Jackson, the man. This movie is all about Michael Jackson, the artist, and he was an incredible artist.

The creative process is fascinating to me. My favorite blogs are writers' blogs where they talk about process. I love Top Chef and Project Runway for the same reason. You see creative people thinking out loud. This is It is a feast for anyone interested in the creative process. You get a behind the scenes look at everything from the dancers' auditions, to musical rehearsals, to the making of the short films that accompany every song in the show.

Michael surrounded himself with amazing talent, and he was generous in showcasing it. He let his dancers shine. He reveled in his musicians ability to jam. He let one of his back-up singers have the spotlight when they sang "I Just Can't Stop Loving You." And it was obvious the dancers, singers, and musicians wanted to live up to Michael's high standards.

The dancers all had stars in their eyes. Several of them broke down in tears in interviews between rehearsals. This break was career-making for them. You couldn't help but feel their joy or smile at the "holy crap, I'm dancing with Michael Jackson" expression on their faces.

The musicians had nothing but respect for Michael. One grizzled old guitar player said, "So many pop artists don't know music. Michael knows music, and no one understands his music like he does. We're creating genius stuff here." Watching Michael work, you believe it.

My favorite thing about the movie was watching Michael turn every song into a story and weave a narrative between the songs. He understood pacing. He knew the moments between the beats were as important as the beats themselves. He stopped the whole production when he felt the opening to "Smooth Criminal" was moving too fast. "We have to let it simmer," he said. Later in the show, he insisted silence would be more dramatic than than the rumbling noise the director wanted to use. He was right.

As much as I loved the movie, it left me a little sad. Michael came alive when he performed. Early on, you could see the joy in his face when he sang and danced. The music lived in him. In the later footage, Michael was tired, almost haggard. In a full dress rehearsal for "Thriller," he needed a crew member's help to keep his footing on the hydraulic stage. You never quite forget you are watching him put together a show that will never be fully realized.

I recommend the movie to anyone who appreciates the creative process. Even more, I recommend the movie to anyone who loves Michael's music. The soundtrack to this movie is the soundtrack of my high school and college years. I could have closed my eyes and remembered specific events in my life as I listened. Except I couldn't close my eyes.

It would have been a great show.

Word Clouds

I discovered the coolest thing ever on Nathan Bransford's blog. Word Clouds! Wordle.net is the site. You simply paste in a block of text or a website url and voila! You have a word cloud. A block of words in itself is just generally awesome, and you can play with the font, the color, and the layout until you get an aesthetically pleasing cloud, but for my fellow writers out there, the cloud has an added benefit. The cloud is created out of the 150 (a default number which can be changed) most used words in the block of text. The most used words are the biggest words in the cloud.

I've posted two clouds. The first is made up of words from the most recent entries in my blog. The second is from my novel, Sapphire Sins. I pasted all 107,000 words. Can you guess the names of my main characters? I've been working on yet another edit of the book, and I knew I was using the word "look" too often. Could a word be more lackluster and boring? Obviously, I still have some editing to do.

This will be fun to use with my students. They can see the words they've used the most in their writing. I visualize printed word clouds all over my classroom.

Yes, my geek is showing, but come on people...Word Clouds! 'Nuff said.

Glee

Wednesday night's episode of Glee made me laugh harder than anything I've seen on TV in a while. This is particularly hilarious to me because my husband is a football coach. My son is a high school football player and a member of the school choir. My son watched the episode with me. His response? "They would get a delay of game penalty for that. I fell out of my chair...seriously.