Plus ça change, plus c'est la même debâcle economique

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This long, shambling story is not without interest. There is romance, intrigue, politics, Ponzi schemes, American character assassination (oh, I love it when the Brits do that - it's so much fun to see ourselves as others see us), a social structure in upheaval, and a critique of literary criticism. But it is pretty darn long. I read the Kindle edition and didn't pay attention to how long it was or I might have been daunted. Still, I had a short vacation coming up, spending a few days in a hotel in the middle of nowhere without a car, and figured if anything would drive me to read this, that would do it.
After that Hardy hodgepodge (Desperate Remedies, see my so-called review of that at http://staff-developomendo.blogspot.com/... ), I was leery of Trollope, but actually found myself enjoying this book. The characters and situations were not as over-the-top as in the Hardy story. Heroines who want answers about their fiancés will openly defy their mothers and take a train alone for the first time to track down answers, and good on 'em, I say!
Overly honorable men actually wrestle with their lesser, uglier feelings for quite a while before conquering them.
Chinless things in clubs have varying degrees of degradation if not actual separate and believable personalities.
And small, furry creatures from Alpha-Centauri would be, if they appeared in this book, separate and believable small, furry creatures from Alpha-Centauri.
Whatever you do, don't read the Wikipedia plot summary of this, which seems to be from a different version of the novel than I read. Paul went to Mexico to check on the progress of the railroad? Not in my book. That was just an offer to get him out of the boardroom and in the end he didn't fall for it. Also, an "editor" of that article complained that too much of the plot summary was given over to details of the plot. Excuse me? It's a frickin' plot summary! The complaint should be, the details of the plot are, at times, inaccurate. And how do you condense 100 chapters to a few paragraphs?
Anyway, whether it's a spoiler or not, all works out for The Best and the Truly Noble, or at least, Likable characters get the happy ending they so richly deserve. If you're touchy about anti-Semitism, you might want to take a chill pill before reading, or at least hold out for "fat, old Jew" who shows the backward Christians what Dignity is.

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And Some People Are Just Too Noble

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was read in the Kindle edition.

I was totally unaware of the German occupation of the Channel Islands during WWII, so this served as a small and very interesting history lesson. Other than that, the story was not very original (most aren't) but it was told in an original and entertaining way. The romance part of the story is as predictable as Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy (and, come to think of it, I can make a case for parallels), you just wonder when they're going to get around to it.

Bits of it went beyond credulity - how can you paint a portrait of someone to make it look like an ancestor in such a short period of time? Have you any idea how long it takes oils to dry?! And then to age it? Anything inside a month would smell like new paint. And don't you love it how coincidence operates; that a couple might be on the point of a kiss and Exactly The Wrong Person shows up at that critical moment?

I know some people don't care for the epistolary style, but I enjoy it and I thought that was well done. It also enabled the story to be told in something other than chronological order and to kill off a main character in the middle of the book yet have that character remain a force throughout the rest of the book. You have to admit that that is a clever piece of work. So maybe I should give this two and a half stars.


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Write About It!/Ga Children's Lit Conference

Miriam ("Mimi") Rutland is a published author of a series of books about Miss Pistachio. Her session on teaching writing realistic fiction to kids using their own experiences interested me because of the Be Creative theme of this summer's reading program. I was already thinking about a poetry workshop. Maybe I could do this also or instead - maybe I should just go lie down.

Rutland uses a storyboard approach in her 3rd-5th grade writing clubs. She has them think of three people that are important to them, then three events: vacation, birthday, lost tooth. They have to pick one of the people (who doesn't have to be connected with the event) and describe the person: what they look like, what sort of personality. Then you put the person together with one of the events ... and embellish. Add little bits, like spices.

She says that the hardest thing to do is to start. Sometimes they need to have realistic explained to them (no flying cars or talking animals). Sometimes they need to brainstorm a special event: going to the beach, visiting a friend's house, making a new friend.

And she made us go through the process. She read some of the paragraphs we wrote "anonymously." She was careful to praise what she thought was good or interesting about the paragraphs, which of course reminded me of Mrs. Smith in Kindergarten and how she squashed a classmate's clay cat and told her she had done it all wrong and to "Start Over!" I had been looking at her method of dividing the clay into pieces and making the cat (we all had to make a cat that day - no creativity in that class!) out of them the same way you'd assemble a snowman: ball with smaller ball on top, tiny balls pinched into ears, another piece rolled into a long tail, etc. I looked at my cat, all pinched here and there and messy looking and then at her neatly assembled one and had been at the point redoing mine when Mrs. Smith waddled over in her grey wool suit, ruffled blouse, and black orthopedic shoes and squashed the snowcat flat. It's a lesson for all of us who work with kids. [Not to put too fine a point on it, the lesson is: Don't Do That!]

Rutland's presentation was simple and organized and fit exactly in the time allotted. So maybe there should be short sessions and longer sessions.

The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt

This was in my shelf-reading area (along with Bully-Be-Gone, see below) and looked interesting. The jacket blurb reminded me of David Sedaris's story of his foray into Shakespearean acting when he was a kid. As the title indicates, it is typical teen hyperbole where everything is about them and their own petty problems. There are no wars. Holling is just the only non-catechism student in his class, causing his teacher to find something to do with him on Wednesday afternoons. Because she tries giving him away, giving him icky chores, and finally caves in and forces him to read Shakespeare, he thinks she hates him.
Schmidt must be my age or a year or two younger. I remember all this Viet Nam angst and I certainly heard about generation clashes (which just didn't happen between me and my parents but I knew it must be going on because I saw it on television). There are some things, though, that I'm pretty sure did not happen, but I guess had to be written this way for the sake of the story. I am from New York and while we had air-raid drills my kindergarten year (none of the "duck-and-cover" nonsense from earlier in the Cold War), it was all over after then, so I doubt it continuing in 1968. Teachers were not delivered telegrams about the life or death status of their loved ones in the service in their classrooms. Any right-thinking administrator would call the teacher to the office to be given news in relative privacy with adult support ... if indeed the message goes there at all.
And one other thing bothered me.
Mrs. Baker and Holling read together "The Merchant of Venice" and have a fine discussion about it. They discuss what happens to Shylock and Mrs. Baker finishes by telling Holling that this is the reason this play is called a tragedy. I flipped to the back blurb about the author to confirm what I had read about him before. He is a college English teacher. Shylock's position in society and his losses at the end of the play notwithstanding, "The Merchant of Venice" was classified as a comedy at its first printing. Today we might refer to it as a "problem play," but the merchant of the title not only doesn't lose his pound of flesh, he gets the girl at the end. It might be a tragedy for Shylock, but the play itself is not called a tragedy.
This does not spoil the overall book, which is chock full of pathos that brought this reader to tears even as she resisted it. The book is not without humor as Holling relates how he suffers numerous "humiliations" such as playing Ariel, a fairy, in a scene from "The Tempest." I have to agree that playing a fairy, even in a Shakespeare play, would sink a teenage boy's macho rankings in the herd, much more so with tights and feathers on his bottom. (I also heartily disbelieve that any performance of any Shakespeare would move his peers to tears, but that's why they call it "fiction." I'm beginning to feel sorry for Mickey Mantle, by the way, because of how he's used in fiction to symbolize all idols with feet of clay. I know he was an alcoholic and hardly Mr. Nice Guy to his fans. It just seems to be kicking someone when they're down or dead or otherwise can't defend themselves. Feet of clay is an important lesson to learn, but I'm just sayin' ...) There is also the sole Vietnamese student who has to bear the hostility of some and the "noble" support of others.
I finished reading the book while working out at the club. I'd done my limit on the cardio machines and got to the end of the story by walking laps on the track. You know it's a good (if manipulative) read if I lose track of how much time I've spent exercising while reading! I'm willing to set aside my little quibbles (not without airing them to make me appear smarter - say, aren't those standard achievement tests called the Regents exams? My sister sweated those each year and had to go to summer school one year because she flunked them!) to call this a Good Book.

A Turnabout

Everyone is probably sick of the Digital Youth Summit notes, so I've prepared a short book review to provide the refreshing lime wedge to the notes' eye-watering tequila shot.
In what appears to be a series of the Misadventures of Millicent Madding, Brian Tacang (above), a former fashion designer, offers us Bully-Be-Gone. The titular character of the series, an unrepentant inventor named Millicent, devises a formula to fend off the middle-school bullies that make her life, and that of the rest of the smartypants crowd of multi-culturals, a living heck. She calls this formula ... well, "Bully-Be-Gone," but it unfortunately backfires by making the bullies romantically interested in their former victims which, at least for middle-schoolers, is even worse than bullying. I must say that I find the group of kids with mult-cultural backgrounds in children's books to be utterly unrealistic, but this isn't a realistic story, so I'm going to let Tacang get away with it.
Although it's my opinion that Tacang is trying a bit too hard to be funny, especially with the names (such as Uncle Phineas Baldernot), some of this is actually amusing. One could only hope for a librarian with Shakespeare and Toni Morrison tattooed on her well-developed biceps, and I was particularly taken with the cross-dressing English teacher. Oh, sure, it was the monthly Greats Of Literature class and Mr. Templeton was dressed in period costume (big skirt and hat - this must be where the fashion designer bit comes in), but ... Oh, never mind. I just love a man in a dress. What a great middle-school this must be! If only I had children, I'd send them there.

shelfmonkeys ... rips off Unshelved

Based on a true story. In the fifth grade I moved to a new city and started in a new school. On a trip to the school library (I'm dating myself here - they weren't called Media Centers then) when I discovered they had run out of Alfred Hitchcock, the school librarian suggested a book of realistic fiction to me. I read the story with increasing distaste. The main character was as described above and the whole time I was reading all I could think of was why the librarian thought I would enjoy this book. In my mind, it was because that is how she saw me. My middle-class sensibilities were violated. How could anyone think I was the daughter of the equivalent of a janitor?! My father was in middle-management! He went to college. He played golf. My mother was very eloquent on proper etiquette. She judged flower arranging and painted. Oh, I had friends on various socio-economic levels, and that didn't bother me, but don't go mislabeling me.
The next time we went to the school library, I cagily avoided the librarian. However, an alert teacher caught me and recommended James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl to me. I didn't have high hopes for it, but on the face of it, it didn't seem to be about any little girls who had no friends and lived in less than fortunate circumstances. After two pages, I was hooked. Today, as someone who has to recommend books to children, I am more careful. I try to find out what sort of books they enjoy and I don't put a book in their hands. I show it to them,put it back, and let them make the decision to take it the rest of the way off the shelf and see if they want to read it.
To this day I despise realistic fiction. I can't imagine why anyone would want to read it. And I have a librarian to blame.