Nicole recently posted her responses to a book meme. I tend to shy away from memes, but in the spirit of self-congratulatory smugness, I’ll actually participate in this one. Because I happen to have read a lot of the books in the list, I can feel all proud that I’m more educated than you are! (Actually, for whatever reason, this list has a lot of overlap with our book group reading list, so I’ve read a lot of these books in the past decade, not just in my lifetime.)

In the list below, I’ve bolded books I’ve finished, italicized books I started but did not complete, made blue the books that I particularly love, and used red to indicate books I particularly dislike. The only problem with this list? No Proust.

The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
American Gods
Anansi Boys
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
Angels & Demons
Anna Karenina
Atlas Shrugged
Beloved
The Blind Assassin
Brave New World
The Brothers Karamazov
The Canterbury Tales
The Catcher in the Rye
Catch-22
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo
Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
Dune
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Emma
Foucault’s Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
The God of Small Things
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity’s Rainbow
Great Expectations
Gulliver’s Travels
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Historian : a novel
The Hobbit
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Iliad
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
Jane Eyre
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Kite Runner
Les Misérables
Life of Pi : a novel
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex
Mrs. Dalloway
The Mists of Avalon
Moby Dick
The Name of the Rose
Neverwhere
1984
Northanger Abbey
The Odyssey
Oliver Twist
The Once and Future King
One Hundred Years of Solitude
On the Road
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Oryx and Crake : a novel
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Persuasion
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice
The Prince
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
The Satanic Verses
The Scarlet Letter (reading right now)
Sense and Sensibility
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-five
The Sound and the Fury
A Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Time Traveler’s Wife
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island
The Three Musketeers
Ulysses
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vanity Fair
War and Peace
Watership Down
White Teeth
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values

What about you? Has your book group managed to read a lot of these books in the past ten years, too? Or are you just an uneducated little waif?

During our Thanksgiving road trip to bend, we listened to the audio version of The Golden Compass. Kris and I have both read the book several times, but since the film is coming out soon, we decided to refresh our memories.

Tiffany enjoyed the book so much that she insisted on borrowing my iPod so she could finish it on Saturday. (Tiff, Kris has finished the second book now, if you’re interested.)

When we got home, I decided to search for information on the film, which opens on December 7th. What I found made me worried. I was initially excited for the film, but recent trailers have me wary. I’m afraid the girl who plays Lyra may not be a good actress, and I’m afraid that the film may be over-produced. This clip does nothing to allay my fears:

Can you say “wholly invented” and “made from whole cloth”? This scene has no relation to the book. I am baffled. The following episode is a little better, combining two scenes from the book:

I’ve continued to listen to the book during my commute. I always forget how slow it starts. It’s leisurely, and doesn’t seem to be heading anywhere. But by the half-way point, you come to realize that everything that has been mentioned before is important, that story elements have been accumulating like a snowball. It’s quite effective story-telling, actually.

In fact, there’s an extended section about two-thirds through the book (starting with “the lost boy”) that is one of my favorite passages in any book. (I’m speaking of Tony and his fish, of course.) I only wish the rest of this trilogy held up to that last half of The Golden Compass. There are moments of brilliance throughout — including the dirigible chase near the end of The Subtle Knife — but I think that things eventually go flat.

Apparently there’s an uproar about the movie in certain parts of the Catholic church. They don’t appreciate that the series ultimately takes a dim view of religion. I never understand why religious people get hacked off at this stuff, especially in the U.S. What about freedom of speech? And why feel so threatened? Christians make up a vast majority of this country’s population. Why is it okay to have thousands and thousands of books that depict atheists in a poor light, but a single series that questions organized religion (and Catholicism in particular) is taboo? Give me a break.

Kris and I braved the icy roads — which turned out to be not so bad — to drive down to Canby for dinner with Ron and Kara last night. We were joined by Jenn and the kids. It was wonderful.

Kara prepared a meal entirely from Cook’s Country, the new(-ish) companion magazine to Cook’s Illustrated. Among the goodies were a citrus salad (tossed in an Asian dressing that even I liked — and I hate dressing), Italian pot roast, and a decadent chocolate pudding cake for dessert. Kris and I brought a bottle of wine which we’d received from Andrew and Joann at Thanksgiving. It turned out to be a perfect complement to the meal.

Between dinner and dessert, Ron and Kara gave us a tour of their newly-remodeled home. The house was built in 1891, and has been home to Ron’s family ever since. His family, Jeremy’s family, and my family are all founding members of Zion Mennonite Church, and have a long, intertwined history. When our hosts showed us their new kitchen island, they pointed out the butcher-block countertop. “That came from the old kitchen in the Zion basement,” Ron said. It was a lovely piece of wood, scarred through decades of use: circular burn-marks covered the surface.

“Look at that,” I said. “It’s not too hard to imagine my grandmother in the basement canning with the other women. And maybe Ron’s grandmother is there with her. And Jeremy’s, too.” The thing is: this probably did occur, and on more than one occasion. It’s been a long time since I marveled at the connections of community I feel when in the Whiskey Hill neighborhood, but they’re real, and they are strong. (I can imagine forty years from today Harrison and Ellis and Noah standing around a kitchen discussing the same thing.)

After dinner we chatted and let Hank read us trivia questions from his new book (Guinness World Records for Kids 2007, or something like that). Daphne managed to injure herself when leaping from the bannister-less stairs. I browsed Kara’s collection of old books, and in doing so I found a gem: Touchstones of Success by “160 present-day men of achievement”, published in 1920. The book, which is already falling apart, contains advice on success from business leaders of the era.

The within pages tell what the price [of success] is, and as our ambitious young men read in these wonderfully fascinating testimonies of really successful men they will disovered that the making of money was by no means their chief aim. They got that, and they got it because their main purpose in life was to serve, and work. Integrity, courage, a clear conscience, and a real fine character were the most valued and cherished of all their possessions.

Kara allowed me to borrow the book, and I look forward to mining it for gems — both humorous (to my 21st century eyes) and practical. I don’t that I’ve mentioned it here, but reading through “the success literature” has become something of a hobby for me. I enjoy it. The stories are uplifting, and I’ve found that many of the anecdotes and admonishments have real application to my own life.

(Barbara Ehrenreich, in the latest issue of Harper’s, attacks the personal-development field as purveyors of false hope, as scammers and charlatans. This makes my blood boil, so much so that I’ve not yet been able to set down a suitable well-reasoned response. All I can think to do is call her a disillusioned old bitch, but that’s hardly rational, hardly fair, and just plain stupid. Yet it’s where I am in my response. Maybe by next week I’ll have calmed down enough to craft some sort of rebuttal. (My biggest complaint about Ehrenreich is that “personal responsibility” seems to be a foreign concept to her.))

There’s a film coming next winter — it’s set to open on December 7th — that’s sure to excite many of my friends as much (or more than) the next Harry Potter movie. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is finally being turned into a major studio production, and the stills from first film have been released. Here are ten of them.

These are from The Golden Compass (which is known as Northern Lights in the U.K.). The second part is The Subtle Knife and the third is The Amber Spyglass.

This must be near the beginning of the film: Lyra roaming Oxford.

Daniel Craig, the latest James Bond, is Lord Asriel.

Nicole Kidman should make an excellent Mrs. Coulter.

Sam Elliott is Lee Scoresby. “Sometimes there’s a man…”

Coulter meets Lyra. Run, Lyra, run!

Scoresby to the rescue.

Lyra with the titular golden compass.

No Iorek yet (I can’t wait) and no daemons. Digital effects take longer to produce, of course, so we probably won’t see examples of those until the summer at least. Still, I’m heartened by these stills. Kris and I are excited by what we see.

Blogathon status: 8 sponsors for $151. Come on, folks: sponsor me! Even $4 or $5 makes a difference.

Lee wonders:

What’s the first book you remember reading?

That’s a difficult question to answer. As long as I can remember, books have been a part of my life. Mom and Dad did a wonderful job of making me a reader. As I look at the kids I know now, I’m ecstatic to see that in almost every instance, their parents are fostering a love of books. (Jenn and Jeremy have been especially great: Hank and Scout fairly breathe books.) But the kids I know are universally well-off. Rich, even. They can afford books, and their parents believe in the value of reading. Not every child has this advantage.

But what was the first book I remember reading? I don’t know.

I remember having Small Pig read to me at a young age. Also Millions of Cats and Dr. Seuess’ Sleep Book.

A moose is asleep. He is dreaming of moose drinks.
A goose is asleep. He is dreaming of goose drinks.
That’s well and good when a moose dreams of moose juice.
And nothing goes wrong when a goose dreams of goose juice.
But it isn’t too good when a moose and a goose
Start dreaming they’re drinking the other one’s juice.
Moose juice, not goose juice, is juice for a moose.
And goose juice, not moose juice, is juice for a goose.
So, when goose gets a mouthful of juices of mooses
And moose gets a mouthful of juices of gooses
They always fall out of their beds screaming screams
So, I’m warning you, now! Never drink in your dreams.

I have strong memories of each, including memories of going to the public library for Small Pig.

I can remember learning to read in first grade using the Star Reader books: The Wee Light, We Feed a Deer, etc.

I can’t remember which book I first picked up on my own, though. It was probably something in my grandmother’s parlor, something like The Bobbsey Twins or the Hardy Boys in The Tower Treasure.

Getting kids to read is vital. It lays the groundwork for lifelong learning. Because of this, I’m raising money for FirstBook this month. On July 29th, I’ll be blogging for 24-hours straight at Get Rich Slowly. Your sponsorship helps, even if you just give a buck. Please take the time to pledge your support.

Lately I’ve begun to read “success” books: self-help and motivational tomes and biographies of famous people. A common thread among these is: successful people read — a lot. I’m thankful to my parents for having made me a reader. Now I have a chance to foster reading in others.

Look! It’s one of those rare days on which I’ve made a weblog entry every year since I started:

Contest! Want to win some free science fiction books? Read on…

Why isn’t science fiction respected as mainstream literature? Take a gander at these book blurbs, each of which was taken from the latest flyer for the Science Fiction Book Club. These are hilarious, and not in a good way.

Here’s a contest: Tell me which blurbs are real and which blurbs are fake. Whoever has the most correct answers by next weekend wins three books recently purged from my scifi library. (Please do not cheat. That takes the fun out of it. Just make your best guesses without any outside support.)

1. Changelings — When a scientist gets wind of the shapeshifting ability of the Shongili twins, she plans to kidnap them for study and experimentation. They must flee their home on Petaybee, for though the planet is protected from exploitation, its people are not.
2. Definitely Dead — When mind-reading cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse is summoned to be Queen of the Vampires in New Orleans, she’s more puzzled than worried. But that’s before all those folks start trying to kill her.
3. In Fury Born — Aided by a self-aware computer and a Fury from Old Earth mythology, an ex-Marine seeks vengeance when raiders murder her family.
4. Mammoth — When ruthless billionaire Howard Christian’s arctic team turns up a frozen mammoth, a watch-sporting 12,000-year-old man and a time-travel device, he can’t decide which he wants more. Until the device brings rampaging mammoths to Downtown L.A.!
5. The Protector’s War — Nine years after the Change rendered technology inoperable only a few pockets of civilization remain. Two communities thrive in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. But the army of the Protectorate is coming for their priceless farmland.
6. Dragon’s Fire — Pellar, a mute orphan boy, is taken in by Masterharper Zist and his wife, Cayla. They are concerned with the fate of the Shunned, particularly with the Red Star due to return soon. In time Pellar decides he must unravel the disappearance of Moran, Zist’s previous apprentice. Pellar also finds a reclusive community of watch-wher breeders, led by a half-mad woman named Aleesa. They were driven from their homes by the local feudal chief, D’gan, who hates the watch-whers. Pellar convinces the group to trust him and to allow him to take an egg away with him. The egg is extremely valuable. But is it worth the risks Pellar takes to transport it?
7. The Ghost Brigades — Three alien enemies are moving toward war against humanity, aided by a turncoat scientist. Cloned from the traitor’s DNA, Jared begins to intuit his motivations. But time is running out…
8. Queen of the Slayers — The forces of darkness are more eager than ever to regain dominance. As apocalypse draws near, the mysterious Queen of the Slayers emerges. She turns Champions against each other in her determination to claim the intoxicating Slayer essence.
9. Promise of the Witch King — The assassin Artemis Enteri and the dark elf Jarlaxl search for the Witch-King’s treasure. At the gate of the Bloodstone lands, they find themselves in the midst of a struggle between the ghost of an evil lich and an oath-bound knight.
10. Heir of Autumn — Ruled by eight Children of the Seasons, the city of Ohndarien falls to tyranny when Brophy, the Heir of Autumn, is accused of murder and exiled. Brophy must find a way past treachery — and the secret held within the dreams of slumbering child.
11. Solstice Wood — When Sylvia meets the women of her grandmother’s sewing circle, she learns why she’s been called home: Lynn Hall is the door between this world and Faerie — a realm the circle seeks to bind with magical stitches. And Sylvia is now its heir…
12. The Wizard of London — Two mismatched girls at an Edwardian boarding school reveal startling psychic gifts under the watchful eye of headmistress Isabelle Harton. But when a power-mad Elemental Mage also learns of their rarified gifts, Isabelle’s quest to shield them puts her on a collision course with the greatest Mage in England — the Wizard of London.
13. Danse Macabre — Anita Blake should be thinking about the ardour, the sexual power that flows between her and Jean-Claude, Master Vampire and Richard, her werewolf lover. It is reaching new levels…perhaps evolving into something altogether new. The unexpected effect of this is that Jean-Claude’s own power as a master vampire have grown. Richard, always unpredictable is changing too. On top of all this, Anita may be pregnant. And while not knowing whether the father is a vampire or a werewolf or someone else is bad enough, life as a Federally licensed vampire killer is no way to raise a baby.
14. High Druid of Shannara — Pen Ohmsford had paid dearly in his quest for the darkwand, the wand made from the ancient tanequil. His friends hide from Druids while the trolls are besieged by savage Urdas. Can the scattered friends join forces in time to defeat the evil.
15. Southern Fire — On the Aldabreshin Archipeligo, magic is anathema. When magic-wielding savages terrorize a southern realm, warlord Kheda must act to save his domain. He turns to Dev, a man who is everything Kheda despises, a peddler of vice…and a wizard.
16. Crystal Gorge — The enemy is close to the Treasured One’s secrets, while the Dreamers are in danger of delivering a nightmare to the Elder Gods. It falls to the humans to fight back the Vlagh…if the realm of Dhrall is to live.
17. Crown of Stars — In the series finale, Sanglant fights to legitimize his rule with Liath as his queen. As the Ashioi sow discord among the humans, Lady Sabella and Duke Conrad try to seize the crown, while Liath seeks forbidden magic to heal the war-torn land.
18. Memories of Ice — A new threat looms over beleaguered Genabackis. The Pannion Domin’s fanatical minions devour all who refuse its sadistic priest-king’s creed. When the city of Capustan is threatened, Dujek Onearms rebel army must forge peace with their old enemies.
19. The Stardragons — Eons after humankind is gone, when the Universe itself is collapsing, only the Stardragons remain. They begin an epic quest to find the Birthplace — source of all life in the universe.
20. Micah — A routine assignment turns difficult when Anita Blake must deal with her feelings for were-leopard Micah while raising the most dangerous zombie of her career.
21. Geodesica — The post-human Exarchate controls both ftl technology and the Naturals of the far-flung system — until a mysterious alien construct threatens their rule. But Geodesica will prove more dangerous than anyone can imagine.
22. The Anubis Gates — When a 20th-century scholar time-travels to 1810, he’s soon face to face with a the ka of an ancient Egyptian sorceror, a deformed clown of crime, and a body-stealing werewolf…all involved in a sinister plot to change history.

Each of the real blurbs was copied exactly — spelling, punctuation, and all. I think the Science Fiction Book Club needs to hire a new blurb writer. A couple of these are from well-known authors or are highly-regarded books, but you wouldn’t know it from these summaries!

“You know,” Kris said to me as I read some of the blurbs to her, “It’s no wonder they have to sell these five for a dollar.” And it’s no wonder that people don’t take science fiction seriously.

When the contest has finished, I’ll go through and post Amazon links to the real books. Have fun!

My startling transformation from a hoarder to a purger continues.

“I want to get rid of more books,” I told Kris last night.

“Which books?” she asked. She looked skeptical.

“Nearly all of them,” I said.

That was going to far, Kris protested. “You don’t need to get rid of any more literature,” she said. “If you want to get rid of something, get rid of your comic books. And the science fiction.”

Over the years, I’ve amassed a large science fiction library, one that takes up about 360 inches of shelf space. Maybe more. But I don’t read science fiction much anymore. I haven’t read a single book from my scifi library since we moved to the new house.

To make matters worse, the scifi books live on a pair of bookshelves in the guest room, a room that I keep complaining doesn’t give me enough room to work. (It doubles as my writing office.) I want to get rid of the guest bed, but Kris thinks I should get sell the science fiction bookshelves instead. We purchased them for $20 each from a disgruntled Borders employee. The shelves are angled so that the base rests on the floor several inches from the wall. They take up a lot of space. And they’re ugly.

“Yeah, I could purge some science fiction,” I said. “Maybe I could move the remaining books to a shelf in the other room.” We have a pair of bookshelves in our ‘cat room’ that we use mainly as storage for children’s toys. Since we have no children, these could probably be kept out of sight.

“Maybe I could move the small bookshelf from the media room into here,” Kris said. “Then we could put the kids books on it, and you could move your science fiction books over.”

“Could we get rid of the guest bed?” I asked, though I already new the answer.

“No!” said Kris. After a moment she added, “But we could move the guest bed into a corner, which would give you more space to work in.”

We’ve made a decision to re-arrange several rooms again. This happens once every few months, and I love it. I derive great pleasure from shuffling books between rooms, from dragging furniture to-and-fro. It’s as if we’re gradually seeking the ideal layout for every room in the house.

You gotta love Anthony Lane. The man is a comic genius. Check out his review of the The Da Vinci Code — both the film and the book — a review so deliciously scathing that I had to read it twice. And laughed at the same jokes each time.

How timid — how undefended in their powers of reason — must people be in order to yield to such preening? Are they reading “The Da Vinci Code” because everybody on the subway is doing the same, and, if so, why, when they reach their stop, do they not realize their mistake and leave it on the seat, to be gathered up by the next sucker? Despite repeated attempts, I have never managed to crawl past page 100. As I sat down to watch “The Da Vinci Code,” therefore, I was in the lonely, if enviable, position of not actually knowing what happens.

Oh, goodness.

I’ve tried to start The Da Vinci Code, too, but can’t make it past the first couple pages. They’re awful. Kris read it and pronounced it rubbish. It’s a shame that poorly-written stuff like this makes a gajillion dollars while better-written stuff languishes unread.

Alas.

What else does Lane have to say? Well, let’s see:

Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people, except at Columbia Pictures, where the power lunches won’t even be half-started. The Catholic Church has nothing to fear from this film. It is not just tripe. It is self-evident, spirit-lowering tripe that could not conceivably cause a single member of the flock to turn aside from the faith. Meanwhile, art historians can sleep easy once more, while fans of the book, which has finally been exposed for the pompous fraud that it is, will be shaken from their trance. In fact, the sole beneficiaries of the entire fiasco will be members of Opus Dei, some of whom practice mortification of the flesh. From now on, such penance will be simple—no lashings, no spiked cuff around the thigh. Just the price of a movie ticket, and two and a half hours of pain.

The Da Vinci Code: 23% at Rotten Tomatoes (11% from big-name critics) — that’s worse than RV or The Shaggy Dog.

Anyone surprised?

I am reading Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell for the third time in less than a year. If that is not a high recommendation, I don’t know what is.

I’ve mentioned before (as have several commenters) that there are some brilliant passages in this book. Though Clarke is unable to sustain this peak of quality throughout the entire volume, like an addict I keep going, craving the next hit.

Here is today’s hit:

Strange took the cup and drank the water down. The cup fell from his hand. Drawlight was aware — he did not know how exactly — that Strange was changed. Against the starry sky the black shape of his figure sagged and his head dropped. Drawlight wondered if he were drunk. But how could a few drops of any thing make a man drunk? Besides he did not smell of strong liquor; he smelt like a man who had not washed himself or his linen for some weeks; and there was another smell too — one that had not been there a minute ago — a smell like old age and half a hundred cats.

Drawlight had the strangest feeling. It was something he had felt before when magic was about to happen. Invisible doors seemed to be opening all around him; winds blew on him from far away, bringing scents of woods, moors, and bogs. Images flew unbidden into his mind. The houses around him were no longer empty. He could see inside them as if the walls had been removed. Each dark room contained — not a person exactly — a Being, an Ancient Spirit. One contained a Fire; another a Stone; yet another a Shower of Rain; yet another a Flock of Birds; yet another a Hillside; yet another a Small Creature with Dark and Fiery Thoughts; and on and on.

“What are they?” he whispered, in amazement. He realized that all the hairs on his head were standing on end as if he had been electrified. Then a new, different sensation took him: it was a sensation not unlike falling, and yet he remained standing. It was as if his mind had fallen down.

He thought he stood upon an English hillside. Rain was falling; it twisted in the air like grey ghosts. Rain fell upon him and he grew thin as rain. Rain washed away thought, washed away memory, all the good and the bad. He no longer knew his name. Everything was washed away like mud from a stone. Rain filled him up with thoughts and memories of his own. Silver lines of water covered the hillside, like intricate lace, like the veins of an arm. Forgetting that he was, or ever had been, a man, he became the lines of water. He fell into the earth with the rain.

He thought he lay beneath the earth, beneath England. Long ages passed; cold and rain seeped through him; stones shifted within him. In the Silence and the Dark he grew vast. He became the earth; he became England. A star looked down on him and spoke to him. A stone asked him a question and he answered it in its own language. A river curled at his side; hills budded beneath his fingers. He opened his mouth and breathed out spring…

He thought he was pressed into a thicket in a dark wood in winter. The trees went on for ever, dark pillars separated thin, white slices of winter light. He looked down. Young saplings pierced him through and through; they grew up through his body, through his feet and hands. His eye-lids would no longer close because twigs had grown up through them. Insects scuttled in and out of his ears; spiders built nests and webs in his mouth. He realized he had been entwined in the wood for years and years. He knew the wood and the wood knew him. There was no saying any longer what was wood and what was man.

All was silent. Snow fell. He screamed…

Blackness.

Like rising up from beneath dark waters, Drawlight came to himself. Who it was that released him — whether Strange, or the wood, or England itself — he did not know, but he felt its contempt as it cast him back into his own mind. The Ancient Spirits withdrew from him. His thoughts and sensations shrank back to those of a Man. He was dizzy and reeling from the memory of what he had endured. He examined his hands and rubbed the places on his body where the trees had pierced him. They seemed whole enough; oh, but they hurt! He whimpered and looked around for Strange.

The magician was a little way off, crouching by a wall, muttering magic to himself. He struck the wall once; the stones bulged, changed shape, became a raven; the raven opened its wings and, with a loud caw, flew up towards the night sky. He struck the wall again: another raven emerged from the wall and flew away. Then another and another, and on and on, thick and fast they came until all the stars above were blotted out by black wings.

Strange raised his hand to strike again…

“Lord Magician,” gasped Drawlight. “You have not told me what the third message is.”

Strange looked round. Without warning he seized Drawlight’s coat and pulled him close. Drawlight could feel Strange’s stinking breath on his face and for the first time he could see his face. Starlight shone on fierce, wild eyes, from which all humanity and reason had fled.

“Tell Norrell I am coming!” hissed Strange.

In the past few hours, I’ve listened to this passage three times. I’ve read it on paper three times. I’ve copied it from the book to the text editor. It retains its dark hold on me each time I read it, enchants me. I wish that I could write like this.

When I have finished with Jonathan Strange, I will move onto a book that Kris recently read and loved: The Time Traveler’s Wife. And then I will re-read another book that captivated me last spring: Cloud Atlas. This is a golden age of fantastic fiction. There’s some wonderful stuff being produced by strong writers, stuff that’s accessible even to those disinclined toward fantasy and science fiction, stuff that’s quality literature by any measure. For children, there are the Harry Potter books and Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. For adults, there are the three books I’ve cited and several others. It is a great time to be a fan of speculative fiction.

For book group this month, we’re reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those rare perfect books, yet I knew little of it until a decade ago. Sure, it was popular among the kids in my grade school and high school classes; I can remember all sorts of book reports on the novel, but I avoided reading the book, or watching the movie, until sometime in the mid-nineties. Now, the book and the film have become two of my favorites. Hell, the opening credits of the movie are often enough to make me misty. (The opening to the film adaptaion of The Joy Luck Club also has this power over me.)

I love To Kill a Mockingbird for many reasons: clarity of language, authorial tone, strength of characterization, etc. Most of all, I love how it captures the life of children in Depression-era Alabama. I relate strongly to Lee’s sense of nostalgia; I am reminded of similar experiences from my own childhood.

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Some, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told it had nothing to fear but fear itself.

…

When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summertime boundaries (within calling distance of Calpurnia) were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house two doors to the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south. We were never tempted to break them. The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end; Mrs. Dubose was plain hell.

That was the summer Dill came to us.

Early one morning as were beginning our day’s play in the back yard, Jem and I heard something next door in Miss Rachel Haverford’s collard patch. We went to the wire fence to see if there was a puppy — Miss Rachel’s rat terrier was expecting — instead we found someone sitting looking at us. Sitting down, he wasn’t much higher than the collards. We stared at him until he spoke:

“Hey.”

Hey yourself,” said Jem pleasantly.

“I’m Charles Baker Harris,” he said. “I can read.”

“So what?” I said.

“I just though you’d like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin’ I can do it…”

“How old are you,” asked Jem, “four-and-a-half?”

“Goin’ on seven.”

“Shoot no wonder, then,” said Jem, jerking his thumb at me. “Scout yonder’s been readin’ ever since she was born, and she ain’t even started to school yet. You look right puny for goin’ on seven.”

“I’m little but I’m old,” he said.

The wonder of the film is how faithful it is to the book. Yes, it leaves out some subplots (such as Scout’s conflict with her teacher), and it softens the edges around the characters of Atticus and Jem, but on the whole it is a remarkable translation of the text. In some ways, it’s even better than the book. The film’s quality is derived largely from the convincing performances of the child actors. Child actors are notoriously poor, but these kids go about their business with conviction.

Twenty years before To Kill a Mockingbird saw print, Carson McCullers produced The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, a work of similar tone and color, set in a similar town at a similar time. There are people who dislike McCullers’ book, but I am not one of them. I love it. It captures a similar snapshot of the south as does To Kill a Mockingbird; it’s as if it might have been written about another town in Maycomb County.

In the following passage, Mick is precocious girl of about fourteen. Her brothers Ralph and Bubber are about two and six, respectively. They are poor kids in a poor town.

This summer was different from any other time Mick could remember. Nothing much happened that she could describe to herself in thoughts or words — but there was a feeling of change. All the time she was excited. In the morning she couldn’t wait to get out of bed and start going for the day. And at night she hated like hell to have to sleep again.

Right after breakfast she took the kids out, and except for meals they were gone most of the day. A good deal of the time they just roamed the streets — with her pulling Ralph’s wagon and Bubber following along behind. Always she was busy with thoughts and plans. Sometimes she would look up suddenly and they would be way off in some part of town she didn’t even recognize. And once or twice they ran into Bill on the streets and she was so busy thinking he had to grab her by the arm to make her see him.

Early in the mornings it was a little cool and their shadows stretched out tall on the sidewalks in front of them. But in the middle of the day the sky was always blazing hot. The glare was so bright it hurt to keep your eyes open. A lot of times the plans about the things that were going to happen to her were mixed up with ice and snow. Sometimes it was like she was out in Switzerland and all the mountains were covered with snow and she was skating on cold, greenish-colored ice. Mister Singer would be skating with her. And maybe Carole Lombard or Arturo Toscanini who played on the radio. They would be skating together and then Mister Singer would fall through the ice and she would dive in without regard for peril and swim under the ice to save his life. That was one of the plans always going on in her mind.

Usually after they had walked awhile she would park Bubber and Ralph in some shady place. Bubber was a swell kid and she trained him pretty good. If she told him not to go out of hollering distance from Ralph she wouldn’t ever find him shooting marbles with kids two or three blocks away. He played by himself near the wagon, and when she left them she didn’t have to worry much. She either went to the library and looked at the National Geographic or else just roamed around and though some more. If she had nay money she bought a dope or a Milky Way at Mister Brannon’s. He gave kids a reduction. He sold them nickel things for three cents.

But all the time — no matter what she was doing — there was music. Sometimes she hummed to herself as she walked, and other times she listened quietly to the songs inside her. There were all kinds of music in her thoughts. Some she heard over radios, and some was in her mind already without her ever having heard it anywhere.

An interesting — and vital — counterpoint to these two tales is Richard Wright’s Black Boy, his memoirs of growing up black in Mississippi. Although his book is set twenty years earlier than To Kill a Mockingbird and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and although he’s exploring the world of the Negro, many elements remain the same. Wright captures the wonder and awe of childhood in the south, the hardship, the dreariness, the bewildering world of adults.

Granny’s home in Jackson was an enchanting place to explore. It was a two-story frame structure of seven rooms. My brother and I used to play hide and seek in the long, narrow hallways, and on and under the stairs. Granny’s son, Uncle Clark, had bought her this home, and its white plastered walls, its front and back porches, its round columns and banisters, made me feel that surely there was no finer house in all the round world.

There were wide green fields in which my brother and I roamed and played and shouted. And there were the timid children of the neighbors, boys and girls to whom my brother and I felt superior in worldly knowledge. We took pride in telling them what it was like to ride on a train, what the yellow, sleepy Mississippi River looked like, how it felt to sail on the Kate Adams, what Memphis looked like, and how I had run off from the orphan home. And we would hint that we were pausing but for a few days and then would be off to even more fabulous places and marvelous experiences.

To help support the household my grandmother boarded a colored schoolteacher, Ella, a young woman with so remote and dreamy and silent a manner that I was as much afraid of her as I was attached to her. I had long wanted to ask her to tell me about the books that she was always reading, but I could never quite summon enough courage to do so. One afternoon I found her sitting alone up on the front porch, reading

…

She whispered to me the story of Bluebeard and His Seven Wives and I ceased to see the porch, the sunshine, her face, everything. As her words fell upon my new ears, I endowed them with a reality that welled up from somewhere within me. She told how Bluebeard had duped and married his seven wives, how he had loved and slain them, how he had hanged them up by their hair in a dark closet. The tale made the world around me be, throb, live. As she spoke, reality changed, the look of things altered, and the world became peopled with magical presences. My sense of life deepened and the feel of things was different, somehow. Enchanted and enthralled, I stopped her constantly to ask for details. My imagination blazed. The sensations the story aroused in me were never to leave me. When she was about to finish, when my interest was keenest, when I was lost to the world around me, Granny stepped briskly onto the porch.

“You stop that, you evil gal!” she shouted. “I want none of that Devil stuff in my house!”

…

My grandmother was nearly white as a Negro can get without being white, which means that she was white. The sagging flesh of her face quivered; her eyes, large, dark, deep-set, wide apart, glared at me. Her lips narrowed to a line. Her high forehead wrinkled. When she was angry her eyelids drooped halfway down over her pupils, giving her a baleful aspect.

“But I liked the story,” I told her.

“You’re going to burn in hell,” she said with such furious conviction that for a moment I believed her.

Reading these works of regional color makes me burn with a desire to write similar stories about the Willamette Valley. I have characters and settings and plots in my mind, and I’ve even set some of them to paper. Yet often I wrestle with the question: what is it that sets this place apart? There are certain qualities that make this place unique, but I cannot define them.

Off the top of my head, some 0ther strong regional novels include: My Antonia by Willa Cather, Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey, Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett, and the entire oeuvre of Garrison Keillor.