The Finish Line

So far, I've managed to read 47 books towards my 50-book goal for the year. The following list explains why I didn't quite make it.

Here are the top ten books I started in 2012, but failed to finish. This is a new bad habit I picked up this year (refer to "stress-induced illiteracy" re: the wedding). Some of them are still in running to be read, as they are clearly awesome. Some of them are going in the provebial dustbin, as they are not awesome remotely. If you have any compelling reasons why I should finish any of them please fill me in.

1. Anna Karenina

By Leo Tolstoy

Seriously though, I will finish this one. I'm on page 507 and I started it LAST New Years.

2. Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

By Mark Kurlansky

I really tried.

3. As I Lay Dying

By William Faulkner

Wrong time.

4. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

By Stieg Larsson

Put this one down to re-read Harry Potter.

5. Interview With The Vampire

By Anne Rice

I may have seen the movie too many times.

6. The Dovekeepers

By Alice Hoffman

This probably isn't as badly written as I feel like it is.

7. The Age of Miracles

By Karen Thompson Walker

Best book premise ever. So boring.

8. The Magicians

By Lev Grossman

Don't start with me on this one. I know.

9. Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks and the Hidden Powers of the Mind

By Alex Stone

I don't care about this dude's problems. Just, no.

10. Dead Man Walking

By Sister Helen Prejean

Read the first 100 pages. Cried for two days.

Round Up

Here are the top-ten awesome things I did this year.

1. Adopted a cat beast

So forlorn.

2. Got married

3. Grew a freckle on my finger 

(this one is the most impressive, as far as I'm concerned)

See it?

4. Completed a month-long cleanse, wherein I didn't eat any dairy or corn or toxic goo. 

(And in the middle of which Jared sent me a king cake, which I had to put in my freezer and resist.)

Straight from the juicer

5. Finally, finally, went to Disney World.

Breakfast of Champions.

6. Managed a pet boutique (Funnest job ever)

Dogs like shopping too.

See?

7. Got a new job at the State Department. 

(Don't freak out, nothing's totally final yet and I don't start until probably January)

8. Wrote a novel

This was the day I hit 50,000 words.

9. Cut off my hair.

(And met green man from Always Sunny)

10. Survived the Apocalypse. (This is just an assumption, but I think it's a fairly safe bet.)

Just as terrifying.

Light Reading for the Apocalypse

I started a new project today.  Here's a hint:

In addition to that, there are about a million other things going on. (Actually, there are only about four. I'm not that busy.) We're going to Texas for Christmas and we're driving. With the cat. I doubt that I'll do any more reviews before the new year/until after the apocalypse. I'm just re-reading Harry Potter now anyway. Nothing new to report.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
By Cathrynne M. Valente

This is one of those books that I heard about, bought the same day, and finished the next day. (Alsn, did you finish it yet?) I forgot to ask for the sequel for Christmas, so if you're trying to think of something to get me, that's it.

I'm not entirely sure if this is supposed to be YA or just Y, but I'm pretty sure I would have loved it at any age. It's a fairy tale. Imagine Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland, and The Chronicles of Narnia all rolled up into one fabulous little package (I hate descriptions like that, but it's true). The main character is September, a little girl from Nebraska, who is whisked away from her home one day on the back of the Leopard of Little Breezes to Fairyland. There, she meets a Wyverary: a beast that is half Wyvern half Library, among about a billion other wonderful and intriguing characters (a soap golem! a soap golem!).

This book is fantastical, playful, smart, and totally, totally embedded in my heart.

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
By Phillip K. Dick

A famous actor wakes up one day and discovers that his identity has been fully and totally erased. No one knows him, there is no official record of his existence. Plus, he happens to live in a police state where being off-the-record can lead to life in a forced labor camp.

This is a very philosophical bit of science fiction. I'll admit freely that I didn't love it, though there were moments that inspired some introspection. If you're a fan of thought-provoking (read: rather depressing) science fiction, read it, and let me know what you think of the end. I'd love to know someone else's opinion.

I Am Not Myself These Days
by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Where to start? This is a memoir and a love story. A very unconventional one. A rather NSFW sort of one.

Eighty percent of me loved this book, in which Kilmer-Purcell relates the story of his first year in New York City, where he is a mild-mannered advertising exec by day and an alcoholic drag queen by night. Actually, he's an alcoholic both day and night, but that's neither here nor there. One night, he meets Jack, a very upscale male escort who lives in a beautiful penthouse apartment and is always on call. This is exactly the sort of real love story I wish would flood the market. There are all sorts of imaginative books about love between vampires and werewolves and other non-existant creatures. There are not enough stories about real humans who love other real humans who don't fit neatly into boxes.

Here's the 20% I didn't enjoy:
1. This is supposed to be a humorous memoir. I did not find the characters struggles with drugs and alcohol remotely funny. In fact, I was sort of furious at them. I am, however, a professional stick in the mud.
2. I get the impression through the writing that the author watches a lot of television. In many, many places, the characters do and say things that only happen in sitcoms. Fine for fiction, a little weird in a memoir. Drag queens I believe. Drugs I believe. Male escorts I believe. The witty straight friend who always has a snappy comeback? Please.
3. Here's a good test of whether or not you'll like this book:
Have you ever been to Bourbon Street?
Did you like it a lot? Great! Read on.
Did you find it horrifying? Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

The Tao of Pooh
by Benjamin Hoff

Audio book! Do you have two and half spare hours? Do you like Winnie the Pooh? How about the Tao? How about the Tao explained through Winnie the Pooh (and Piglet too)?

Here's the deal. I loved this book. I have no idea why I hadn't read it sooner. I'm honestly not all that sure I learned anything about Taoism listening to it. Not really. I mean, I learned about things like the "Vinegar Tasters" and the "uncarved block," but I doubt I could apply that to my life. I just loved, loved listening to the narrator do all the voices for the characters. Listening to it while walking around town simply made me cheerful and content. Which is maybe more Tao than not.

Ghosties

Alright, focus. None of these books are remotely festive in any way, unless you count the fact that one of them mentions Charles Dickens, once. In point of fact, they're all about dead people.

Try not to read any subconscious angst into it, if you can.


The Corpse Rat King
By Lee Battersby

Here's the premise: Once upon a time, a corpse rat and his young apprentice are out on a battle field scavenging riches from the pockets of the fallen. In a case of mistaken identity, the corpse rat finds himself in the underworld, where a city of dead people try to make him their king. The problem, of course, is that he himself is NOT dead and has no desire to rule them (crazy, right?). He's given an ultimatum: find a king to rule in his place, or wind up in their legions forever.

It's a creative premise, I was totally drawn in by the cover and the blurb on the back. The book's biggest successes are it's wildly imaginative moments. What happens when a dead man ends up at the bottom of the ocean? What passes for conversation in a tomb long-dead kings? How does one build a palace out of bones? This is a humorous book and I am loath to make these sort of statements, but I feel like this is a dude book all the way. There's lots of cussing, and adventure, and about one and a half pages with women characters.

Plus the author is Australian, whatever that means.

This is not the most high-quality literature (for real: there are a number of bad typos throughout). But if you want something silly and imaginative to read, it will do in a pinch.


The Haunting of Hill House
By Shirley Jackson

This is a novella by the author of the acclaimed short story, The Lottery. If you've never read the story, I suggest you take a minute to do so. There's a reason it's famous.

The Haunting of Hill House is one of those books that seems designed for movie adaptation (bad and good). Everyone's personality is sort of larger than life. It's the story of a supernatural investigator who invites a group of young people to spend the summer with him in Hill House, which has--of course--a troubled past. Only three souls take him up on his offer: Luke, Theodora, and Eleanor. Even the regular housekeeper won't stay near the house after dark.

The book is vivid and the characters are charming in their own strange ways. I love the way everyone speaks to one another, in a sort of breezy, funny banter that in no way reflects the bizarre occurrences at Hill House. It's like those old movies where someone sees something awful and says, "Oh I think I'll just hang myself!" with a bright, bubbly smile. The real name of the game is psychological drama. You really can't beat a nice, ambiguous psychological horror story.

Giving up the Ghost: A Story About Friendship, 80s Rock, a Lost Scrap of Paper, and What it Means to Be Haunted
by Eric Nezum

This one's non-fiction. This is a truly fantastic book.

Nuzum's memoir travels back and forth between his past and his present. In his past, he is a haunted young man, lost in many senses of the word. He has violent dreams about the ghost of a young girl in a blue dress, dripping wet, screaming at him. He senses her presence everywhere (particularly behind the door of his parents attic, which opens by itself and where the family hears inexplicable thumping sounds). He lives in almost constant fear of the Little Girl. He is an outsider, prone to rage and depression, black outs and anti-social behavior. He has no idea what to do after high school. He has no idea why he has these dreams.

In his present, twenty or more years later, he is a happy, married, normal sort of guy, except that he is still terrified of ghosts--all ghosts--and seems to have forgotten why. In these chapters, Nuzum travels to the places people go to come in contact with the dead: The Mansfield Reformatory, Lily Dale spiritualist community, Gettysburg. He's trying to remember, and to understand.

This book is about what it means to be haunted, as a person. It's not about cheap, gory thrills (though it made me uncomfortable to turn the light off after reading it). Nuzum is himself a sceptic, and the book doesn't attempt to convince the reader of anything hokey or silly. Nuzum's life, his friendships, and his quest are so unique and still so powerfully human. I would read this book again, hands down. Hooray for used books I never would have discovered on my own!

Asleep at the Wheel

November is over. Which means NaNoWriMo is over. I reached 50,129 words on the 29th, a day before the deadline. (Do I get a medal?)

I am, however, no where near finished writing my novel. Today, I'm at 61,001 words and just getting to the really meaty parts, which are the most frustrating and most exciting. There's like, plot happening. Though I have no idea if any of it makes any sense.

That's the writing.

Here's the reading: I've finished eleven novels since my last blog post. Which is a lot of reviewing.

I do this to myself.

It
By Stephen King

Remember when the miniseries came on TV, and Tim Curry's clown face was the scariest thing your seven year-old brain had ever seen in the history of time? I remember locking myself in my grandmother's bathroom because I was so freaked out, and then thinking "oh my god, there are so many drains in here." I don't think I actually watched the movie; I just had nightmares about the promos.

With this history of terror in mind (plus all the ample hype), I expected to be terrified reading this novel. It's 1100 pages of evils clowns, insane bullies, secret pacts, crawling around in sewers, and people just getting killed in nasty ways. Except... it wasn't all that scary.

But, one of my favorite annoying hobbies is going on and on about how tuned-in Stephen King is. He knows popular culture; he knows human psychology. This book had all of that. Despite not being all that scared, I really got sucked into the world of Derry, Maine, and into the characters' lives.

Here's the breakdown: the first 800 pages are pretty much worth it. No spoilers here, but I found the ending cheesy and sort of disappointing after all that intense buildup. I highly preferred Carrie or The Stand.

(Disclaimer: I've heard a number of people say this was the scariest book they've ever read. Mayhaps I do not not know what I'm talking about.)


This is How You Lose Her
By Junot Diaz

I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to write something about this one. I may have mentioned about 150 thousand times before that I have a fondness for Junot Diaz that is deep and wide and filled with kittens and lightening bolts and wild stallions. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is the reason I went to grad school for English. When I read it, I wanted to talk about it for three hours around a big conference table filled with other nerds (wish granted). I may also have mentioned that when I told Mr. Diaz that in person, he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek (brag). Which basically made me want to be a better human in every single way.

That being said, I've read a lot of reviews claiming that This is How You Lose Her is an even better book than Oscar Wao. It's not. But I'm biased. And that's a very high bar. It is, however, an incredible, heartbreaking book and better than many of the books I have read this year. It's a novel written in short stories, from the point of view of Diaz's recurring character and kinda-alter ego, Yunior. Yunior is deep, he's charismatic, he's interesting. He's also tragic. There is no woman on earth who hasn't fallen for a man like him at one point or another and lived to regret it later:

tragic

+ good-looking

+ deep

(x) cheater

__________

one out every ten ex-boyfriends in the world

But who wants to be the sort of man whom women regret? The novel succeeds in that it is both unusual and highly relatable. These are stories about the kinds of difficult relationships we've all had--with our parents and siblings, with our exes and friends. Familiar, yet deeply moving.

The Imperfectionists
 By Tom Rachman

Here is another novel in short stories. It's impossible to over-emphasize how well-written this book is. It's also hard to describe what it's about. Each chapter is one story from the life of one employee at a small English-language  newspaper in Rome. Each of the stories is interconnected, and each is anchored to the past. Each of the characters is unique, but not so unique as to become unbelievable. Most of the stories are moving.

This is just a good, solid, well-written novel.


Pulphead
By John Jeremiah Sullivan

Even if you have no real interest in reading essays, there is almost certainly something in this book for you. Pulphead is a fine collection of essays on such various subjects as caves, the Blues, what happens to people from MTV's The Real World, Christian Rock festivals, Hurricane Katrina, Michael Jackson, Axl Rose, and other awesome topics which I was thrilled to read about. The piéce de résistance is an essay titled, "The Violence of the Lambs" which also happens to be the very last essay in the book. It's weird and shocking and totally brilliant. It's about the recent trend in animal-on-human violence. It's friggin' insane, as they say.

If you do enjoy essays or pop culture, or know someone who's into any one of the above topics, I highly recommend this book.

(Disclaimer 2: Not all of the essays are awesome. Some of them are kind of a drag. But there is the beauty of the essay and skipping around.)

NaNoWriMo 2.0

So, we have officially reached the half-way point of NaNoWriMo, year two. And at this point in the day I am slightly ahead of schedule with 25,547 words on paper. You may recall that last year I posted bits and pieces of my novel as I went along. Why no previews this year? Well... I like this novel better. I respect it more. I want to take it on a few dates first.

Putting any part of the novel up before it's edited feels, for whatever reason, a little bit like counting your dinosaur eggs before they've hatched.

I want to have a whole herd of living, breathing dinosaurs before I start splashing poorly edited bits of story all over the place.  The truth is, I'm over 25,000(!) words into this project and feel as though I've just begun. I've written approximately seventeen chapters and we haven't even reached anything that's anything yet.

But before anyone starts quoting Tolkien here, it's highly possible that all this is because what I'm writing now is long-winded garbage... but it's my long-winded garbage. I'd rather have my own long-winded garbage than have to envy someone else's. Stick with me over the next few weeks. We'll see where this goes (maybe nowhere, maybe somewhere, probably not into the depths of Mordor).

P.S. I may be spending an unhealthy amount of time alone in the hinterlands of my own imagination.

Wreck-It Ralph FTW

John Lassater is a man after my own heart.

For ages, Disney has really excelled at princess stories, which, despite all my feminist indoctrination, I still love deeply and cry over with embarrassing frequency. (Even when the princesses aren't really princesses, ahem, Pocahontas.)

But, starting with Toy Story, John Lasseter did something really amazing for children's films. Instead of recycling old fairy tales and fables that were told to keep children in line (be good or your step mother will try to murder you and no one will ever marry you!!) he decided that movies for children should be about children, or at very least about things that matter to children. Why are so many children's movies about trying to find a husband!?! It's not something you really want your 8 year-old to be obsessed with.

John Lasseter doesn't seem to really have all that much to do with Wreck-It Ralph, Disney's new film which just came out this week. He's only listed as an associate producer. But I think he must be credited with a sea change in the culture of children's films, a definite change for the better.

Dreamworks, Pixar's computer-animated-kids-movie-rival, does one thing well: all their jokes are double entendres. The jokes in Dreamworks' films sound silly to children, and dirty to adults, which seems to be the Dreamworks MO for keeping parents entertained. (Shrek was surely the beginning of this seemingly endless progression of fart-joke movies.)

Pixar operates differently and doesn't have to resort to pratfalls to carry the story. Their films are funny, but they are also charming and heart-felt. The humor works for most people because it's universal. They explore the ways that children and adults relate to one another, and how children find their place in the world. Most importantly, I think they also remind adults what it felt like to a child.

The true center of each Pixar film is a family who need each other, even if they're not really related to one another: Nemo, Marlin, and Dory; Andy, Woody and Buzz; Russel, Carl and Dug; Boo, Sully and Mike, the Incredibles; Lightening McQueen and Tow Mater (my least favorite); Remy and Linguini, Wall-E, Eve and all those awesome fat people on that space station.... etc., etc., forever and ever amen.

Enter Wreck-It Ralph. After all I've just said, this isn't actually a Pixar production, but the unmistakable feeling is there. There was a moment, before I saw the film, that I worried it wouldn't live up to the trailer and that it might be an empty promise, or at very least that the plot would fall apart in favor of show-off animation. However, it's impossible not to enjoy this movie. The beauty of this film is in the little, almost imperceivable details that make it feel like a real labor of love. Forget for an instant that the music is perfect, the animation is the best I've ever seen, the storyline is original, and the voice actors are fantastic. Forget that I'm biased by my nerdly love of video games, and my feeling that maybe John C. Reilly is one of the most under-appreciated actors out there today.

There's a sense that this film was created by passionate, creative people who believe entertainment can be both funny and meaningful. It's easy for me to get overly rhapsodic about movies I enjoy (The Goonies, y'all, made me who I am today), but I've seen enough totally crappy films to appreciate the ones that have that extra spark that makes them special. Wreck-It Ralph sort of gets to the core of what a children's movie should be, which is entertaining (also, ADHD-proof) and very smart.

High-fat foods for happy people.

Today is the first day of Nanowrimo and also my first day as an officially unemployed person. Before I start writing like a mad bastard though, I thought I'd share this recipe.

Fully-Loaded Scalloped Potatoes

Ingredients:

• About 1lb Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled, washed, and thinly sliced.
• 1/2 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 1 ham steak, cubed
• 2 cups broccoli (fresh or frozen, no big deal)
• 2 1/2 cups heavy cream, half and half, or milk (or some combination; I use half milk, half cream)
• 1-2 cups grated Parmesan (not the kind in the can, the refrigerated kind in the bag)
• salt
• pepper
• thyme

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cut all your vegetables and ham first. If you're using frozen broccoli, microwave it for about 1 minute to thaw it some, and chop it up a little if the pieces are large. Just a rough chop, nothing too neat.

In a deep frying pan or dutch oven, melt butter over medium heat. Add sliced onions and sprinkle with salt. Stir these around every minute or so until they begin to deeply caramelize. Throw in the cubed ham and cook for another minute or so to brown it up a bit.

Stir in milk/cream and heat until it's warm, but not boiling.

Spray a casserole dish with non-stick spray and begin to assemble the layers. Add one layer of potatoes, then broccoli. Ladle some of the liquid mixture over the layer, being sure to distribute the onions and ham evenly. Sprinkle each layer with Parmesan, salt, pepper, and thyme. This should yield about three layers depending on the size of your pan.

When you've used up all the ingredients (make sure you end with cheese on top!) bake for 45-55 minutes.

Tim and I gorged ourselves on this during the storm. It's the perfect meal for a rainy day and it's ridiculously indulgent.

PS. Technically this is not scalloped potatoes but actually a gratin, because of the cheese, but I do what I want.

Epic

If you're not freaking out over this right now, I don't even know you anymore. This Christmas is going to be so epic, no one will ever recover.

3. Anna friggin Karenina:

2. Les. Mis. er. ables.:

1. Aggghhhhh, The Great Gatsby. From Baz Luhrmann, no less!

This Christmas, my brain is going to explode.

Book club for freaks.

Ahhhhh, hunkering down in preparation of Armageddon. Halloween, election day, my last days of work, the first day of Nanowrimo, and of course, Hurricane Sandy dumping all over all of it.

It's a good time to stay inside and read.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
By Erik Larson

The author of this book, Erik Larson, is wildly popular for his non-fiction books about unusual and often obscure events in history. This was my introduction to his oeuvre and the same probably goes for most readers. If you are one of the ten people who still hasn't heard of or read this book, know that it stands up to the hype.

There are two main subjects: the architects responsible for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and a serial killer lurking in the crush of anonymous men and women who flooded the city looking for opportunity. Non-fiction books of this sort can go two ways... there are the books that are well-researched but are written poorly or vice versa, and there are books that are well-researched, well-structured, and fantastically suspenseful.  This is one of the latter.

The segments of the book about Dr. H. H. Holmes (AKA, Herman Webster Mudget), the serial killer, fascinated me the most because I'm creepy and because this dude was so over-the-top bizarre. I was less interested in the parts of the book about Architect Daniel Burnham, though I have spoken to others who loved them. What is perhaps most interesting about the book is Larson's ability to describe a world so entirely different from our own. In many ways, fin-de-siecle Chicago might as well be an alien country.

When She Woke
By Hillary Jordan

This book is often described as "a futuristic Scarlet Letter." It tells the story of a young woman in a not-so-distant future who is charged with murder. Her punishment? She is "chromed," infected with a virus that turns her skin bright red. She's free to live in society, but everyone can see the marks of her crime. For me, this premise is enough. Sold. Done. Let's read it.

The book is fiercely political in a sci-fi, soft-core Stieg Larsson sort of way. Hannah Payne (get it, H.P.? Hester Prynne?), the main character, lives in the Plano/Dallas area and her parents are members of the largest mega-church in the country. She lives under intense religious stricture. There are oh-so-many ways in which the world has lost its mind, none of which Hannah really sees until she becomes an outsider (isn't that often the case?). But the action in the book keeps it from becoming, well, preachy, most of the time. The second half of the book was not as strong as the first, but I didn't really mind because I loved the unusual premise and was willing to put up with just about anything.

P.S. The kindle version is $1.99 right now.

The Family Fang
By Kevin Wilson

This is another book I fell in love with for the premise, and loved it enough that I stuck it out even with the plot was a little holey. The premise: Buster and Annie Fang, children of world-famous performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang, have grown up, but it's still basically impossible for them to tell the difference between reality and art. Everyone thinks their own family is screwed up, but no one really holds a candle to these people.

There is a plot, but it's really secondary to the pleasure of just enjoying Wilson's writing. The novel wins because it's funny and creative, and because Buster and Annie are so human (even if their parents are more like caricatures of real humans). Read it for the scene with the potato gun, if for no other reason.

Wilson has an amazing imagination and it shines in the guerrilla art-pieces created by the Fang family, and in the fictional movies and novels Annie and Buster create. Plus, the novel is short, which happens less and less in contemporary fiction these days (Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, I'm looking at you), but is sometimes exactly the right thing.

M1Nd-BoGgL3d

Tim and I have this on-going discussion that I find totally fascinating. There's a certain class of knowledge that totally changes your outlook on your existence. There are just some facts that, once you  learn them, you're kind of never the same person again. I remember growing up and finding out different things and just thinking, "holy crap--I don't know anything about anything."

There are a few I remember in specific, but I'm reminded of others from time to time.  Here are my current top-ten favorites (each one of which deserves more consideration than I've given them here).

Too smart for our own good.

1. People are Animals.
When you're little, it's fairly plain to see that there are people, and there are animals. Two different categories. Two different groups. I remember learning that people were mammals, that we actually belonged to the same classification, and having my mind explode. I also remember repeating this fact to anyone who would listen at any given moment.

The fact that people are animals completely changes our whole relationship with everything around us, and the nature of our existence.


2. The Fibonacci Sequence.
The Fibonacci Sequence is a simple series of integers where each number equals the sum of the two previous numbers, e.g.:

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144....etc.

When expressed as a spiral, the sequence looks like this. A golden spiral.

It's a lovely image, ok. But the reason it's so mind boggling is because it appears EVERYWHERE in nature and art. Flowers, nebulas, shells, storms, and some of the most famous art and architecture in the world, all follow the same mathematical principle, which is closely tied to what is called the Golden Ratio, also known as the most beautiful ratio.

Why is this so mind blowing? Because it's universal, it's simple, and it suggests order throughout the universe all through a simple pattern that you can draw on any piece of graph paper. I'm in LOVE with the Fibonacci sequence.

Great taste! Less filing!

3. We're drinking dinosaur pee.
For real. I remember learning about the water cycle and being vaguely horrified--water falls, plants and animals use it, it goes into the atmosphere, it falls again. But then I learned that every single molecule on this planet except those that come from space debris, has been on this planet since it formed. The water in the water cycle has been doing its thing since water formed on the surface of the planet--hence, we drink the same water (and breath the same air) that was in the lungs and guts of dinosaurs (and Jesus and Einstein). On top of that, all of those molecules originally came from outer-space. Outer-space!

What if your cells are slowly turning you into a cat?

4. The human body regenerates its cells once every seven years.
Every seven years you are a completely new and different person from the person you used to be. Even your scars are made of different cells than they were when you scraped your knew or fell off your bike. If this is the case, why don't they go away? Why don't we grow new limbs if we lose them? How do our brains contain any of the same information if all of the cells that made up ourselves died long ago and were replaced by new ones? MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS!


5. The human body is made in distinct proportions
This is something you begin to learn in basic drawing classes. Your eyes are located in the precise middle of your face, directly between the crown of your head and your chin. Your hand, from the base of the wrist to the tip of the fingers, is the exact length of your face from chin to hairline (uh, if you've got a hairline). The length of the bottom of your foot is equal to the length of your forearm from inner elbow to wrist. Most human bodies are eight times the height of the head, while the shoulders are twice the height of the head. This is math at its most functional. Does it have any mystical significance? Probably not. But it's fun to be reminded that our bodies are awesome.


6. Futility, or The Wreck of the Titan
This book, written in 1893, is about the largest ship in the whole world, the Titan, which strikes an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sinks one day in April. It's written 13-years before the sinking of the Titanic. I remember learning about this--I was looking through another book in Crossroads Mall in Boulder, when I was about 11--and getting goosebumps all over my body. By no means do I believe that the author predicted the sinking of the Titanic, or that there is any sort of occult explanation. But I LOVE how bizarre and unpredictable the world is. I remember thinking, "if something this amazing could exist, anything could exist."

Forward thrusters, ENGAGE!

7. When you look at stars, you're watching the past.
A light-year is defined as, "a unit of astronomical distance equivalent to the distance that light travels in one year, which is 9.4607 × 1012 km (nearly 6 trillion miles)." If the nearest star to earth is 4.5 light years away, it has taken 4.5 years for the light we see to leave the star and travel to our eyes, where it dead-ends in our retinas. Watching the night sky is like watching a film of events that happened in the past. For the most distant stars, it is wholly possible that the star has long-since exploded or died out and that the image we see is of an object in space that no longer exists.

FOR REAL.

8. "The War of Northern Aggression"
I'm from Colorado. We studied the Civil War, but let's be honest here: Colorado wasn't even a STATE until a decade after the war had ended. We study a lot of other things in our elementary history classes... like dinosaurs... and the American Indians... and... the water cycle. I didn't know, until moving to the South for college, that many Southerners consider any non-southern person a "yankee" and that the Civil War is referred to as "The War of Northern Aggression." America seemed like a fairly homogenous entity for me, until that moment. This is when I really realized how it's possible to live in one place and have utterly different perspectives of "the truth."

NSFW in GB

 9. Sometimes a nod means "no."
There are some countries where nodding your head means "no" and shaking it means "yes" (or some other gesture is used). This gesture seems completely innate--we never think about it--but it's actually learned and culturally agreed-upon. Learning that some cultures wink, or bobble, or jerk their heads emphasizes the feeling that we all live on one planet, but in some ways we're totally alien to one another.


10. The interstate system is not organic
What I mean by this is, the Interstates in the US aren't just more-developed versions of roads that were already there. I always just sort functioned under the assumption that most roads were paved over older roads and paths that people and animals had been using for eons to get around. The nature of the Interstate system might seem completely obvious to people who live in any city that's laid out like a grid--city's don't just spring up that way, they're usually planned. But I was astonished to discover that the interstates we depend on every day were part of a defense initiative by Dwight Eisenhower. He argued that we needed a way to transport army equipment and troops in the event of a war. The interstates didn't really exist until after our grandparents were born, but it is almost impossible to imagine our country without them.

Maybe this all just demonstrates that I wasn't/am not currently the brightest crayon on the tree. But being amazed is more fun than being bored all the time.

Argo

Yesterday we saw Argo, and I have to tell you about it.

Argo is a film about the Iran Hostage Crisis which occurred between 1979 and 1981. After Ayatollah Khomeini came into power and the Shah of Iran was deposed, the US gave the former Shah safe haven. The shaw had been wildly unpopular because he was essentially a puppet for the US and Great Britain, allowing them control of Iranian oil. He was also responsible for the "westernization" of Iran, a move that outraged traditional Shi'a muslims. Under the Ayatollah, Iran transformed from a monarchy--which it had been for centuries--to a theocracy.

On November 4, 1979 a group of hundreds of Iranian students stormed the US Embassy compound. Their intention was to voice their objections to US and Soviet policies, and hold the embassy for a few days. The siege, however, got out of hand. Some 60 diplomats were taken prisoner inside the embassy. Six of them escaped through a back exit and took refuge--secretly--in the home of the Canadian ambassador.

Argo is the story of the audacious rescue of those six people, devised and carried out by CIA agent Tony Mendez in cooperation with the Canadian government. Mendez planned to enter Iran under the cover of a fake science fiction film looking for a location. The six trapped Americans would be smuggled out disguised as a Canadian film crew. Everything about the fake film had to be real enough to stand up to the highest scrutiny.

There are many, many things to like about Argo. The first of which being the sensible and fair treatment of Iran in the film. They seems like an odd thing to say, since the film wouldn't exist without Iran-as-badguy. However, the film makes clear that all people caught up in these kinds of situations go nuts--American, Iranian, or otherwise--and that there are good and bad people in any group. This isn't something you usually get in films where it's the US against a foreign country (just talk to every Russian or Chinese person ever depicted in a movie, ever). Time, more than anything else, is the enemy in this film.

Because of this sense of urgency, the film has a tense, fast-paced plot. The costumes and settings are flawless (at least from the point of view of someone who wasn't born yet at the time and has never been to Iran). The characters are interesting. Best of all, the movie cuts tension with humor, resulting in a film that seems really "human," well-rounded, and eminently watchable.

It's nice to see Ben Affleck do something more Good Will Hunting and less Surviving Christmas (remember that? Yeah, neither does anyone else). I would not be remotely surprised if this film earns him another Oscar.

The cast is strong: John Goodman, Alan Arkin, Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad!), Clea DuVall, Rory Cochrane (Empire Records, remember?)... And Ben Affleck actually looks like he's playing someone other than himself. (Much love for the 70's beard.)

When I say this film is tense, I'm really not kidding. I had my feet up on my seat and my hands over my mouth for most of it. And it is the only movie I've ever been to where the whole audience applauded in the middle of the film.

Movies like this make our decision to try for the Foreign Service seem a little crazy, but they also remind me why Tim wants to go in the first place. There has to be diplomacy in this world.

PS. I have no idea why I don't post more movie reviews. I'm sort of obsessed with going to the movies.

Good and bad ideas.

The job search continues. Meanwhile, if you have any documents you need me to proofread, let me know. (Please don't let this blog inform your opinions of my badass proofing abilities.)

Thitherwardly with this week's book reviews! Two books by Jeffrey Eugenides and one about a serial killer.

The Marriage Plot
By Jeffrey Eugenides

I have elsewhere described this book as "an English Major's Utopia/therapy session for lost 20-something (both categories that appeal to me)."  It occurs to me through reading reviews by others that these are not universal categories and not everyone was as pleased with this book as I have been. The number one complaint seems to be that all of the characters are white, and one of them is wealthy. To which I reply, "You've never studied the marriage plot in English class, have you?"

Not being an English major shouldn't ruin the reading experience for you--in fact, you'd be amazed how often being an English major ruins it. If literary allusions are a deal-breaker for some, they're my blind spot.

This is the story of three students trying to keep their college graduation from becoming the apogee of their whole lives. Madeline studies English; Leonard, biology; and Mitchell, religion. In the midst of their trying to find meaning in their post-graduate lives, a tangled love-triangle ensues. Mitchell loves Madeline, who loves Leonard, who is manic depressive and by turns loves everything and then nothing. Each of the characters is so different from the other, and each is so strong, that the book grips you in the force of their personalities.

I love the sections focussed on Leonard and on Mitchell. Leonard, like many real-life people with bi-polar disorder, is magnetic, fascinating, and frustrating. Mitchell is his foil--a loner and a wanderer. I never really grasped the reason they both go for Madeline, though I feel a kinship with her in her nerdiness and struggle to find her way. Eugenides delivers musical prose and even humor. I can't recommend this book highly enough to the English Majors in my life (oh, the section on semiotics alone!), and to everyone else: it's a wonderful modern love story.

The Virgin Suicides
By Jeffrey Eugenides

You might as well know, Eugenides has written three novels, one every ten years since 1993.  The Virgin Suicides, then Middlesex in 2003 (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and then The Marriage Plot in 2011. Each of these books is wildly different. You might just as well know that The Virgin Suicides is my least favorite of the three.

Probably the most striking fact about The Virgin Suicides, is that it is written from the first-person-plural perspective, giving an already dream-like book a strange, elusive quality. The book is not so much about a family with five daughters who all commit suicide, but about how we--society-- are simultaneously obsessed with those around us, and completely ignorant of them.

The book begins with the death of the youngest sister and precedes through the months leading up the the deaths of the other four girls. There is a touch of magical realism in the book. Impossible events occur, distorting the POV and timeframe, everything (a tube-top, an elm tree, a stuffed chameleon) is invested with meaning. The book feels very poetic and experimental. In some passages it works and in some you begin to feel sort of adrift in a way I'm not sure is intentional. One passage nicely demonstrates the tone of the book and, fittingly, my feelings about it:

"Most people remember the Day of Grieving as an obscure holiday. The first three hours of school were canceled and we remained in our home rooms. Teachers passed out mimeographs related to the day's theme, which was never officially announced, as Mrs. Woodhouse felt it inappropriate to single out the girls' tragedy. The result is that the tragedy was diffused and universalized. As Kevin Triggs put it, 'It seemed like we were supposed to feel sorry about everything that happened, ever.'"

Zodiac
By Robert Graysmith

A true-crime book about a famous serial killer.

Tim and I listened to the audio book version on a camping road trip together. This was a singularly bad idea, as I felt we were going to be stabbed to death in our tent (which was, ironically, set up near a camper full of missionaries) AND that, impossibly, someone was lurking in the overstuffed back seat of our car.

It's rather macabre to say you "enjoyed" a book about a serial killer, but I have to admit that this book got under my skin in a way I couldn't resist.

The Zodiac case is an unsolved series of murders that took place across California in the late 60's and early 70's. The murderer was fond of writing cryptic letters and actual cypher puzzles to area newspapers and detectives, boasting about his crimes. Author Robert Graysmith was a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle at the time of the Zodiac murders, and took it upon himself to investigate the the murders. (A film version was directed by David Fincher in 2007.) The book goes into detail about the confirmed Zodiac killings, as well as a number that are believed to have been committed by him--upwards of thirty murders. The book benefits from Graysmith's proximity to the events. In some cases, he tails suspects and collects evidence which he presents to the many detectives who worked on murder cases in different counties. It is harrowing to discover how many murder cases have no resolution and no hope of ever being solved.

In general, the writing is very straight-forward, though it can be hard to keep track of the many police officers and reporters described in the book. I'm not sure what twisted impulse leads people (myself included) to read books like this, but I will admit that I was hooked from beginning to end.