In Withdrawal...

for E. and Washington, D.C.  Had the most amazing weekend - as every weekend there, and with her, is - and now I'm having trouble settling back into the freezing cold, up early for work, drinking coffee and not mimosas in the morning life.

However, unlike most of the flights back, I actually wasn't totally depressed while on the plane, because the one benefit to heading home was I got to get back into the book I was reading on the flight down: Lev Grossman's The Magicians.  I have a ton of work to catch up on, and I'm clearly not moving fast (E & I may have taken some time to enjoy ourselves & relax, but we still rolled pretty hard this weekend, and I am exhausted today), but I will jot down a few quick notes and then take the lazy-girl's route and throw in a couple links to what other people have said about the book.

For starters, I don't really remember how this one ended up on my list (I think maybe it was in one of the Harvard Bookstore monthly fliers?), but I am really glad it did.  It's essentially an homage to C.S. Lewis, loving but jaded and critical, and some of the other teenagers + fantasy usual suspects.  Since the main character is a kid who gets whisked away to a school for magicians, the obvious parallel is J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter (although way less twee and annoying, and way darker - not just hints at "big themes," but sex, drugs, and alcohol, if not rock and roll).

I think the Narnia references are the deeper and more pertinent ones, though - the boy's favorite books growing up, which he learns may or may not be based in reality, are a pentalogy of childrens/young adults novels about several siblings who get pulled in and out of a magical land as they are needed to perform various feats and quests where talking mice sail ships and bunnies drink tea.  Oh, and the only way to get you there under your own steam is by jumping in and out of ponds in a sort of deserted ante-chamber world, with the right rings...er, BUTTONS...in hand... 

Sounds so derivative, but it's not.  On the one hand, clearly you need to love the Lewis series, and the whole "teenagers fight evil with magic" genre to even start this project (and know them back and forth), but there's also a darker, snarky, and ultimately rather depressing side to the whole book - it's like when you grow up and first realize your parents are just as flawed as any one else in the world.  It's not that you don't love them, but you've seen the other side, and the original innocence doesn't come back.  When magic doesn't ultimately solve any of the protagonist's problems, any of the worlds described in the book look infinitely uglier, no matter what the enchantments.

This is already too long...okay, obviously some Tolkien in the stew, as well, although not much, maybe a whiff of Susan Cooper?  I kept almost seeing it, but then I wasn't sure if I was making it up - certainly it would be a bigger stretch than the others.  Basically, if the book were chicken soup, the broth is Rowling, the chicken, carrots, and onions are Lewis, Tolkien is the celery, and Cooper would be the rosemary, or the garlic - just a hint of a taste, if it's even there at all (of course, in this book as in soup, if it's not, it should have been).

Only other major point would probably be that I finished it and went "huh?" - towards the end I thought there was no way it would be wrapped up, and that it must have a sequel, then Grossman whipped up all the loose ends, and then in the last pages introduced a new-ish direction, and re-introduced a character, which threw me.  No longer, though, as when I googled the book this morning, Wikipedia informed me that a sequel has been written and will be published this fall.  Which makes MUCH more sense, and I will definitely read it.  Also, just as a side note, not only did I enjoy the book enough to look it up online, I then read two reviews, from the Times and the Onion:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/books/review/Agger-t.html

http://www.avclub.com//articles/lev-grossman-the-magicians,31495/

Finally - I liked Grossman's writing.  It was a bit uneven, and I think he occasionally tried to make the story "edgier" by throwing in coarser scenes, language (his, not the characters'), and dialogue, which was a little off-putting (just because I didn't think he needed to try that hard), but over all comfortable and confident with his characters and story.  The Times reviewer (I think it was that review) suggested the characters were a little too obvious and one-dimensional, but I don't really agree - there is a difference between enlarging and expanding on a type, and adding nuance, which makes sense in a book that is SO referential, and just relying on stock characters.

Interesting article on editing in the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/11/lost-art-editing-books-publishing

Cleaning house

I was looking for something to read on the plane to/from DC Fri/Mon (WHOO!) and realized some of the books I have on my "to read(?)" lists I've actually already read, so:

Making Haste from Babylon: the Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World, Nick Bunker, 2010.  Really enjoyed this one; had been meaning to read it for a while, and then had to read it for work when we got to the chapter on the Pilgrims.  Good stuff.  A lot of wandering around in the hedges & stopping to smell the flowers (literally - Bunker loves to set a scene by getting down into the weeds, and giving detailed descriptions of the local flora & fauna), but very informative, and I kind of liked that it was pretty wide-ranging and not super focused.  A LOT of information, but not at all scholarly or academic, in a good way - I think it's very accessible for non-historians, although it could be a bit dry, I guess...I didn't think so, but I know I am not the normal non-academic audience either.  More English history than American, by far; this is very much about the background in England (and Leiden) of the Pilgrims, and really has nothing much to say about what went on over on this side of the pond.  Lots to say about English politics, religious disputes, and social life, though.  I'd assign it in an undergrad English history class, only an advanced or grad class on the Pilgrims specifically, if the imaginary class were operating out of an American history department.

late might not be better than ever

But in any case,  a while ago I read Cereus Blooms at Night, by Shani Mootoo; enjoyed the story & characters quite a bit (imaginative and unique, but believably familiar at the same time, if that makes sense.  The dialogue irritated me, though - literally, almost, in so far as it didn't make me angry as much as it sort of chafed at my brain and mental ear...  Mootoo, who I think is from Trinidad (already returned the book, and am too lazy to look it up) & sets the story in a imaginary West Indian place, attempts to replicate a...general West Indian patois?  I have no idea if it's even authentic or not, but it comes and goes willy-nilly, and when it comes, it feels forces.  Perhaps if it had been more consistent it wouldn't have bugged me so much, but it just didn't seem like it fit.  The post-colonial and gender/sexual identity issues, on the other hand, were handled lightly and gracefully, and were an absolute delight.  I see now that she has some other books, and I think I would definitely read one or more of them...
I would also maybe read more by Claire Harman, author of Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World - a bit on the light side, to be sure, but interesting.  Harman traces Austen's early writing and publishing attempts, and how her cult was slowly (well, in fits and starts, some very, very fast) grown over the years.  Very chatty tone; I think I would have preferred something a bit more scholarly, but it worked well for pre-bed reading.  Another small complaint would be that she references a lot of images not all of which are reproduced in the book, so some of them are kind of hard to picture, but I suppose there may have been prohibitive costs associated with some of the images.  My fingers are too cold to type more about it, but it was fun, in any case - and gratifying to know how many super smart people think she's nifty...
Additionally, I finally learned more about the most deliciously "cheeky experiment" (thank you, Guardian, that wouldn't get said in an American paper), in which someone tried to get only barely-disguised versions of Austen's books published, and was rather soundly rejected: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jul/19/books.booksnews.  I HAVE to think that a lot of the rejections were because the books were so obviously Austen's classics, even if the letters didn't say so - one imagines the manuscript was picked up, a page or two was read, and it was immediately dumped in the "no way in Hell pile" where it was later picked up by another person entirely, who wrote a bland rejection letter without reading the mss.  At least, I hope that's what happened!

Also fun (for me, anyhow), but MUCH more scholarly was Susan Hardman Moore's Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home, which I've been wanting to read for a while, and then had to read for work, so that worked out.  Really interesting book about the Puritans (and others) who went to Massachusetts / New England in the 1630s and 40s and then ended up going back to England.  The strength of the book definitely lies in her case studies, where she follows the lives of individuals who came over and then returned.  She's weaker on the math: there aren't all that many numbers, and the ones she has start to fall apart a little when you get into how she arrived at them.  Still, excellent work for what it is, if not what it aims to be.