Nobody Here

Quick. Name all the books you remember reading in 2005. Only the ones you remember off the top of your head. No peeking at your nightstand. It won't be a complete list and we all know you read a lot more than that and your total list, if you could look around and think about it, would be wayway longer and totally impressive. Use your own blog or comments.

Here's mine, the only order being the order they occur to me:

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling (reread)
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
The Well of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde
Something Rotten, Jasper Fforde
The Big Over Easy, Jasper Fforde
lost boy lost girl, Peter Straub
Haunted, Heather Graham
Mr. Touchdown, Lyda Phillips (reread sorta)
Peace I Ask of Thee, Oh River, Lyda Phillips (reread sorta)
It, Stephen King (reread)
The Spiderwick Chronicles (5 book series), Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi
Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl (reread)
Matilda, Roald Dahl
The Egypt Game, Zilpha Keatly Snyder (reread)
The Witches of Worm, Zilpha Keatly Snyder (reread)
The Ghosts of Rathburn Park, Zilpha Keatly Snyder
Good in Bed, Jennifer Weiner
In Her Shoes, Jennifer Weiner
Little Earthquakes, Jennifer Weiner
Something Borrowed, Emily Giffin
A Series of Unfortunate Events - first 3 in the series, Lemony Snicket
No Easy Answers, Brooks Brown and Rob Merritt
Notes from the Underbelly, Risa Green

That's all I can think of.

Favorite on the list (excluding rereads): Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Favorite on the list that isn't the one we knew you were going to say (excluding rereads): The Well of Lost Plots, Little Earthquakes, Matilda, Spiderwick
Least Favorite on the list: Haunted

Books I want to get to in 2006, also in the order they occur to me:
Inheritance series, Christopher Paolini
Tales from the Crib, Risa Green
Goodnight Nobody, Jennifer Weiner, if it comes out in paperback
Inkheart books (I think she's up to 3), Cornelia Funke
His Dark Materials series, Philip Pullman, but only if Archer says it's worth reading

In case you missed it, Miss Snark's famous crapometer is chewing up and spitting out synopses for your instruction and amusement. I never wrote a synopsis for my last book, because my agent didn't make me, and doing a synopsis when you aren't required to is the writerly equivalent of getting together a car load of crabby toddlers, with colds, and taking them to the DMV to hang out for the afternoon, just for fun. But reading through the crapometer posts reminded me of my workshop hero Judy Morris. Judy is veryvery big on writing two page summaries. Summary of novel as a whole, summary of plot, chapter-by-chapter summary, summary from point of view of hero, summary from point of view of villain, summary from point of view of secondary character you're having a hard time getting a handle on. You get the idea.

Now, I'm not saying this doesn't suck, because I know it does. But. Still. If you look at the synopses Miss Snark is posting, you'll notice how scraping the story down to its barest bones can reveal flaws large and small. It's kind of like how you have a dream that makes perfect sense when you're in it, but when you tell someone about it the next morning, you realize how silly it sounds. "No, but seriously, the dancing seahorse was scary." (Actually, I had this experience with Ethan Frome too. I was crying, until someone asked me what was so sad about it, and I was all, "They sledded into this tree on purpose! It's so tragic! Um.") And even assuming the story holds up in general, an inconsistency that's barely noticeable between chapters three and fourteen of a two hundred page novel can stand out like a New Yorker in the prairie when it's between paragraphs three and seven of a short synopsis.

So the question is, does summarizing the story suck enough to wait until the book is totally done, when I might be writing a synopsis for an agent or editor? Or is it maybe kindasorta worth it to do a few of them as I work on the early drafts, to work out those kinks before they see the light of snark?

Yah. More work for January.

*Post title ripped off from The Princess Bride

Have a holly jolly Christmas. Unless you're offended by my suggestion that you have a merry Christmas, in which case, have a cookie and disregard its shape.

*Post title ripped off from Tiny Tim

I’ve been dabbling in chick-lit lately (reading, not writing). I’m not sure why, since a lot of it is written in first-person present, which as Paula has mentioned is the most annoying POV ever for a novel. Maybe it’s the strong presence on the three-for-two table at Borders. Whatever the reason, in my brief experience I’ve concluded that “chick-lit” means a book by a woman, for women, in which a woman, often in a chatty, cocktails-with-girlfriends tone, tells you all about the time she a.) did something slutty; b.) did something outrageous; c.) got married; d.) got pregnant/had a baby; e.) several of the above. It should be lighter than literary fiction but not have enough graphic sex to qualify as romance.

I’ve seen it written that Jennifer Weiner is widely considered the queen of chick-lit. If this is true, I can see why. For one thing, she drops the conspirational whisper and writes her books like books, which is nice. She’s entertaining and engaging, she’s got a sense of humor and a sense of honesty, and she structures her books to keep you reading (short chapters that end with momentum). And what she gets, she really really gets, and expresses so you get it too, which is not an easy thing. I don’t see how anybody who’s had a baby and remembers what the first year was like could fail to connect with Little Earthquakes.

In Her Shoes has a lot of these good qualities. It certainly kept me reading. But after I finished and thought about it, I felt a little cheated, like I’d been tricked by Weiner’s captivating style into going along with a story that just doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny. It’s a story that deals with inner and outer beauty in stereotypical ways, and tries to deal with redemption, but never gets beneath the surface of why and how we forgive.

You’ve got Dowdy Sister and Hot Sister, and they’re exactly who you’d think: Dowdy is older, wiser, together, and of course, the smart one. Hot is younger, scattered, learning disabled, and of course, the slutty one. You’ve probably already guessed that maybe halfway through the book Hot Sister sleeps with Dowdy Sister’s boyfriend. After that there is, as you might expect, a bit of a falling out. Then you get several passages where Dowdy, despite her anger, reflects on how much she misses her sister. Unfortunately, you have to take her word for it, because you really don’t get the sense that despite their differences, they love each other. Instead you get a sense of family guilt and obligation, and there could be (and no doubt are) whole books dedicated to how that’s not the same thing. Both sisters’ journeys are interesting to read, but while I enjoyed the how of their changes I wasn’t ever really sure of the why. When forgiveness and redemption and sisterly love do arrive, it feels like it’s not for any reason other than that the book is ending, and it’s their time.

It does, though, have lots and lots of descriptions of shooze.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is a nearly flawlessly executed movie. One: applause for the cast and the director for the best performances by children since The Sixth Sense. It's hard enough to find even one child who can act without sounding like they're reading lines, let alone four of them, but all the kids in this movie speak and move completely naturally. Two: the special effects greatly exceed expectations for a story with talking animals, which are just really really hard to pull off in live action. By and large this movie looks beautiful. Three: nice performances by Mr. Tumnus and the White Witch, the only other live actors who get a lot of screen time, with a particular nod to Tilda Swinton who manages to look deadly serious despite the odd costumes and bizarre (and unwinterly) dreadlocks. Four: excellent voice casting for the non-human characters.

When I saw this morning that the movie came in at number one over the weekend, I was curious about who was seeing it. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe as a book is more appealing to the younger side of the middle grade set. It's short, straightforward with few plotlines to weave together and all the backstory conveniently and quickly explained through prophecies and ancient magic, and leaves very little for the reader to figure out on their own.

But the movie version may be on the scary side for the six and seven year old set. Kids who have no problem reading C. S. Lewis' brief, no-nonsense account of the climactic battle may not be so comfortable watching the same scene in the movie, which although bloodless looks like a battle in every other respect. And the bit at the Stone Table, while no doubt difficult for a child to read or hear, takes on a whole other dimension of disturbing when it's seen.

It's all in the telling, of course. With a movie, you haven't got the luxury of distance. But with a book, you can get as wontonly dark as you like. Small boys can be locked in cupboards by uncaring relatives and four-year-old girls can be left home alone to their own devices while their mothers run off and play bingo. Kids can be tortured, parents can die. Swords can be crossed, blood can be shed, monsters can win. All of that and more, as long as you use a narrative voice that distances the child reader sufficiently from it. Lemony Snicket has made a career of this, as did Roald Dahl before him, and the Brothers Grimm before that.

But then what happens when they make the movie? Here's a movie that may be too graphic for the book's audience, and a book that may not be action-packed enough for the movie's audience. Either everyone will see it, or no one. In this case, it would appear to be everyone. That includes you, by the way. If you haven't seen it, go. Then tell me what you think of the talking animals.

Paula says I have to do this.

January and February: old blog, saved on old computer, too lazy to look it up

March 12, 2005: And in the evening she still sings it with the band

April 4, 2005: I live among the creatures of the night

May 4, 2005: Impossible deeds should be his daily fare

June 1, 2005: Bad chip (not about Eric Estrada)

July 9, 2005: A real character is hard to find

August 6, 2005: 'magine that

September 1, 2005: Ignorance is as ignorance does

October 4, 2005: The NaNoWriMo Diaries # Negative 1

November 1, 2005: Word #3520: My foot is asleep

December 1, 2005: Goodness, I almost forgot the obligatory Harry post

There's been a lot of bloggetry lately about the so-called war on Christmas, with peeps on both sides feeling disgruntled. Personally, I favor a compromise.

On the one hand, I really have a hard time with the idea of anyone with any understanding of our long global history of various faiths' murderous intolerance of others pointing at the lack of a nativity scene in the public square and, with a straight face, labeling that religious persecution. Public spaces are, by definition, not yours. They're everyone's, and the way our country works is, the majority drives our collective cultural will. You have a right to hold and practice your faith. You do not have a right to the majority. There was a time when most Americans celebrated this holiday as the birth of Christ, and our public spaces reflected that. As those numbers shift, our public spaces will reflect that, too. It's not personal.

On the other hand, wholesale resistance to Christmas as an American holiday is futile. As many have already pointed out, it isn't going anywhere. That's because our cultural sense of the holiday has transcended the trappings of any particular faith and become about something bigger than all of us: money. You may do what you like for yourself, but you can no more go up against Santa as part of our cultural landscape than you could Windows.

So if the local third grade class is making Christmas decorations that show, say, angels or wise men, I'm opposed to that, because I am against any child being in the position of choosing between fitting in and compromising their faith. But if they're making paper Santa hats? Well, I'm a practical girl. You'd be hard pressed to get me to step away from the Christmas cookies to attend the protest rally.

Bee in my bonnet: villains and how they're beat.

I’m annoyed by final conflicts in which the protagonist just kind of stands up to fight the good fight, and for vague reasons never really explained, when it’s all over they’re alive and the villain not so much. Stephen King is the master of this technique. He uses it to great advantage in It and even more outrageously in The Stand, as well as some others. J.K. Rowling also employs it to some degree during the final confrontation in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I am, as anyone who’s read my blog in the last ever knows, a big fan of both writers. But it bugs me when they do that because I like the rules to be nice and clear and neat. If the hero finds some power - physical, mental, supernatural, whatever - I want to know what it is, how they got it, and how they used it. Specifically.

I look to other villains vanquished. Sauron killed by his own weapon when he wasn’t watching, rather than faced directly. The Wicked Witch of the West, killed by an inadvertent spill and her own laziness in not refilling the paper towel holder. Tom and Daisy Buchanan not killed at all, but you just know they’ll be, like, really unhappy, except they might not even notice, the shallow twits. The White Witch killed during her duel with Peter, except not by Peter but by Aslan swooping in at the last second. Mrs. Reed succumbing to old age, Heathcliff (villain, hero, whatever) catching a cold. The Kraken defeated by the head of Medusa, because ONLY THE HEAD OF MEDUSA CAN DEFEAT THE KRAKEN. Mrs. Danvers, okay well she burns down the house and runs away, so bad example.

When the little guy wins, it’s usually due to some combination of luck, trickery, or the help of a more powerful other. The ordinary guy tapping his resources to find strength he didn’t know he had is the basis of many stories, but it rarely makes it to the final showdown.

There’s a reason for this: you can’t spend an entire book making the villain formidable and then just let the ordinary guy come along and beat him in a direct confrontation. Suppose that after three books of how evilawfulscary Sauron is, Frodo just kind of stabbed him in the knee and knocked him down? It would feel like a cheat. Nobody would buy it. Or it would look like the ending of It.

Come on, peeps, prove me wrong. Give me an example of the ordinary hero beating the extraordinary villain by themselves, in a head-to-head confrontation.

*Post title ripped off from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Best Harry Potter movie yet. Captured the spirit of the book and moved the story forward without any of that annoying little Dobby. Outstanding special effects. The kids continue to do well, particularly Rupert Grint who despite the unfortunate hair style (or perhaps aided by it) is showing quite a knack for comic timing. Top-notch performance by Brendan Gleeson. Drastically underused Alan Rickman. Poor plot construction at the end, but that's Jo's fault, much as I hate to criticize her, because it's weak in the book too.

You should go.