A Wrinkle in Time: Wherein I Read with Myself

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Warning: This review is a meditation on personal time travel caused by re-reading a uniquely amazing piece of middle grade and high school science fiction that was written 50 years ago. In it, there are women brilliant at math and science and boys with incredible powers of communication. It is also an excellent story, and involves faster-than-light travel through time and space. My review will not be about that, though.

Just re-read my old copy of this book, and it literally transported me back to my childhood. It was a bizarre experience, like I was two people reading the book at once, through the same eyes. Childhood self had her reactions – the images that the prose brought to life, fully realized – and adult self had different ones. Simultaneously.

How did the book hold up for current me? I loved it. L’Engle is a masterful story-teller, and I was surprised how quickly she moves it along and how relatively spare her descriptions, etc, are, given the vast images they created for me as a child, images that were re-created in the re-reading.

Powerful stuff, and a reflection on what makes great and timeless writing.

I was also fascinated by the ways in which this book has shaped me, without my realizing it:

That argument I had on the bus in high school about accent marks over the “e” in “-ed”? Well, it probably stemmed from the fact that there is an odd and out of place accented “e” in this book. Thus cementing it in my mental map of the world for all time.

My immediate obsession with social psychology when I encountered it in college? Probably because of how directly it relates to the control of societies and exploration of social conditions played with in this book.

My fear of the movie “It”, even though I’ve never seen it? Probably because of the villainous and creep-tacular “IT” in this novel. (By the way, contemporary Abi had “I.T.”, as in, “information technology”, the help desk people, pop into her head every time she saw the name “IT”, and it was very distracting. Not a problem in her prior, pre-computer era readings.)

My willingness to connect religion with science at every turn, such as assuming it was scientifically reasonable for Jesus to walk on water because he could play with the molecules. Duh, Mom! Again, child-self appears to have stolen that idea DIRECTLY from L’Engle and the playing with molecules that occurs on Camazotz. I guess she’s not so original. 🙂

Reading this book was like reading myself. I even had set much of it, in memory, in the country setting of my old house in Pennsylvania. (I was surprised to discover that Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which lived in a house in a forest. In memory, it was geographically located up the hill where my dear neighbors Edwin and Martha lived, with only a smattering of tress around. I was also surprised to be reminded of Mrs. Murry’s laboratory off of the kitchen, which didn’t fit the layout of our Pennsylvania house I’d set the Murry home in. Thirdly, I was surprised that they return onto of the twins’ vegetable garden – the broccoli, to be specific – and not next to the compost heap and chicken coop I’d placed them at in my childhood plotting of their world onto mine. I still can’t shake seeing every bit of the story on a corresponding bit of that Amish Country world…)

Interestingly, “modern me” noticed the heavy religious currents that just didn’t register at all for “prior me”; in childhood, religion was just a given and a part of the culture I inhabited.

There are a few, minor moments where the book feels out-dated, but they are few and far between. Occasional dialogue, hand-holding, and gender assumptions are all that ruffle your feathers and remind you this book was written 50 years ago, not now. L’Engle’s novel remains essentially timeless.

(Side note: I also learned my mother had censored the book. When one of the twins describes something as a “gyp”, a term derogatory to gypsies, she penciled it out and penciled in “shame”. I don’t think the line reads quite right with that particular correction (the meaning is something more like “what a cheat!” than “what a shame…”), but I was fascinated to learn she had read it aloud to me – why else the correction? – and that I had read the censored book countless times without noting the edit! Ah, past self, how fun it was to hang out with you for this quick reread…)

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Today I Cooked Some Goat

I have curried goat simmering on my stove and (organic, brown) basmati rice sitting in my fridge. No big deal, right?

Well, for me it’s a milestone. A landmark moment.

You see, I am an recovering anti-domestic.

In my college years and most of the four years after, I did not do much in the way of housekeeping or cooking. Or budgeting, for that matter! In college, budgeting meant making sure I didn’t spend more than I had –  I didn’t have much, but I worked hard and always had enough. After, I was blessed enough to have a job for a time that meant I could get away with my slack budgeting. Cooking meant microwaving an Amy’s meal or – when I was really getting good – some Trader Joe’s rice to eat with steamed veggies. Sure, I attempted one curry and roasted one batch of veggies, but that was it until this August.

Thus, most of the lessons I’m working to learn right now are embarrassingly basic. So basic, in fact, that I’ve found it challenging to make my self fulfill my goal of blogging about them!  I’m coming out of my embarrassment closet, though, because I’m starting to hit my stride. I’m proud that this:

is cooking on my stove.

I’m proud I have basmati rice cooked, ready to put it on, and vegetables, fruits, and trail mix that will sustain me throughout the week. I’m thrilled to KNOW – really know, from past experience! – that the food I have will sustain me through breakfast, lunch, and snack/snack/snack/snacking throughout the work week.

In order to have that food appear on my stove, the following lessons had to be learned:

• How to make a budget that worked for my easily-overwhelmed self
• How to look up a recipe and (sort of) follow it
• How to plan my meals for the week

I also had to learn to become comfortable with raw meat, but that happened automatically in August 2011 when I started eating paleo (more information on the paleo lifestyle can be found here. I’m not really paleo anymore, but doing it for about nine months fundamentally changed my relationship with food.)

Books that Help Us Remember: Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day in the United States: our three-day weekend that often consists of BBQs, family, and the onset of summer, but – more importantly – provides us with the opportunity to stop and honor the men and women who have died serving in the Armed Forces.

I am fortunate enough not to have lost any of my own loved ones to war, and I am a book nerd. Because of this, I turn to literature to help me slow down and think about the cost of war and about those who serve and give their lives. Here are four books I’ve read this year that help me hold the fallen soldiers of America more clearly in my memory.

1. Doing My Part by Teresa R. Funke
(For ages 9-12, according to the book cover. WWII historical fiction. Set in Illinois.)
Summary
Helen is 14 years old, working on a factory assembly line over the summer to contribute to her family’s coffers and to the war effort. The story is elegant, realistic, and deeply entrenched in history. Helen is trying to prove how grown up and responsible she is, but doing the right thing consistently proves to be more complicated than she’d thought it.
During the book, she increasingly tunes in to what is going on in the war, especially as her cousin and her best friend’s older brother go off to join the fight.

Why It Helps Me Remember
Helen’s neighbor is Mrs. Osthoff, a German immigrant who has experienced deep losses and withdrawn from the world. Helen begins to connect with Mrs. Osthoff after accompanying her grandmother to deliver the news that Mrs. Osthoff’s son has died in the war.
Because of this direct brush of family and community with the death of a young soldier, this book aimed at young readers helped me sympathize with the many families in our modern era and in our past who are dealing and have dealt with just this sort of loss.

2. Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King
(Young Adult literature. Fiction. Cybils Award Nominee for Young Adult Fiction (2011), Andre Norton Award Nominee for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy (2011))

Summary
Lucky Linderman isn’t so lucky. In fact, he’s depressed, and he might be going crazy. He is the target of a particularly pernicious bully. His dad is never home and isn’t that present when he is: his restaurant is his life. Lucky’s mom swims, swims, swims and pretends things are okay. When he sleeps, Lucky visits his grandfather in a Prisoner of War camp in Vietnam. When he wakes from these dreams, he finds physical manifestations of them, which he then hides.
This is the summer where something changes. His mom takes him to stay with relatives (who have a pool) for a few weeks. Lucky makes unlikely friends and an unlikely enemy. He stands up for someone. Connects with his mom in a new way. Faces fears. Faces the ants that constantly mock him.
This books is part dream and part reality, but all excellently and intensely written.

Why It Helps Me Remember
Lucky’s grandfather fought in the Vietnam War, and he never came home. While this story is about much, much more, the Vietnam dream sequences and the impact of the loss of Lucky’s grandfather on him and his own father (the child of the man who didn’t come back from Vietnam) bring the cost of the ultimate sacrifice to life.

3. Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness (book 3 in the Chaos Walking Trilogy)
(Young Adult literature. Science Fiction. Teen Buckeye Book Award Nominee (2012), Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Young Adult Fantasy (2010), Carnegie Medal in Literature (2011), Publishers Weekly’s Best Children’s Books of the Year for Fiction (2010))

Summary
War dominates the final book of this trilogy, and many lives are lost.
Since this is book three in a trilogy, please go visit my review of the excellent first book. I don’t want to ruin any of Patrick Ness’s perfect storytelling for you.

Why It Helps Me Remember
While the war in this book happens on a fictional and very unusual planet in the future, Patrick Ness weaves a compelling and realistic story within that frame, and it is a story in which you care about people who are giving their lives in a war. Because of the quality of the writing, you connect deeply with the main characters and care about the people they care about. You see what is happening, how people serve, how they die. It impacts you. I have never been to war, but it is through books like this that I am most able to empathize for those who have lost someone and to see, dimly, what making the ultimate sacrifice might be like.

4. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
(Adult. Fiction. Set in New Hampshire and Canada.)
Summary
Narrator Johnny Wheelwright’s life is shaped largely by the powerful voice of the tiny Owen Meany, his boyhood friend. Owen dies young, as he’d predicted as a boy, but the narrator never lets go of Owen’s memory. This is the story of their growing up together, of Wheelwright’s odd faith in Owen Meany, and of Wheelwright’s bizarre Canadian adulthood.

Why It Helps Me Remember
The narrator is obsessed with the Vietnam War, and it is because of this book that I have a sense of the scope of lives lost by American soldiers in that war. As odd and imperfect a narrator as Wheelwright is, it is through this book that the costs of that war came to life in my mind in a way they never had in text books or political discussions. Irving has his narrator obsessively tracking the increasing body count as the war goes on and the boys get closer to and past draft age, and that combination of true data mixed with a unique, compelling narrative hit a nerve for me and helped me see the lives lost in that war.

The Plot that Will Never Let You Go

Apparently, creating a Pinterest board for all of my 5-star books leads to writing lots of reviews. Here’s another.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Love great writing? Read it.
Love a great plot? Read it.
Love stylized writing? Read it.
Love action? Read it.
Love suspense? Read it.
Love science fiction? Read it.
Hate science fiction, but love dystopian books? Read it.

Basically, just read it.

It’s hard to talk about without ruining it.
.
.
.

Wait, you’re still there? You want to know what HAPPENS? Well, fine. I’ll try to share something, spoiler-free.

The narrator is a teenage boy. He is the youngest of 146 men in Prentisstown, on a colony planet.

His world is loud: every thought of every creature and all the men can be heard. Walking through town can give you a headache.

They are all that is left on the planet, having killed off the native aliens (Spackle) and lost their women (his ma included) to disease in the war.

That’s just the beginning, though. Something happens that unravels his world, and he is sent off on a journey he could never have imagined. At every turn, it appears that some fact is not as it had seemed…

The epic journey at the center of this book rivals many others, but the speed and danger of it – combined with Ness’s pitch-perfect writing – reminds me most of Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.

Ness, however, is much much more YA friendly, and his plot hooks you and drags you along bleeding and gasping behind it through every artful page.

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Three Months Later, I Finally Review THE FAULT IN OUR STARS by John Green

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Upon finishing this book, I couldn’t rest until I’d found its next reader. I passed it on at 11:30pm, about 30 minutes after finishing it.

Every time I see it on my five star list, I think to myself, “Does that deserve 5-stars?” Then, I start remembering it. “Oh. Right.” I think, “It does.”

Here’s my review, at least three months after reading it. I didn’t even Google anything, although I usually do to get the details right…This book is so amazing for me that it just comes flowing back.

The book is about Hazel. She’s a teenager. She’s dying of cancer. She wants to avoid being a “grenade” – she doesn’t want people to hurt because of her when she dies. To minimizing the casualties, she avoids everyone but her parents and the cancer support group she attends.

Beyond her parents, there is one other thing she cares about. It’s a book, by a Dutch author. She feels like he, through his book about death, is the only one who “gets” her and what she’s going through. (This is the book within the book. There is no such book or author, although Green quotes the book a fair amount in his book. I love that.)

Then, she meets a boy. He’s beautiful. He’s in remission.

Against all of her best judgment and running counter to her rules for coping with her impending doom, she forges a connection with him. She shares the book, and he shares her enthusiasm for it. There is love.

Then, there is the necessary external conflict that drives the plot forward. It is wonderful and only partially predictable, and I refuse to give it away.

The reviews I read of this book said that it was John Green at his best, and that his specialty is a highly-intelligent but detached teenage protagonist, but in this book everything is pitch perfect. I’ve only read one other Green protagonist (one of the Will Graysons in Will Grayson, Will Grayson), and while I really liked it I agree that he has taken his strengths to the next level in this intense, emotional, intelligent and highly literary book.

A must read for deep and thoughtful teenagers everywhere, and delicious and poignant for the rest of us. Bravo.

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Epiphany

Today, I had a realization.

I used to ask school to be practically everything in my life. Then, when I graduated, I asked that of my job. Only after I lost my job was I able to learn some of the essential and (for most) easy and obvious lessons about how to be a person, beyond school or work.

It was an amazing job that helped me grow so much as a person and a professional. I am so grateful for the work I was able to do and the people I was able to work with for those nearly four years. Now, I’m grateful that I got a chance to leave and learn to be “me” without a job. I am so much stronger and more well-rounded, as a person and as a professional.

I hope I can keep this realization in mind moving forward into the next phase of my career. It is vital that I take care of myself if I’m going to do the good I hope to do in the world.

Inspiring Quote!

Imagine the progress we could make in all matters of challenges, if when we had a different take on something, we began with, “Here’s my point of view, and here’s why. Help me understand where you’re coming from.”

~Dena Lambert Hellums

The Mysterious Benedict Society

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Plot: Four child prodigies are recruited to help save the world.

Who needs more than that?

I love puzzles, precocious children with immense responsibility, and good, fun writing, so The Mysterious Benedict Society was definitely for me. How about you?

Trenton Lee Stewart says on the jacket that the idea for the book came from a chess riddle he thought up on the way to a restaurant. By the time he got there, he knew he had to write this book. (And I’m so glad he did!)

The characters are smart in different ways. Each one on his or her own would not have the power to save the world, but – together – they just might. I appreciated Stewart’s depiction of different kinds of brilliance.

This is ever so slightly a spoiler, but you’d know who the four heroes are by the end of the second chapter anyway and I want to demonstrate how marvelous and varied they are. I love that (and the fact that Stewart managed to surprise me a time or two in the ending!) about this book.

*Kate is capable of feats of physical prowess and spatial reasoning
*Sticky remembers everything he’s ever read and reads rapidly.
*Constance is incredibly precocious and outrageously stubborn.
*Reynie – our main character – is a puzzle solver, who sees how things fit together.

They are all geniuses, all different, all sad, and they form a deep bond.

If it is right for you, I hope you enjoy this silly, serious story.

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All the Right Stuff to get me thinking about philosophy…

All the Right Stuff by Walter Dean Myers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When the phenomenal Walter Dean Myers’s book All the Right Stuff arrived in my mailbox, I had no idea I was about to be schooled in the philosophical idea of the social contract.

I’m used to Myers’s thoughtful but action-packed stories – this one was a beautifully, humanely written contemplation of the systems that can help us or hurt as as we go through life, and the messy combination of injustice and opportunity we all face to varying degrees.

I don’t dig philosophical writing, generally. I’ve read some – mostly old. I’ve enjoyed more contemporary considerations of specific topics, of the sort offered on the radio program Philosophy Talk or in bell hooks’s writing. This book, however, read like a contemporary take on a Greek philosophic text. Myers has characters who literally debate their varying view points, and the youth in the center who is gradually forming his own opinion.

The two opposing views come from Elijiah, who makes homemade soups for seniors at his “Soup Emporium,” and Sly, who has a shiny car, a bodyguard, and a new business venture of his own, also with the espoused aim of helping the Harlem community they all live in. Both men are highly intelligent and gifted speakers who have gathered a following of sorts.

Then, we have the chorus – four of the seniors from Elijiah’s emporium, and four hard luck cases Sly has befriended. With this format, Myers has brought a Greek-style philosophical dialogue into Harlem and brought it to life with modern examples and counterexamples that are perfectly, empathy-inspiring-ly real.

Meanwhile, Paul DuPree is the teen protagonist at the middle of it all, mentoring a teen mom on her basketball game and dealing with the death of his father and his relationship with his mother.

I was spellbound by it, and by the end I was thinking hard (although maybe not as hard as the impressive Paul DuPree). I was thinking about life, and how what this book had to say aligned with “ah-hah” moments I’ve had via psychology, or what I’ve seen as an organizer when I heard people’s stories and we worked together to make something change.

I was also thinking about who I’d give it to. It’s not for everyone, but I came up with a good list of people who I know are searchers and are open to philosophical ideas applied in their daily life.

Oh, and I also have some good soup and stew ideas now, too. 🙂

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

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The Princess and The Goblin: Retro Review for the Nerdy Book Club!!!

Welcome, any Nerdy Book Club visitors! To any friends visiting, I am proud to be able to link to this post on my favorite blog, The Nerdy Book Club. This is the same post, except for this note. If you want to read this book, you can read it online for free – it is in the public domain. There’s a “Read It” button below the cover on the Goodreads page, if you want to check it out.

Once upon a time, deep in Amish country, a little girl fell in love with the fantastical adventures found in her books, especially the children’s stories by C. S. Lewis and George MacDonald. The little girl grew older, moved three thousand miles across the country, and discovered countless other books. Still, once or twice a year, she would open an old book and sink into the story, pulling it all around her like the warmest, softest down comforter in the world.

Of course, I am who that little girl grew into. When I was invited to write a Retro Review, I jumped up and down a few times and then chose to write a Retro Review about one of my beloved “time machines.” Miraculously, instantaneously, this time machine can transport me back to my converted attic bedroom in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania or to a deliciously elicit 12am-on-a-school-night reading fest in our tiny house in Oregon City.

Here is a photo of the time machine in question:

I am a Nerdy Book Club nerd; I read the blog religiously each morning. So, I knew I couldn’t do right by my task if I re-read my “time machine” copy of the book, because my memories lie interleaved in its pages, coloring my perceptions. So, I picked up a library copy for a fresh perspective. Here it is with my darling old one:

And – I’ll be honest – it took me a few pages to get over the different edition. You know when you walk into your old high school and it’s been renovated but still has the same layout, and the posters are different yet familiar? The first two chapters were like that: uncanny. Unsettling.

Here’s the Princess and her King-Papa. The colored print is from the newer edition I picked up at the library; the black and white die cuts are much older.

However, that feeling quickly faded. It doesn’t matter what window-dressing illustrations come with it, or whether or not the edition includes awkward introductory asides. The Princess and the Goblin is wonderful. It stands the test of time.

Yes, the language and the pacing are not contemporary – after all, it was published in 1872. Young readers still love monsters, princesses, and adventures. (Don’t we all? I know I do.) Especially when they are presented in a fresh, inventive, and honest way.

Sometimes, older texts feel staid because of the way they reflect the mores of their time. For instance, implicit sexism – negative or weak roles for women – can make a story less appealing to me. I did not have that problem with George MacDonald, because he did not write about weak, silly women. From my experience, he writes strong women better and more consistently than C.S. Lewis, who did pretty well, himself.

One of his strong female characters is the eponymous eight year old princess, Irene. She is and is written to be young, but she is courageous and good-hearted, and does as much rescuing as she gets rescued. She does receive help from a magical and omnipotent source, but if that discounts heroic efforts, you’ll find literature is a little scarce on “real” heroes. 🙂 In any case, she isn’t afraid to injure and dirty her hands digging at rocks for hours for the cause, which is impressive for any 8-year old, let alone a pampered princess!

Strong female number two is Princess Irene’s great-great grandmother, the ancient and striking woman who guides the heroes from her tower in a way that Gandalf will imitate in future literature, providing tools and opportunities throughout the story.

The third strong female is the mother of Curdie, the little miner boy who is the secondary protagonist to Princess Irene (SPOILER: Curdie is who the Princess rescues! He does get to rescue her one time, too, but you’ll have to read it and see who you think has the more impressive rescue…)

I love Curdie’s parents. They remind me of Linda Urban’s incredibly subtle, supportive and inspirational role models, the parents in A Crooked Kind of Perfect and the uncle in Hound Dog True. Curdie’s parents are more lightly drawn and less poetic, of course, but they have a similar energy. In her way, Curdie’s mother is just as impressive as the royal Irenes, and she plays a quiet yet crucial role in the story.

Not to lose sight of the action in the midst of my historical gender considerations, this book, of course, features exciting, goblin-related adventures. In fact, Curdie uncovers and tries to stop not one but TWO fiendish plots that the goblins have hatched!

When the book opens, the Princess has been kept in the dark about the very existence of goblins, let alone their dangerous grudge against the royal family… Meanwhile, Curdie is the most adept, among the miners, at inventing songs to rout out the foul creatures. Thus, it is obvious they must cross paths with each other (and with the goblins!) They do, and – as the book continues and schemes are revealed and enacted – the stakes are raised. Deaths are defied. Curdie’s faith in Princess Irene’s honesty and her own patience with those who do not believe her are solely tested.

In addition to the plot, MacDonald’s story is suffused with his belief in the possibilities of people. His message of seeking to be your best self is one that continues to ring true today, and in his gender-balanced and plot-driven novel, there is nothing to tarnish it. Humans today still need to work hard, to be forgiving, and to trust each other.

In summation, The Princess and the Goblin is a wonderful story I would recommend as a read aloud with an older or bolder young child or for curious readers of any age. Personally, I’d recommend a copy with the original black and white die cut illustrations, but you take your pick! Here are two final examples, featuring Curdie, the Princess, and an irritated Lootie: