The Pale Blue Eye

Louis Bayard, 2006, 448 p.

“All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.”
~ Edgar Allan Poe

I adore Louis Bayard because he provides an antidote to my ADD.  Normally, no more than an hour or two of my day is spent reading because I tend to become wriggly and lose focus after about thirty minutes.  When this happens, I have to do something useless for awhile before I can get back to my book.  The only time I can really sit still and read is right before bed, but my bedtime reading sometimes lasts for just a few minutes due to the head nodding and drooling all over the pages problem I often develop later at night.

There is something about Bayard’s writing that prevents the aforementioned problems from happening to me.  I think I stated in an earlier post that there are times, with certain authors, that I can “get into the zone” and be transported to another plane of reading experience.  Something clicks in my brain, and when this occurs, I can read their book(s) nonstop for hours.  This phenomenon has happened to me both times that I’ve read Louis Bayard’s novels, and it’s strange because his genre is totally outside my sphere of interest.  Mr. Bayard currently writes period mysteries starring literary/historical figures.  I read Mr. Timothy several years ago and was so enthralled with it that I stayed up all night to finish it.  Now, the same can be said for The Pale Blue Eye. I stayed up until around 1 a.m. before closing it for the last time, and I was very sad to say goodbye.

The Pale Blue Eye has two main characters; a detective named Gus Landor and Edgar Allan Poe, and the novel is set during the mid 1800’s when Poe was a cadet at West Point.  Landor uses Poe to help him solve a couple of grisly cadet murders.  Landor uses Poe for a bit more than that as well, as do some of the other characters.  In fact, Poe was very ill-used throughout the novel, but Poe was also very smart, and this was his saving grace.

The more I think about it, the more amazed I become at Bayard’s skill with characterization in his novels.  In Mr. Timothy, Tiny Tim was fully-fleshed out, and he was exactly the type of man he should have been as an adult.  The same can be said for Poe in The Pale Blue Eye. He was a naiive, chivalrous, irresponsible, prophetic, irritating, and hopelessly romantic man.  Bayard imagined him exactly the way I imagined him when I was going through my “Poe phase,” and doesn’t every angsty teenager go through a “Poe phase?”  In addition to excellent characters, the settings are impeccable and the language perfectly fits the time frame of the novel.  The Pale Blue Eye is so finely constructed that I am hard-pressed to find anything wrong with it.  I even noticed that Bayard’s action sequences have improved with this novel.  Without a doubt, The Pale Blue Eye will be in my top five reads for 2008.

Reading The Pale Blue Eye gave me the incentive to conduct some minor research on Poe.  He is considered to be the “father” of detective fiction, and was also one of the first authors to dive into the realm of science fiction.  He remains one of the most popular authors EVER, with his works translated into dozens of different languages, even Swahili!

Poe paraphernalia is abundant, and since I like to post pictures on this blog, I decided to find some pictures of Poe dolls to conclude with.  Here they are:

A Message For Moms

Happy Mother’s Day!  Remember that our main purpose as wimminfolk is to procreate and procreate and procreate, no matter how miserable all this chile’bearin’ may make us.  Us wimmens must keep poppin’ out dem chillen’ until our innards is hangin’ down by our feet, or our husban’s take us behind the shed an’ shoot us because we’s too ol’ to bear ‘em (both the husban’s and the chillen’) anymore.

I was having some stomach issues this morning, and while I was lying on the couch recovering from the latest bathroom run, the “Today Show” had a segment on the Duggar family.  They are expecting their 18th child.  After watching their touching display of family unity for a few minutes, I had run back to the bathroom again, and this time, it wasn’t just my stomach problem that made me vomit.  Now I’m at work (and as you can see, I’m working very hard).  Before I get started on my mysterious librarian alchemy, I’d like to give all you mommies this lovely Mother’s Day gift:

This is the Duggar family.  Aren’t they wholesome?  I know this has nothing to do with books, but some wimmen read when they ain’t poppin’ out chillen’.  Maybe a few of those readin’ an’ chile’bearin’ wimmen will find this and be amused.  If enough readin’ an’ chile’bearin’ wimmen find this site and let me know they enjoy it, I can change the moniker to “Bloody Hell, It’s a Baby Barrage!”  This would make me very happy indeed.   

Manual Labor - Booking Through Thursday

• Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?

Hooray, an easy one!  I use zero, zip, zilch which is why my grammar is often so atrocious.  But I DON’T CARE, because it’s mine.  I own it and I’m proud of it.  I have no grammar books in my library, although I did purchase a Harbrace hybrid in college to refer to when needed.  It disappeared a long time ago.

As an undergrad Lit major, my alma mater required that we take “advanced grammar.”  It was the most difficult course I’ve ever had in college — EVER!  It was a hundred times worse than any math/science class I’ve ever taken.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if the instructor hadn’t been such a mean old biddy.  She was about a thousand years old and had a nasty temper.  She had a conniption fit one day over some pop quiz that we’d all failed and got so worked up that she started to choke and turned bright red and had to leave the room.  I think we were all secretly hoping that she’d die. 

We got a study group together because a bunch of us were all freaked out about the course.  Luckily for us, one of the members of our study group was a total genius, and she showed us how to correctly diagram sentences, and how to use her mnemonics to remember all the rules (thanks, Suzanne)!  It was our saving grace.  Doesn’t it seem funny that none of us, except Suzanne, knew how to diagram sentences?  I was never taught diagramming in school.  Were you?

I have one more admission to make before I go.  I cheated on the final.  Suze had helped me make it through the mid-term, but I had a “D” in the course, and I knew that a comprehensive final would be too much for me to handle.  I feigned illness and took the final a few days after everyone else.  I made a bunch of crib notes and took the exam seated at a desk around the corner from my grammar class.  Nobody was around, so I ended up getting a “B” on the final and a “C” in the course.

I’m not proud of this, but I kind of feel like I did the right thing.  If I had failed the course (and at my school, “D” was failing), I would’ve had to take it over again.  The same instructor would be screwing with my head because she was the only “advanced grammar” teacher on campus.  Hell, I’d probably still be there today, listening to the old biddy squawk and trying to figure out why I can’t use certain past participles in declarative sentences.

It was the only time I ever cheated in college, unless you count the times that I lied to my “man of the moment” in order to sneak around and go out with someone else.  That doesn’t count, does it? 

My Little Chickadees

This post has absolutely nothing to do with books in any way, but I don’t care.  These little critters are just too cute to ignore, and I’ve been seeing tons of them while going on my afternoon walkies.  I did some reading on chickadees this morning and found out that they’re really good for the environment too!  They can help increase the growth of evergreen forests by as much as one-third.  Here’s a synopsis of a  CU Boulder study which was undertaken a year or two ago:

The study showed that chicadees and nuthatches removed various species of beetles, caterpillars, ants and aphids from tree branches, increasing the vigor of the trees, said study author Kailen Mooney.  Mooney, who conducted the study as part of his doctoral research in CU-Boulder’s ecology and evolutionary biology department, said it is the first study to demonstrate that birds can affect the growth of conifers.

“In a nutshell, the study shows that the presence of these birds in pine forests increased the growth of the trees by helping to rid them of damaging insects,” said Mooney.  “From the standpoint of the trees, it appears that the old adage, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ holds true.”***

This is pretty cool, huh?  So, without further ado, I bring you my little chickadees.  I love these little guys!

***Kailen Mooney
mooney@tritrophic.org
University of Colorado at Boulder
1-Aug-2007

Mother’s Day and Scary Mary

Mother’s Day is coming up.  I’ve never liked Mother’s Day (or any Hallmark holiday), and when I was a young teen I told my Mom that I thought it was just another bogus excuse for greedy retailers to suck money from brainwashed consumers and I didn’t want to be part of that hypocrisy anymore.  Well, Mom wasn’t buying this.  Declaring that “every day should be Mother’s Day,” she told me to go hit my Dad up for some cash so that I could buy her something nice for once.  That was the only time I ever brought up my true feelings about Mother’s Day to my Mom, and every year at around this time, I’d swallow my resentment and go shopping for a good Mother’s Day gift for her.  Now that she’s gone, I wish I could buy her a gift  — the cheesiest, most sloppily sentimental, “I Love You Mom” gushing mug or card or teddy bear that I could find.  I’d wrap it in a big red bow and present it to her with a huge grin and hug her and we’d sit there with tears in our eyes, enjoying the maudlin moment we were sharing.  I wouldn’t feel one iota of resentment, not for a single second. 

What a selfish little shit I was!   

I used to think about who I’d choose as a substitute for my Mom.  It would have to be someone really special — kind and generous and super fun to goof around with.  After a great deal of deliberation, I finally made my choice:  Julie Andrews.  She would be the ideal mother: pretty and vivacious and a terrific singer.  She would be the type of mother who would join the PTA and participate in every bake sale and comfort me when I was down.

The other day, while trolling through Amazon’s website, I noticed that Julie has published a new memoir: It talks about her childhood and teen years leading up to her starring role in “Mary Poppins.”  I’ll probably never read it, but seeing the book prompted me to explore some Julie Andrews clips on You Tube.  Here’s a remix of the “Mary Poppins” trailer which is quite inventive. 

 

Perhaps she wouldn’t be such a good mom after all!  I should’ve chosen Carol Brady instead.  No, she was even scarier!

Now Is the Hour

Tom Spanbauer, 2006, 459 p.

“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth truer.” 
~Tom Spanbauer 

I’ve been dreading writing this post on Now Is the Hour even though the novel was very good.  I liked the characters, the settings, the plot; basically everything about it, but I’m still quite reticent about discussing it.  I hate to think this, but maybe it’s because Now is the Hour is the first real homosexual novel I’ve ever read.  I’ve read other books that have mentioned homosexuality or have had secondary gay characters in supporting roles, but I’ve never read a book that is largely about what it is to be gay.  My neglect of gay fiction makes me wonder if I should join the ranks of those bible-thumping, Dubya worshipping, Ann Coulter loving, intelligent design touting, Jesus fish decal on minivan displaying, rabidly jingoistic, Conservative Christian dogmatists who feel that the wimminfolk ought to be kept at home to cook-n-clean and who repeatedly brainwash our future Jesus freaks and believe that those nasty homosekshuls should just die, die, die.  I’m not anything like them!  I am tolerant, dammit, except I can’t go within fifty feet of a brussels sprout.

Really, I think the main reason for my neglect of gay fiction is because it has just recently become mainstreamed.  It’s kind of like letting the mentally challenged kids finally attend public schools in the late 1970’s.  One day you look up from your desk and there’s a drooling idiot sitting in the seat next to you asking if he can borrow a “penthil and thom paper.”  (This is obviously not a good PC day for me).  J  Gay books have finally been released from the retard facilities, so to speak.

All right, now that I’ve cleared my conscience a little bit (and offended at least one or two people, hey, my work here is done!), it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty of the novel.  Now Is the Hour is a coming-of-age tale about a young man growing up in Pocatello, Idaho during the ‘60’s.  Rigby John Klusener is a sensitive and likeable kid who was unfortunate enough to be born and raised by strict Catholic parents in an unforgiving and unbending farming household.  He doesn’t fit in, but then neither does his sister.  Nobody would fit in with parents like theirs.  The Mother’s religious fanaticism and the Father’s passive-aggressive and sometimes overt physical and emotional abuse would be enough to make anyone a little wonky.

Rigby John is beaten and bullied in school by a dreadful kid named Joey Scardino.  I think Joey was a closet homosexual, which provided him with some extra strong “gaydar,” and sometimes just the sight of Rigby John would be enough to infuriate him.  Poor Rigby never stood a chance against Scardino until the end of the novel, and I’m not giving that part away!  So, Rigby has a terrible time at school and at home until he hits puberty, when one part of his life starts to make everything a bit more bearable.  Rigby John becomes romantically involved with his penis.

A few memorable chapters in the first half of the novel are devoted to Rigby’s discovery of himself.  I’m going to call this part of Rigby’s life “joyously priapic.”  He becomes the king of mastubation and pleasures himself all over the place.  This journey of self-discovery makes him feel more alive than he ever has before.  Rigby explains it quite well in these sentences:

“When I found my cock, my body suddenly landed in the world.  The real world with things in the world.  Suddenly our farm, which so far had been more of an idea than a place, started to be different….  It was like I’d been sleeping for a long time, then suddenly woke up. Scintillatingly gorgeous.”  (p. 85).

I didn’t find any of this to be offensive at all.  Rigby’s thoughts and actions seemed to be simple and honest and real.  Several of my male friends have told me what it felt like to go through puberty and experience this all-consuming sexual awakening.  My cousin once remarked that he had a nearly constant erection for several years in middle school, and was concurrently embarassed and exhilarated by this.  Even my Dad has revealed that there is nothing to compare with the feeling of being a young man in his sexual prime.

Rigby’s first homosexual encounter and first great love affair was with an alcoholic and half-crazy Native American man named George Serano.  I really liked George, even though he was a horrible person in many respects.  He was one of the most complex and conflicted characters I’ve encountered in a long time, and I felt a great deal of compassion for him.

Now is the Hour is a long and meaty J novel, and like a good summer sausage J, it retains its flavor until the very end.  I always know that I’ve really enjoyed a book if I want the story to continue after the last page has been read.  I desperately wanted Now Is the Hour to continue.  I’d love to know what happens to Rigby John and George in the future.  If Mr. Spanbauer were to write a sequel to this novel, I’d buy it in a Pocatello minute!

Weekly Geeks #1 - Discover New Blogs

Dewey over at The Hidden Side of a Leaf has come up with a fantasic idea for us (her peeps) to sign up for weekly themed postings.  You can check out her description of this process here.

This week’s assignment is to explore 5 new book blogs from the long list at Dewey’s site and write a brief description of them.  This will allow our readers to explore these new blogs and also let the new blogs take a look at us.  Way cool, Dew!  Due to time constraints, I’ve chosen to take a look at just a couple of book blogs and then write my impressions of them.  Here goes:

1. Tasses at Random Wonder  - This is one of the most original blogs I’ve ever seen, and I could spend hours reading her posts.  If you click on “adult reads” in the sidebar, it takes you to this site, which is fantastic looking and has some great reviews.  If you click on “children and teens” in the sidebar, you go to this adorable site which has fun kid book info.  I don’t know how she maintains all three of these blogs so well.  I’m going to have to spend a lot more time checking them out!  (And she’s being added to my blogroll right now).
2. Renay at The Deus Ex Machina Complex - I love the title of this blog!  And Renay is very snarky and amusing.  Here are a few sentences from her review of The Book of Lost Things:  “The boys need to kiss in the story. And also they should be alive. I mean, I’m just saying. NO HARD FEELINGS.”  Hilarious!  I kind of agree with her on that one.  Even though Live Journal is my least favorite blog format (sorry Renay), I’ll forgive her because it’s just so much fun to hang with her. 

Maybe there will be time to look at more later on.

Six Random Things About Myself

Earlier this week, I got tagged by Kirsti, the creator of one of my favorite book blogs, Other Stories, to participate in the six random things about myself meme.  Since I tend to open up waaay too much when asked about myself, I’m going to be sort of careful about what I divulge here.  I hope this isn’t too boring!  Here goes:

1. I was an accomplished reader and writer when I started school, so I was skipped from the first to the third grade.  Big mistake, because my peers really bullied me, and I spent the rest of my childhood and adolescence copping an attitude (as a defense) and getting into hot water with authority figures.
2. I look like a much taller version of Jodie Foster — not as much now as when I was a kid, but people still comment on it.  Fortunately, I was never stalked by John Hinckley, although I was pursued by a really annoying little dude named Ralph B_____ in college.  Ralph became such a problem that a couple of my guy friends “had a little talk” with him.  I’ve always felt bad about this. 
3. I grew six inches during the summer between 7th and 8th grade.  It was very painful, and now I’m pretty sure I’m getting arthritis in my knees because of it.  Walking long distances helps curb the knee pain.
4. I memorized most of William Blake’s poetry in middle school and would recite it silently to myself during stressful times.  What a total geekazoid I was!
5. I tend to anthropomorphise inanimate objects, especially cars.  My cars are named “Bullet” and “Buzz” and I often thank them for the ride.  I know, this sounds so trailer trashy!  Bullet, for God’s sake!
6. I have a thing for redheaded men.  This started in elementary school when I developed a crush on a ginger-haired boy because he blinked really slowly.  I found that to be quite impressive, so later on in life, I married a redheaded man.  He turned out to be a total asshat and we divorced, but even this has not prevented me from perpetuating my dream of finding the ideal redhead.  Isn’t it ridiculous?

Okay, it’s time to tag six other bloggers.  

1. Devourer at Devourer of Books 
2. Stephen Lang at Booked Out
3. Tracee at Amateur de Livre
4. Misa at This Redhead Reads
5. Kathleen at Kathleeen’s Book Reviews
6. Aaron at That’s the Book!

Here are the rules:

• Link to the person that tagged you (hello, it’s me)
• Post the rules somewhere in your meme
• Write the six random things
• Tag six people in your post
• Let the tagees know they’ve been chosen by leaving a comment on their blog
• Let the tagger (hello, it’s me) know your entry is posted

That’s all folks!

The Future of the Book - Part 2

Wow, it seems like I’ve really opened up a can of worms here!  I went over to visit Trish this morning and found some rather strong opinions about my last post regarding the Kindle.  Here is my response to all of my detractors:

First of all, there cannot possibly be a bigger book lover than I am.  I love the feel, the smell, the idea of books, and I believe that all forms of written language and thought represent the highest level of grace that humankind can ever reach.  I think I was born believing this.

So, I thought I would be the last bastion to hold on to the idea of paper books, but then I got the Kindle.  I knew from the moment I turned it on and began reading that it was something special.  It’s not pretty and it’s all plastic, but believe me when I say that this thing is WAY COOL, and this is just the beginning.

It’s a primitive form of what an electronic book device will be in the future, and if Steve Jobs has thrown his hat into the ring, I forsee that the electronic book IS the future, whether we like it or not.

Many of the reponses, both here and on Trish’s site were totally emotional, and while I understand this, they are purely based on comfort, not practicality.  We all have memories of books from when we were teeny-tiny, and it’s hard to let go of the “security-blanket” that books have always provided for us.  Pretty soon, though, we all have to put away our binkies and our baby bottles and grow up and learn to accept (if not embrace) change.

Yes, I do enjoy bookstores and books I can tote around and flip through and all that good stuff, but e-books are superior for the following reasons:

1. Accessibility — You can get practically anything on your e-book reader.  If you grow tired of reading War and Peace, you can get on the internet and start reading “The New York Times” or the “Daily Kos” or your own blog.  You can download free books, and you can shop at a virtual bookstore.

2. Convenience — It’s kind of like carrying a library without the heavy mess to lug around.

3. Conservation — These little handhelds are better than paper simply because we don’t have to kill trees to make them, and electronics recycling is now part of the mainstream, so I don’t buy the whole pollution aspect.  We pollute more by cutting down and processing trees to make paper to use for books.

I’m surprised that so many readers have already made up their minds never to touch one because, oh heaven help us, we aren’t holding an honest-to-god book.  A book is not a format — it’s not a bunch of pages and a cover.  A book is what it conveys, it’s what’s on the inside, it’s what the author is trying to tell you.  It’s the imagination and the ideas and the prose and the soaring feeling it gives you when you’ve read something exquisite.  It’s what makes you cry with heartbreak or giggle with amusement.

A book is not just the package.  A book is what is inside the package.

The Future of the Book

Man, I hate to say this, I really do, but I think the book industry as we know it is finished.  It will die a painful death and the publication of actual bound books with pages and pretty covers will be reserved for only the most highly regarded and/or bestselling authors.  These books will probably be quite expensive, both to produce and to buy.

This is terrible to consider, especially for people like me who purchase and covet hardcover books.  The unfortunate thing is that people like me are becoming more and more of a minority.  We bookish types are fading into the sunset, so to speak.  The publishing industry is still churning out books, but at higher costs to consumers due to diminishing returns.  Mom and Pop bookstores are gone because they couldn’t keep their costs down and compete with the huge Barnes & Noble and Borders conglomerates.

Even book reviewers are becoming extinct (and it’s not the fault of book bloggers, dammit)!  This was bound to happen — less people reading equals less of a demand for professional book reviews.  Newspapers are in enough trouble as it is; readership is down in all areas and many of them are fighting just to stay afloat.  Some of them have already gone bankrupt.

Yep, the book times they are a-changin’and they are a-changin’ faster than you think.  The newest reason that they’re changing at a rapidly accelerating rate can be summed up in one word: Kindle.

It is finally happening.  The book is being replaced by a handheld reading device.  You may scoff at this, but I swear it’s true.  I received my Kindle a couple of weeks ago and I haven’t looked back since.  This little thing is astonishingly convenient and easy to use.  You can purchase books for 1/3 of the price you pay at the bookstore.  You can zip through a book much faster using a Kindle because there are no pages to turn and no book rearranging awkwardness of any kind.  The screen is non-glare and you can enlarge the font to make it more readable.  You can bookmark any page and add pages that interest you to a clipboard for later perusal.  You can subscribe to magazines, newspapers, blog feeds.  (Hmmm, why was mine left out?  I’m going to have to discuss this with Jeff Bezos)  ( :

Kindle has an “Experimental” section which allows you to search the web.  I tried looking up my blog and found it immediately. The pictures display in black and white, and the comments section works.  If complete word processing capabilities were added to the Kindle, the sky would be the limit.  Kindle could take over the world!  Once the glitches are worked out, it could outsell all other handheld computer devices and really give Bill Gates and Steve Jobs a run for their money.  Apple is working on a new, improved Kindle clone right now.  It’s called the “iBook.”  I’m not sure what Microsoft is doing.

This is scary stuff because the implications are quite far reaching.  First of all, if this takes off like I think it will, it will basically destroy the current publishing industry (but it will save a lot of trees)!  Most publishers will have to learn to accommodate the new market by publishing almost exclusively in electronic format.  They will have to lower their prices as well.

Bookstores had better get on the bandwagon or they may end up closing forever.  Why drive to Barnes & Noble or purchase a novel on the B&N website when you can get into the Amazon bookstore via your Kindle, click a couple of buttons, download a brand new book and start reading it instantly?  And for a fraction of the price?  Right now, Amazon pretty much has the monopoly on this form of electronic bookselling.  I’ve purchased and downloaded three books so far, and there are a couple more I’m just itching to buy.  For someone like me, being able to achieve this kind of instant book gratification is almost too much to bear!  I’m going to have to learn how to resist temptation and continute interlibrary loaning books or I’ll soon become a pauper.

One regret I have is that if I’m using the Kindle, I’ll no longer be able to show off the impressive books that I’m reading.  (Thanks, Care, for reminding me of this).  Nobody will be able to tell that I’m really smart and cool because I’m reading The Decameron on my Kindle (not that I would ever be reading The Decameron on anything, but that’s beside the point).  For all they know, I could be using my Kindle to drool over a website catering to adult diaper babies or to read the latest Erica Jong ~shudder~ novel.  Maybe I’ll have to buy a copy of The Decameron and just tote it around with me for affect.  I can occassionally pretend to read it with furrowed brow and heavy sighs so that everyone can see how incredibly cerebral I am.

My Kindle is not really “my kindle.”  It was purchased for me to use at work.  I’m using it at work, and I’m also using it at home.  I’m using it everywhere.  I’ve even purchased this extra small laptop sleeve to keep it in so that my sweet widdle Kindle windle can stay safe and warm:

I bought the sleeve with my own funds, and look, it’s chartreuse!  This Kindle must mean a lot to me because I felt compelled to choose an accessory for it, and it had to be in my signature color.  I don’t even do anything close to this for my pets.  Good Lord!