School Book: The Tain

After reading A Gate at the Stairs I was in need of something completely different. So I decided to read The Tain from my other class, Translating the Middle Ages.

The Tain is an old Irish epic. In some ways it reminded me of Beowulf. There was lots of fighting, with a superman who was just better than everyone else. I really enjoyed reading it (except for a few parts where it goes on and on listing people).

One day Medb, the Queen of Connacht, starts comparing her wealth to that of her husband's. Their fortunes are perfectly matched except that her husband, Ailill, has one of the finest bulls in the land. And so she starts a war with Ulster for their bull, the only one in all the land which can match her husband's.

But the men of Ulster are all afflicted by a curse. And so it falls to Cu Chulainn, an extraordinary young man, to fend off the advancing army until his countrymen recover. Cu Chulainn uses everything from single combat to guerilla warfare to fend off the Irish army.

The Tain is really entertaining to read. I really enjoyed it, especially because it was so different from A Gate at the Stairs. I think I prefer Beowulf overall, but it was still really good.

School Book: A Gate at the Stairs

While I was reading A Widow's Walk, Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs came in from Chapters. It sounded interesting, so I decided to read it as soon as I finished A Widow's Walk.

I sort of regret that decision, but on the plus side at least I have finished the book. I had a really hard time getting into it at first because the narrator, the main character Tassie, rambles all over the place and it never seemed to get to a point. But eventually, a few chapters in, A Gate at the Stairs seemed to pick up. Accompanying her employers, Sarah and Edward, Tassie goes to another city and helps them adopt a biracial little girl, Mary-Emma (or Emmie as Sarah calls her). Tassie is employed as a babysitter for the little girl. And between Tassie, Sarah, and Emmie, the book gets to be rather entertaining between pages 100 and 200 or so, during which time Tassie meets a boy and falls in love, all the while entertaining both Emmie and the other children from Sarah's Wednesday multi-racial support group meetings.

But then the book seems to just keep on rambling with no real point (spoilers in this paragraph!). Sarah tells Tassie a bizarre and terrible story about her past, after which Emmie is recalled by the adoption agency (Sarah and Edward failed to disclose this story to the adoption agency, which has resulted in Emmie being taken away). The book felt like it should have ended here, but instead it rambled on for another 60 pages. Yes, there was another significant event that happened in these sixty pages, but the book just seemed to have no real steam left. Those last sixty pages were a torment to read.

This book is, like A Widow's Walk, for my Literature after 9/11 class. Bizarrely, for the first while I couldn't figure out how it really connected to 9/11. Other than a few references to the events and Tassie being afraid of her first plane ride (which she took with Sarah), there was no explicit connection to 9/11. But once Emmie entered the picture, so did racism. While racism isn't a new phenomenon, it's changed its face after 9/11. Tassie's boyfriend, who claims to be Brazilian, tells her that he kept getting stopped while he was living in New York because of his skin colour. Other than that, Emmie and Tassie are subject to more quiet and insidious forms of racism, like the looks Tassie gets when people assume she is the mother of a biracial child.

Other than that, the end of the book deals more directly with the wars that resulted after 9/11. Tassie's brother decides to join the army and is sent to war directly after finishing basic training. This happens pretty much within the last sixty pages, with the reader never quite sure of where he has gone (he sends a postcard home in which he says he's "shipping out tomorrow," (285), but it doesn't say where). While this ends up an important part of the end of the book, it seems like a footnote. I think that is because we are seeing the world the way Tassie sees it, but it seemed to take away from some of the later events (some of which I have to say were creepy. I won't go into detail).

Really, I thought that most of the book was rambly and I just had a really hard time with it. I never really connected with Tassie, and so I just never really cared about the book.

School Book: A Widow's Walk

It's almost that time of year again and I wanted to read a bit ahead before classes start in a few weeks. I'm taking two classes this semester: America After 9/11 and Translating the Middle Ages. Because I am already a book ahead in the Middle Ages class (I've already read the translation of Beowulf we're using), I decided to start with a book from the 9/11 class. I chose A Widow's Walk by Marian Fontana because it was written by a writer, so I was sure it would be good.

Well, the book was really good. I just wasn't prepared for how depressing it would be (I know, something called A Widow's Walk kind of screams depressing). A Widow's Walk is Marian's memoir of her life in the year after 9/11. Her husband, Dave, was a firefighter who died trying to rescue people from the Towers. The morning of 9/11, Marian and Dave were preparing to celebrate their 8th wedding anniversary. They had just talked to one another, preparing to meet up at a coffee shop. But while Marian was dropping their son, Aidan off at school, Dave was called to the Towers and to his death.

A Widow's Walk tells the story of what happened in that first year after 9/11. It tells of the terrible grief experienced by Marian, her family, and the wives of the other firefighters from Squad 1 who lost their lives that day. It tells of 5 year old Aidan, refusing to believe that his father is never coming back. It is a story of terrible loss, but also the beauty of the human spirit as friends, family, the country and the world band together to help the families of that day.

Part way through, Marian also starts the 9/11 Widows and Victims' Families Association. While the wives of the firefighters are taken care of due to the dangerous nature of their job, other families do not have the same supports present. Marian bands together with other charities started in the wake of 9/11 to help those in need. Marian also fights for the firefighters themselves, first to keep Squad 1 open when the city wants to close it down in the first few weeks after 9/11, and later lobbying for higher wages for the firefighters.

My only complaint is that there are a million different characters and it's really hard to keep everyone straight. Other than that, A Widow's Walk is a beautiful book, with some excellent descriptions and phrases. It is also incredibly sad, documenting one woman's terrible grief. It was an excellent read which really brought the whole tragedy of 9/11 back to me nine years after the fact.

Nonfiction Book: Writing Movies

Writing Movies: the Practical Guide to Creating Stellar Screenplays is the first nonfiction book that I've ever reviewed here. But considering I've been reading it all summer since starting my screenwriting class, I thought it was fitting that I write about it here. (And now that I've started writing about nonfiction books, I'll keep doing so, although this blog will remain primarily devoted to fiction).

Writing Movies is an excellent guide for novice screenwriters (which includes myself - this class was my first introduction to screenwriting). It covers the basics of everything, from plot and characters to theme and even what the Movie Business is like. And every chapter is by a different person, so this book gives you the advice of ten screenwriters who have sold screenplays. It's a great help guiding you through the process, and it will make an excellent reference book for any help you might need with specific aspects of your script.

Chill

I like this picture of Chill better than the actual cover, so it's going here too.

Almost a year to the day later, I finally read the second part to Elizabeth Bear's Jacob's Ladder trilogy (I actually finished Chill on July 9th at camp). And unfortunately, I wasn't really impressed with it. With Dust, I didn't want to put the book down. With Chill, I generally couldn't be bothered to pick it up.

Chill picks up pretty much where Dust left off. Perceval is now captain of the ship, which she has managed to save from the dying nova star. The Jacob's Ladder is now accelerating, but it has been damaged in the process and is now in dire need of repair. So enters Caitlin, the Chief Engineer, who must find a way to repair the damage with the limited resources available onboard.

At the same time, Arianrhod, a woman who should have died, has escaped. And so Tristen, Perceval's First Mate and head of the house of Conn, and Benedick, Perceval's father and Tristen's younger brother, are trying to track her down. With a colourful cast of characters, many of whom appeared in Dust (like the necromancer Mallory and the basilisk/torch Gavin), the two brothers journey across the ship in pursuit. Engaged in a pincer movement in an attempt to cut her off, the two brothers encounter vastly different things, from carnivourous plant people to ancient enemies of Tristen's.

You may have noticed that Perceval and Rien, the two stars of Dust, do not really feature in Chill. While it's true that Perceval is now captain, she really doesn't have much to do with the plot of Chill at all, grieving for the loss of Rien. And that was one of the problems of Chill, that we have lost a confident character who was a lot of fun to follow.

The other problem is that the narrative is so fragmented. In Dust, the story was mainly told from one or two perspectives (Rien's and Perceval's). But in Chill, we are all over the place, following three main characters who are facing vastly different things. While I liked all of them, I just felt that everytime I started to get into what one was doing, the narrative would switch to one of the other characters.

Another problem might have been that I read Dust over a year ago, and forgot a lot of what happened in the book (and who some of the characters were). For that reason, when Grail comes out, I'm going to reread both Dust and Chill before reading it. That will also give Chill a second chance.

Spellbent

I found Lucy A. Snyder's Spellbent in Chapters back before my Toronto trip. I took it with me and started it after I finished The Hob's Bargain. Unfortunately, I couldn't really get into it. I got 40 pages in, then stopped. A few weeks went by while I put off going back to it; I continued moving onto something else. Finally, a few days back, I decided to finish off Spellbent in the hopes it got better.

Spellbent is the story of the mage Jessie Shimmer and her ferret familiar Palimpsest on their quest to rescue her lover Cooper Marron from Hell. I have to say, I absolutely love the premise of the book; reading the back randomly in Chapters made me want to buy it and read it immediately.

Unfortunately, I've never really liked Jessie. I don't know what it is about her, but I just couldn't really connect with her. I absolutely loved her familiar, Pal. The fact that a giant spider-like creature is stuck in the body of a ferret was really awesome (and the idea that something would have to serve as a familiar for hundreds of years as punishment for some unknown crime is horrifying). I also liked some of the other characters, like the Warlock. But I never really liked the main character.

I also found the story a bit boring. While terrible things seemed to happen pretty quickly, it just never really held my attention. I'm not sure why this happened, but that was the way it was; I'm thinking it probably came down to Lucy Snyder's writing style.

So I was kind of disappointed with Spellbent. While I liked the overarching story, I wasn't really impressed with the specifics. I think I'm going to give her future books in this series a pass.

List Update

As I mentioned in my review of The Hob's Bargain, I just got back from a trip to Toronto. Of course, while there I went book shopping. While most of the books I bought were graphic novels, I did buy a few novels and whatnot (while it is not a List Book, I managed to find a copy of Story by Robert McKee which I am very happy about!) Most of the graphic novels are Batman stories (many of which were recommended to me by someone I met in the Labyrinth, the store where I bought most of the graphic novels I bought), but I got a few random other ones as well (one of which was Marvel Fairy Tales, a graphic novel I have been looking for for quite some time!) The only other book which will not be added to the List is Batman: Vampire. I decided I wanted a copy of it for myself, so I picked it up at the Labyrinth.

Unfortunately, my Toronto trip brings the total number of books on The List up to an even 140. On the plus side, that's only one more since my last update (I managed to read about 8 books since then), but now I have a LOT of reading to do!