Here Be Dragons, or Be Careful What You Drink

Plus Musings on Twitter and the Language of Birds

There is an old Norse legend, perhaps best known through Wagner’s opera Siegfried, that he who drinks the blood of dragons will be gifted with the ability to understand the language of birds. In that legend, Sigurd (or Siegfried) slays the dragon Fafnir and then either bathes in and takes a celebratory chug-a-lug of his enemy’s blood or just accidently gets some blood in his mouth, depending on what folkloric version you favor. Either way, Sigurd doesn’t learn any pithy lessons about being careful what you put in your mouth, because he mostly gets a lot of helpful oracular advice from his feathered friends.

That said and Niebelung legends aside, perhaps my favorite representation of the dragon’s blood legend appears in Newbery Honor author Nancy Farmer’s wonderful blend of historical fiction and myth-inspired adventure, The Sea of Trolls, in which young Saxon Jack and his Viking captors encounter dragons, trolls, giant spiders, and more, when they embark on a series of adventures rooted in Norse legend. In Farmer’s representation, Viking berserker-initiate Jill becomes infected with dragon’s blood and discovers it’s a bit more of a mixed blessing than the story of Sigurd suggests. She learns that while the avian population might chirp up some good gossip, such as whether your enemies are massing over the next hill, mostly they just do a lot of what my dad used to call nattering and gromishing. That is to say, they talk a lot about very little.

So where am I headed with this? Well, Farmer’s musings on dragon’s blood and the language of birds provide as good a metaphor as any for the infamous social networking and micro-blogging service Twitter, currently under exploration for its value in the world of libraries.

While I see a certain potential value in Twitter as an up-to-the minute communication tool for far-flung and “virtual” work teams (virtual, that is, in the sense of teams working together in an online or virtual environment such as email, blogging, or twittering), Twitter can also represent a time and productivity drain for workplaces and a hotbed for missing and missed communications if not used properly or if too heavily or inappropriately relied upon as a communication tool. Still, keeping that concern in mind, there can be some big pluses for team Twittering. Just by way of example, while I was logged onto Twitter for krl2pt0 purposes I observed KRL Training Coordinator Bob Christensen’s of-the-moment update that he had posted new materials on the krl2pt0 site. Hmmm. Imagine if I were working on a time-sensitive project and looking for input from teammates. The entire work team could be instantly directed to Bob’s input and ideas even as he produced them. So… In a nutshell, Twitter strikes me as best designed for time-sensitive virtual team projects and committees. As far as the social aspect of Twitter goes, look no further than the metaphor of the birds to see what I think and whether I will use it that way.

Here Be Some Real Dragons: Bitterwood, by James Maxey
On a dragon-related note, I recently finished an outstanding new entry in the dragon/fantasy/science fiction genre, Bitterwood, by genre newcomer James Maxey. Read my brief review here. Call me a sucker for well-crafted words, but I am a big fan of the dragons of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Ursula K. LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, who are both fascinated by and distracted by a little well-honed argument—well, at least in the Aristophanic sense.* Maxey’s articulate, sometimes contemplative, and often rhetorically-driven dragons—particularly the ultra-evil “murder god” Blasphet—fit the bill perfectly. Then again, if you're like my husband and you prefer your dragons to stick with pillaging and carnage, Maxey offers a healthy portion of that, too. Maxey's slow unfolding of remnants of misunderstood and forgotten technology in a post-apocalyptic future landscape will also attract fans of Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun and Book of the Long Sun, even as they remind us of the Arthur C. Clarke maxim that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” (Starred review in Publishers Weekly and Booklist.)

*In his comedy Clouds, Aristophanes posits a Socratic School where young Greek youths learn rhetoric to argue the Wrong Argument and defeat the Right Argument. His characters attend this school to learn to argue their debts away, and comic mayhem ensues. My Point? Dragons, like Aristophanes' students in Clouds, are known to value argument for the sake of argument and as a means to justify questionable (often monetary) ends.

All Over the World

A hush has settled on this house by four in the morning. 8-ball sleeps at my feet, paws folded, making an occasional delicate grunt of happiness if I reach down to pet him. Magic spills a glossy diagonal across my side of the bed. I know if I touch him he will awake, purring, to nuzzle me, walk on my hair, drool lovingly on my pillow, and intermittently poke my face with a velvet-padded paw. (Magic is 100% a Mama’s boy and also just a teensy bit thick, as they say.) Across the hall, a single orange paw and rumpled tail show where Amber has bedded down for the night in the cat condo.

My husband breaths quietly beside me, and the only other sound is the quiet suserration of an ocean sounds CD by my husband’s pillow. Outside, a glimpse of Christmas Town beckons from across the cul-de-sac, where our neighbors, both Wal-Mart employees, have installed every purchasable holiday fantasia in an ongoing spirit of keeping American consumerism and the feng shui of Snoopy’s doghouse alive. And yet, at this hour and across this distance, the 8-foot blow-up snowmen and tinsel-bedecked caravan of shimmering packages look both fantastical and somehow even lovely amid their twinkle of festive lights.

In spite of the unlikeliness of the hour, my brain has decided I’m done sleeping for the night. Might as well get up and read in the pre-dawn stillness. Today, I am finishing About a Boy, in order to fulfill a request for holiday theme reviews and secure my rights, per Hannah's DVD blog, to the Good Ol' Virginia Killer Egg Nog recipe. Thanks to Hannah’s eloquence, I am sure THE recipe will change my life, or at least significantly alter a worthwhile percentage of holiday evenings, so here goes.

Professional rebound-guy and incurable fantasist Will Freeman has made a career of avoiding committed relationships. (“We always thought you had hidden depths,” his friends say. “No,” says Will. “I really am this shallow.”) To facilitate his quest to meet attractive but lonely ladies, Will invents a two-year-old son and joins a group called SPAT (Single Parents Alone Together). “Children democratize beautiful single women,” Will theorizes, thereby making them more likely to date do-nothings like himself. But instead of the blissful series of brief but uplifting encounters he imagines springing from his new parental persona—curiously, Will sees his half-truths and fantasies as a harmless way to meet and provide interim solace to jaded women on their way to their next real relationship—Will finds himself making an unlikely friend of 12-year-old uber-geek Marcus. As the consequences of Will’s fictionalized fatherhood begins to catch up with him (note, concepts like cause-and-effect and speculation beyond tomorrow’s lunch do not appear among Will’s strengths), Will finds he has as much to learn from Marcus about family, honesty, and caring as Marcus has to learn from him about being cool.

Iffy and potentially clichéd as the above scenario may sound, About a Boy has a certain charm. Yes, Will embodies an extreme version of the oft-cited male capacity for avoiding any discussion around or expression of ucky relationship stuff. Still, as in his earlier novel High Fidelity, author Nick Hornby has a knack for capturing the quirks and foibles of modern mid-‘90s relationships, both those that are a product of, in ‘90s lingo, the Mars/Venus rift, and those arising from a second generation of “hippie” idealists at odds with a self-avowed Me generation, and making them feel deeply personal. (The scenes, for example, where Will begins to feel at home at Marcus’ family’s geeky Christmas gathering are priceless.*) In spite of—perhaps because of— flaws, his characters are understandable, even unlikable: even when they mess up royally, we can’t help but root for them.

On the other side of the afore-mentioned Mars/Venus rift, Helen Fielding’s novel Bridget Jones’s Diary spans a single year, from Christmas to Christmas, in the life of 30-something “singleton” Bridget Jones on her permanent quest to both form a functional f***wittage-free relationship and lose 20 pounds. As good a revisionist version of Jane Austen as I’ve seen, Bridget Jones is uninhibited, laugh-out-loud funny, and a rockin’ good retelling of Pride and Prejudice with modern twists throughout. The generation of women who love the BBC Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth will find much to relate to in this feel-good holiday read, including (you guessed it) a hero named Darcy, a silly, flighty mum in the spirit of Mrs. Bennett and Lydia rolled into one, plenty of social satire, and a healthy post-modern touch of self-reflexive humor, since Bridget herself is a fan of the BBC’s Firth-fest. “It struck me as being pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party,” Jones muses on meeting her Mr. Darcy. “It’s like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden shouting ‘Cathy’ and banging your head on a tree.”

One word of advice on Bridget Jones, though. Don’t read this book if you are on a serious diet. Not only will Bridget’s occasional (justified, of course) 4,000 calorie binge days make you feel okay about breaking your diet, you will find yourself possessed of an undeniable soul-searching emptiness that can only be filled by chocolate croissants.

So, Hannah, what do you say? Enough to make you hand over the recipe? It’s nearly the New Year, and there’s partying to be had! Just don't forget you are always invited.

**Watching the film version of About a Boy, my husband—NOT, I should point out, a geek—was particularly struck by the holiday party scenes with Marcus' geek family. "I can relate," he remarked drily... but also fondly. We geeks are a pleasant lot, after all.

Trick or Treat? A blogful of literary goodies to celebrate the season

Happy Halloween and time for one last wave of the pointy witch’s hat (between Trick-or-Treaters) to all those seasonal favorites—hauntings and spirits and witches, oh my! One of my favorite books with a splendidly mist-shrouded All Hallow’s feel is John Harwood’s wonderfully gothic exploration of the traditional ghost story in The Ghost Writer. The Ghost Writer is a gorgeous puzzle box of intertwining tales, all connected by an overarching mystery in which timid librarian Gerard seeks answers to his inscrutable pen pal's strange past and his own family's somewhat shady history through a series of odd Victorian manuscripts—ghost stories, of course. The manuscripts, each one a perfectly formulated exercise in gothic style, provide clues to the mysteries in Gerard’s life, but will they help him in time to save him from his family’s ghosts? Read it and see.

For a complete change of pace, check out my absolute favorite book about witches, Lolly Willowes, or The Loving Huntsman, by Sylvia Townsend Warner. A full eighty years before Harry Potter, poet Warner penned this rather charming country novel about timid Edwardian spinster, Laura (a.k.a. Lolly) Willowes, who shakes off the conventions of her day to become a witch. Harry Potter fans beware—there really isn’t much magic practiced in this one. Published in 1926, the pace is leisurely, the writing precise and poetic, but—witchcraft aside—the real thrust of the novel is its highly unconventional celebration of freedom from social constraints that, in those days, often relegated women of Lolly’s station to unpaid household laborers. Fans of Barbara Pym's writing might also enjoy this salute—with a little spin of its own—to the excellent women of a bygone era.

Let's Get Digital, Digital

I am here to report that I need never leave my home office again. That’s right, people, I did my homework and then some. I set up an account and subscribed to a dozen or so RSS feeds. (See below.) I listened to a podcast. I downloaded an audiobook from the library catalog. (More on those in my next post.) I even did 200 or so updates and countless system restarts so that I could install the latest version of Windows Media Player, which actually allows me to watch Netflix movies right here at my desk. Am I rockin’ or what?

Incidentally, several of these feats (particularly the Windows Media Player) were achieved with no small level of frustration and with really big bucketsful—we’re talking aircraft carriers of truckloads of buckets—of patience. At one point, my husband took over the installation just to relieve me of the sheer monotony of update, reboot, install—each iteration of which was followed by a message stating “before you can install XYZ, you must first yada yada yada.” (I regret to say strong language may have been used during this exercise.) Anyway, when all was said and done, my husband strongly encouraged me to actually WATCH a movie. So I did. At my desk. Alone. (Maybe my husband wanted to see our frustration and patience pay off, or maybe he wanted to spare himself being subjected to another obscure Zombie flick like the last one I picked out. Who can say? Either way, I am ready for the day—should it come—when the library has downloadable video.)

At this point, I must take a time out to say that E. M. Forster was surprisingly prescient. I’m not talking about Howard's End or A Passage to India here, but another of Forster's lesser-known works called “The Machine Stops,” which details a future where people live in isolation connected to other people only through technology. A strong opponant of H. G. Wells' style of speculative fiction, Forster intended “The Machine Stops” to serve as an "anti-Wellsian" piece. Ironically, it stands as a rather fascinating counterpoint to Wells' own dystopian visions in The Time Machine and other works. Read Forster's story along with Wells' A Story of the Days to Come for a fascinating and quick glimpse of two ironic and terrifying futures.

Here are my comments on RSS feeds: I set up a bloglines account, and added several accounts. The process was clunky, the bloglines page cluttered and hard to read (or so I felt), and I quickly realized I was never going to want to go there. I then added an RSS feed button on my tool bar. I click on the button when I am on a site I want to subscribe to, and, voila, with one additional click it adds the site to my RSS feeds. To access my feeds, I click on favorites and the RSS icon appears with a list of my subscriptions. Neat.

Straight from the Witch's Cauldron: Victorian Ghost Soup

Mist mantled mornings. Check. Skittering leaves that flutter and carpet our rain-damp paths. Check. Bare bones of trees (check) that rattle against the silent backdrop of an eerie harvest moon. Check. Freak windstorms, hailstorms, and lightening strikes that rattle the library windows. Check, check, and check. You guessed it, it must be Halloween, and what better time than a fog-shrouded fall evening with the rain tapping a ghostly coda on the darkened pane—what better to time, I say, than to cuddle up on the sofa with a cup of cocoa, a pair of cats (black of course), and a good book.

Since the season demands, I find myself wondering why it is that the words Victorian and ghost story seem to belong together like macaroni belongs with cheese. Maybe we just have Henry James and The Turn of the Screw to thank for this, or maybe repression and catharsis are another natural pairing that naturally manifests as a spectral blue emanation in the back parlor amongst the roll top desks and hand-painted fans. Whatever the case, we can thank Egyptologist author Arthur Phillips for another shall-we-say interesting and worthy entry in the Victorian Ghost genre with his recent novel Angelica.

Set in 1880s London, Angelica details a family’s downward spiral as a mysterious nocturnal spirit begins to haunt their lives, shattering their peace, disrupting their marriage, and possibly even threatening their child’s life. But is the specter real or is it imagined? Told from the point of view of four disparate family members, the story unfolds as a strange tale of denials, half-truths, buried secrets, and hidden motives, strongly in the vein of a Victorian-style Rashomon. In that respect, readers of the author’s other novels (Prague, The Egyptologist) will recognize Phillips’ trademark ambivalence toward his characters, whose self-deceptions form a unique pathos that is hard to resist. Psychologically complex and rich in atmospheric detail, Angelica is a delectible potage of themes and motifs, part psychoanalysis, part Victorian ghost story, part childhood memory—and entirely impossible to put down. So bring on the fuzzy slippers and the mini-marshmallows, Angelica is a perfect Fall read.

Mmmmm deee-licious

Titillate your tastebuds with reading... and social bookmarking?

Good food and good books shared with good friends—those things form a big part of my life. This week, besides sharing a few good books, I want to share a delicious new way to learn, grow, and share one's interests, whatever they may be. You guessed it, I'm talking about del.icio.us. Del.icio.us is a Web-based social bookmarking site that makes it easy for users to move from site to site while always returning with one click to his or her list of favorites. Not only that, del.icio.us provides new opportunities for readers (or Web surfers) to network with other readers (and surfers) with similar interests.

For example, fans of C. S. Lewis might wish to tag Lewis’s unofficial Web site Into the Wardrobe. Once you’ve tagged the site, you will not only find that 172 other people have tagged the site, you will be able to view other sites those 172 people have tagged that may also be of interest to you. [Disclaimer: naturally, you don’t know those people or how reputable or appropriate for your purposes their favorites may be. You should still always be diligent in checking the reliability of any source, especially any internet source, before singing its praises.]

Now, speaking of C.S. Lewis and all things delicious... Lewis once said that if you wanted to interest children in reading, you should write about things that interest children—things like, for example, food. Perhaps that's why we find so much eating in the world of Narnia—from sumptuous afternoon teas with fauns to fresh fish feasts with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver to turkish delight with, well, let's just say someone who proves in one gesture why children should never accept candy from strangers.

Lewis also offered some pretty delectable fare for the grown-up palate with his classic Garden of Eden allegory, Perelandra, set on the watery world of Venus. Written in the 1940s, the science may be dated, but the story is timeless—and you'll never forget Lewis' description of the Perelandran gourds, that are neither sharp nor sweet, neither savory nor voluptuous.

In any case, if you want to create a world to delight your readers, one where they may immerse themselves as one of the natives, there is no better way than though the cuisine. Here are just a few of my favorite visual and literary feasts that touch on the power of sharing a meal, a recipe, or a culinary custom:

Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto
Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel
Neveryona, by Samuel R. Delany
Babette’s Feast (movie)

Please share your literary feasts with me, and if you find good sources for more, don’t forget to tag them and then share your tags with me!

More of a dinner-and-a-movie type? Don't forget to check out 000h How I Loved That Movie for plenty of film, food, and fun.

Comfort Books

I'm a big believer in pet therapy, comfort food, and of course comfort books. But before we go there, take a moment to slide your eyes to the right and feast them on the love-bunny known as Rho. Rho is Megzilla's brother, and a little less precociously brainy than his sister. He is, however, quite a sweetheart, loves to give hugs and kisses. So take a deep breath, gaze long into those melting blue eyes, and feel yourself to be deeply loved. Aahhhh, feels good, doesn't it?

Now that the pet-lovers have all forsaken their computers to go hug their own feline and canine family members, let's get back to the subject of comfort books. You know the ones I mean: the ones that you always come back to, the books that never fail to give solace on the coldest, wettest, worst-ever days, the days when you lock your keys in the car, argue with your spouse, slip in a mud puddle, and have to eat leftover tuna cassarole for lunch when you absolutely loathe tuna cassarole. On days like that, my husband likes to immerse himself in the world of Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy. I haven't read it yet, but if you have you might want to log in here and let me know what kind of oddball I'm married to, since the reviews all use words like dark, disburbing, and violent, strangely counterpointed with other words like romantic, witty, teasing, and--strangest of all if you knew my husband--matriarchal. Having said that, I'm thinking my husband may be a little like Meggy and there's some freakin' serious stuff going on behind that innocent blue-eyed gaze.

Back to comfort books. One of my favorite comfort reads is Little Women, a choice which no doubt many of you will understand instantly and wholeheartedly. I honestly have never met the person who grew up American, female, and reading who did not love this book. It's a classic for a reason.

Another favorite comfort book is the aforementioned The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. What can I say? It's not enough to know that Vogon poetry is the third worst in the galaxy, Douglas Adams does not scruple to tell you what out there may be worse. If you read this and don't laugh, I am very, very sorry.

Book About Books, Part Deux

My last entry promised you another book about the power of books, and so I offer you Brock Clarke's darkly humorous, deftly poignant novel, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. When habitual bumbler Sam Pulsifer returns from serving a 10-year prison sentence for torching the Emily Dickinson house in Amherst, other famous writers' homes start going up in flames and Sam is the only suspect. Sam's efforts to unravel the mystery lead to a series of comic misadventures that examine the power of literature on our lives. Word of note: If you've ever been in a book group (and even if you haven't), and you don't find Clarke's ruminations on book groups, memoirists, and stoically cynical New England writers funny, well, if you don't find that funny let's just say I'm a little concerned about you. You need to cheer up. Go read the section on Vogon poetry in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Laugh. Please.

If you'd prefer your books about books to be a little less out there, you might enjoy memoirist Julie Powell's Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. When out-of-work actress and secretarial temp Julie Powell finds her life stuck in a rut, she decides to spice things up by cooking every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking--over the course of 365 wild and flavorful days. Her culinary adventures lead to a blog, the blog leads to a book contract, and the book contract leads to a hilarious and heartfelt homage to good food and the inspiration that can come from one well-loved and much-thumbed-through tome. So, buck up, bloggers, we may have a purpose after all.

Thanks to all of you who shared with me your favorite books about books. I encourage everyone reading to check out Sara F.'s excellent review of House of Leaves on The Birdhouse, and if you know Martha Bayley, be sure and ask her about The Shadow of the Wind. Until next time...

What to read while you're surviving Web 2.0

Yeah, I know I said it, but I have no intention of telling you that. Geez, I could feel my ego swelling like an overfull water balloon even as I wrote that. What I can do is comment on a few things I've read and enjoyed while pushing my Sisyphus' stone of blogging up the internet hill. (Just kidding. It's not that bad.) For now, I'd just like to mention a couple fascinating fiction reads, both books about the power of good old-fashioned books--and not just the words on the page (although those are important), but the book-in-the-hand, the sometimes-musty, jacket-bound artifact that may have belonged to someone before you and that may (or may not) have meant the world to that person.

The first is King Dork, by Frank Portman, in which high schooler Tom Henderson finds a copy of the classic Catcher in the Rye in a box of his deceased father's books. As Tom sets out to learn about his father from his father's books, he finds himself enmeshed in a series of mysteries that may help him understand more about his relationship with his father—or maybe they'll just provide the key to attracting hot girls. A wonderfully funny homage to high school, rock and roll, and—somewhat ironically—The Catcher in the Rye, King Dork is heartfelt and sometimes cynical—but always honest.

For the second... well, you'll have to wait for my next post, because I'm bushed and it's dinner time. Better yet, reply to this post with your favorite books about books.