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Uh oh

Welp it looks like I probably won’t be done with my current read in time to post on Friday, so I will post this video now, since I have only just discovered that there is an orchestra version of this quartet and I adore it, and also IT IS CHARMINGLY RELEVANT to my book.

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Not your typical swords & sorcery


The Deed of Paksenarrion, by Elizabeth Moon (1992)

Welp, this is a reread — a family favorite. My husband, daughter and I are all huge fans of this trilogy and have read it several times over the last decade or so. I can’t remember exactly how we started talking about it the other day, but our conversation resulted in first my husband, and then me, eagerly devouring this book once again.

phb2nd1The setting is your typical high fantasy world — in fact, it is quite explicitly based on Dungeons & Dragons. If you’ve ever played it, you will catch on right away. All the character classes are there: rangers, clerics, druids, paladins, magic users, thieves and assassins. All instantly recognizable and conforming perfectly to their descriptions in the good ol’ Player’s Handbook. It’s been quite a while since I played D&D, and it is just so fun coming across these old friends.

However, although the setting is totally derivative and predictable, the story is… not. And here is where I must confess that I despise the Heroic Quest. I have never been a fan of Tolkein, and pretty much anything that involves a quest where, let’s face it, the outcome is certain (good guys will prevail) and it’s just a question of how they get there. Yawn. But this book, despite as I say the totally derivative and predictable setting, defies expectations in that it most certainly is not a heroic quest. While Paks does indeed go on several quests, they are incidental to the real story, which is basically the fantasy world version of a coming of age story: her rise to paladinhood. She fights plenty of monsters and demons, but they are inner demons as much as outer.

One of the ways I like to gauge a book’s worth is, how many times can I reread it before it gets old. The first time you read a book, you’re basically just getting the plot. Reread it and you start to notice other stuff. Symbolism, foreshadowing, character development, all that English major stuff. But (with most books) eventually there comes a time when there isn’t anything more to get. I have to say this is probably the last time I will read Paks. Much as I love the story, it is starting to get old. Too many times, I just wanted to slap her. I don’t remember wanting to slap her the first time I read it, or even the second. But three (or is it four?) rereadings might be the limit for this one. However, if you have never read this book, or have only read it once or twice, I highly recommend delving in!

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Immigration stories: universal and particular

The Book of Unknown Americans, by Cristina Henriquez (2014)

This book tells the story of a family who emigrates from Mexico to Newark, Delaware in order to get help for their brain-damaged daughter. The story focuses on the difficulties they experience in navigating their new life: language & cultural barriers, winter weather, poverty, homesickness, the daughter’s injury. Against this backdrop is great love: love between husband and wife, parents and children, and a very touching teen romance.

What makes this book so riveting is that the story is told with alternating first person narrators: the wife, and the neighbor boy who falls in love with the daughter. And interspersed among these are individual chapters narrated by various other neighbors, each telling their own immigration story. The overall effect is a detailed and poignant picture of a community of Latino immigrants.

Yes, this book is riveting, but it is not easy to read. The members of this community, these “unknown Americans,” have difficult lives and their stories are filled with anger and pain. Says one:

I came from México, but there’s a lot of people here who, when they hear that, they think I crawled out of hell. They hear “México,” and they think: bad, devil, I don’t know. They got some crazy ideas. Any of them ever been to México? And if they say, yeah, I went to Acapulco back in the day or I been to Cancún, papi, then that shit don’t count. You went to a resort? Congratulations. But you didn’t go to México. And that’s the problem, you know? These people are listening to the media, and the media, let me tell you, has some fucked-up ideas about us. About all the brown-skinned people, but especially about the Mexicans. You listen to the media, you’ll learn that we’re all gangbangers, we’re all drug dealers, we’re tossing bodies in vats of acid, we want to destroy America, we still think Texas belongs to us, we all have swine flu, we carry machine guns under our coats, we don’t pay any taxes, we’re lazy, we’re stupid, we’re all wetbacks who crossed the border illegally. . . . We’re the unknown Americans, the ones no one even wants to know, because they’ve been told they’re supposed to be scared of us and because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might realize that we’re not that bad, maybe even that we’re a lot like them. And who would they hate then?

As I read this novel, I found myself thinking a lot about my own family history. I am first-generation American on my father’s side. Although the particulars of his immigration story are very different (he was escaping from Hitler), he and his parents experienced many of the same problems described in the book, including the pain of leaving behind all that is familiar for something new, scary and totally unknown.

This novel happens to be the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Reads choice for 2016. I will definitely be participating! And here is a link to the author’s website, which includes book group discussion questions.

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Decisions, decisions.

So I am thinking about rules for this endeavor. Should I have any?

  1. Rereads. Allowed? On the one hand, revisiting old friends is one of life’s greatest pleasures, and rereads can be very inspiring. On the other hand, if my goal is to get myself back into bookworm mode and, y’know, au courant with the reading world, maybe it would be better to focus only on new stuff. Oh hell, what am I saying? Of course rereads are allowed!
  2. Do I have to finish it if I hate it? If not, how far do I need to read before I can quit? Wow, am I really asking this question? NO I don’t need to finish a crappy book. Life is way too short. Too short even for arbitrary rules like “must read at least 100 pages before quitting.” I’ll use my own discretion, thanks.
  3. Posting schedule. Should I stick to one, and if so what. Yes, I think this is a good idea. Every two weeks (duh), and I think I will use the same schedule as our paydays. So… first review due Friday January 8, and every other Friday thereafter. Progress posts in between are definitely allowed, but actual reviews only on the Fridays.

Ok, this is good! I am excited! I’m about 3/4 through with my first book. It is a page turner, really good, and it just feels fantastic to be reading.

Also, I started a twitter.

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Mission

I feel like the internet has destroyed my brain. I used to be able to sit and read for hours; now it seems like I can’t even read for ten minutes without getting the urge to stop and check email, facebook, what have you. My mission for 2016 is to recover my bookworm self. And hopefully also recover my attention span. 26 books, 52 weeks.