tuckova

Bossy!

There's some bit of nonsense at the end of some of Squire's latest audiobooks that just burns me up. It says that it's important for kids to be read to... and that in today's busy world, blahblahblah, audiobooks are just as good as a parent reading to a child. In today's busy world on what planet, I'd like to know. Audiobooks are great --and I certainly appreciate Jim Dale for his ability to read Harry Potter and the Gobbledygook over and over again, because once was fine, but once was enough-- but they're not the same as reading aloud.

Now, I understand that not everyone is the fantastic reader I am. I am to reading what Jules Winnfield is to a foot massage: I don't be ticklin' or nothing! But I do not read to my son because I love the sound of my own voice (shut up!). I read to him because:

1. It's fun to do things together. It's fun to watch movies together, learn things together, go on trips together, because we can talk about it afterwards. How cool was it when Will got his wish of snow for his birthday? It wasn't what we expected at all, was it?

2. It's good to see how he thinks. I think it's important for me as a parent to observe how information gets processed, and to guide the processing when it's tangled, and sit back and relish it when it is as clear as only a child's processing can be. I get more out of a book when I read it to him because I see it in his eyes and mine at the same time.

3. It is good for me as a reader to read aloud. Words sound different, and sentences sing or they don't, and it's different than reading in my head. I would have missed some of the magic of "The Subtle Knife" if I'd read it to myself, and I'm glad I've had someone to read to.

4. If he has questions while I'm reading to him, he can ask. This might not be As True for girls as for boys, but it's been my observation that it's easier to talk about something if you stumble over it together. It's true for vocabulary definitely, and also for storytelling.

5. It is fun to experience things that are generally solitary together. So much of what we experience is solitary, even if we're all in it together-- reading together is like watching a television show where both people are watching the same show at the same moment, and both people can hit the pause button whenever they want to be witty or insightful or confused. I like the remote control in the middle of the couch, and I like reading as a companionable activity.

Please understand: I like audiobooks. Kids have the ability to listen to the same thing over and over again (CrazyFrog, I hate you so much) and it's been great for Squire to have that available to him, because I wouldn't do it. I understand that in "today's busy world" we sometimes can't take time for everything that we feel we ought to do for our kids. I really do get that and I also understand that I am privileged to have the time to read to my kid. But I think that if you don't, you're hurting... not so much the kid, because whatevs, kids are tough. But you're hurting yourself. And I'm angry that these audiobooks, in the interest of marketing audiobooks, imply that they're more able to do your job than you are. Delegate the housekeeping, delegate the lice removal. But really, why delegate the fun stuff? And reading is fun.

what I read

I finished "The Golden Compass" over the weekend. I had started reading it to Squire Tuck and then apparently wasn't reading it fast enough, because he started reading it alone. Since I hadn't already read it, I hopped to so we could talk about it.

I liked it a lot. It takes a certain amount of thinking for granted, which I particularly like in a children/YA book. It was well-written, and there was a decent flow to the plot. I liked that the end of a chapter was really the end of a chapter, and not always a cliffhanger. I liked how things progressed in a way that was exciting and possible to follow.

I also thought Pullman did a good job of telling you things about characters in a way that revealed his thoughts about them. For example, there's a part when he says that Lyra has no imagination. This is hard to fathom because she's a great on-the-spot liar, which to me requires an active imagination, but Pullman explains that in fact she is a good liar because she believes what she says... in a way, he presents something and explains it away at the same time. I wasn't sure I agreed with him but it's clear he thought about what he wrote.

He has a way of describing people through their behavior that I thought was really powerful. Mrs. Coulter only has a few complete scenes in the book, and each scene revealed more about her than a page of adjectives. I wish that he had spent less time using the adjectives later, because it felt a little screenplay to me, a little "stay with my visuals!" but he did so well describing action to reveal character that if he wants to be sure you see HIS character, that's fair.

On the downside: He doesn't always describe how people interact and how they got to feel the way they do about each other very well. Some relationships are clear in a sentence or two ("Ma Costa had clouted Lyra dizzy on two occasions but fed her hot gingerbread on three") but many of them fell short, for me. Lyra explains that she loves Iorek because he was kicked out of a country for murder, as was her father, except that no loving relationship ever seems clear between her and her father. Her quick affection for Iorek seems reasonably placed but the reasons given don't line up. I had problems with her relationship with Lord Asriel, too, who spends quite a few pages threatening to kill her in the beginning, but is described later as always treating her as "an adult engaging a child in a pretty trick." Wha--? Her parents' relationship was particularly difficult for me to understand: so passionate and so dead at the same time. Maybe I've never had relationships like these, so it doesn't make sense to me, but I think the problem is that Pullman doesn't really know how to describe these relationships himself. A relationship that should be key, Lyra's parents are fierce and infinitely sad and passionate and dizzy and they don't make sense, and it hurts the book that they don't.

And... the alethiometer seemed a little too handy. It was not as handy as "because Dumbledore thinks so" (glargh!) but it really did seem almost too much. As if the book got written and then there were holes in the plot that had to be mended, and boom! they were. This is a minor complaint, though. It's just -- he did so well at describing other otherworldly things to a degree that made them seem really possible that I'm sorry he didn't spend more time making the alethiometer seem as real, at least not to me. I finished and wanted to think for days about what form my daemon would take, but I never once considered what I would ask the alethiometer, if I could. Do you see what I mean?

Anyway. Good book, glad I read it, want to read the rest. Next up will be some non-fiction, I think. By the way, when people tell you Nora Ephron's latest book ("I Feel Bad About My Neck") is "funny" what they mean is that they have never read a decent blog post, because there are at least 20 writers out there who make my ribs hurt, but Nora Ephron never even made me smile.

what i'm reading

I'm still reading Love in the Time of Cholera. I was going to finish it before I went to Greece but then I took on this textbook editing project (editing by hand! Totally quaint! Fortunately I remember most of the proofreader's marks so it's okay... but it does interfere with my pleasure reading).

Anyway. I thought I didn't like Marquez because I really didn't much like 100 Years of Solitude; I've never really been able to get behind magic realism. I love long meandering stories, I like a touch of the absurd, I like the idea that reality is in fact pretty flexible, but magic realism is the potato salad of literature: I love all the ingredients, I hate the result. Other than a weak spot for Tom Robbins, which he's doing his level best to eliminate, I really have never gotten the point of magic realism.

So I never bothered to read any more of Marquez's work, because, you know, why. You don't keep picking up Raymond Chandler if you don't like hardboiled detective stories. But then here I am with  ...Cholera and I'm reading it and I'm enjoying it and yet there is something in it that nags at me and I tried to explain this over beer last night and I thought I'd try again over coffee.

I really don't do well with adjectives deployed to describe characters. I need to be given actions and allowed to locate my own adjectives. And I've noticed this with Kundera, too, and it's why I have trouble with him, and why I have trouble with Klima, and why so many books that are otherwise delightful to me wind up flung across the room as if they were Hemingway clones (really, really hate Hemingway clones. Not a big fan of Hemingway either, but glah, the clones). I do not want to hear "she was a fierce woman" or "he was a man of firm principles" -- I want to know how she's fierce, what principles are firm. I think that this is why, ultimately, I find Kundera's characters (and am now finding the ones in Cholera) to be so unbelievable: because it seems these adjectives mean something different to me than they do to the authors, and so then the actions that are shown make no sense. I have noticed this problem with my friends, too, that the ones who tell me stories of "he did this and this" are the ones I can listen to for hours, but the ones who tell me "he is cruel" are the phone calls I have trouble returning.

I also have, and I realize this is a personal thing, trouble liking characters who leave their children. I will never, ever like Anna Karenina, although I've given it almost as many attempts as I have Lolita (another book I can never like, I finally realized after several miserable rides through Nabokov's hideous sea. I concede that the man can write words, sentences, paragraphs, but I can't stay in a boat with someone who hates his main character) and my conclusion is the same: I don't like Anna and I can't like that book. And I can't like Fermina now and I don't know if that's going to ruin the book for me, but between the adjectives, which are on a steady rise here at page 270, and the fact that things appear to be boarding a hot air balloon of unreality without showing any signs of actually cutting the ropes and soaring away... well, I don't know. You don't get a lot of first sentences better than "The scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love," and it's not as if I'm not going to finish or that I'm going to hurl the book from me or anything but I'm a little frustrated.

And I wanted to talk about something other than my shameful craving for Ronald McDonald and the Deathly Hallows. 

bridges

the sentence "at least it gets kids to read" drives me nuts when it is applied to bad books, because it is like saying at least mcdonald's gets kids to eat. i don't think reading is as necessary to existence as eating, sure, but i do think that the analogy holds up. some people don't appreciate well-prepared healthy meals, and would prefer to subsist on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off for apparently the rest of their lives, and if you're the parent who wants to prepare that meal day in and day out then i guess you can go ahead and do that, but don't expect me to think you're doing a good job with your "well at least he's eating!" and don't expect the school to back up your indulgence of your kid's dietary lack of imagination. i like to think that as parents we care enough about our children's health to see to it that they eat a decent amount of vegetables and we want the school to exhibit at least a basic understanding of what is nourishing as well. we may not expect our children to subsist on whole wheat crackers and fresh vegetables only, and especially at birthdays and christmas even i have been known to indulge the sweet tooth. similarly, one may indulge the darlings with a few "glittery unicorns and the dragon adventures" from time to time, but it should be presented as a exception to the rule of selecting books that engage the thinking brain as well as the pleasure centers. i think the reason we want children to read is not for the sake of the reading itself (we don't eat because "chewing is good for you"), but for the fact that it expands the horizons of their imagination and understanding and makes them better humans.

i have a more conflicted response when the "at least it gets kids to read" is applied to books being made into movies. i wasn't allowed to see movies until i'd read the book, and i apply the same rule to Squire Tuck's movie viewing. this ruined a lot of movies for me, because i had pictured the book in my mind perfectly and the director didn't always do right by my imagination. however, it did wonders for my critical thinking skills, deciding which things in a book were subject to interpretation, how far artistic license could reasonably extend, whether it's possible that i misunderstood the book and the screenwriter had understood it better, etc. Squire Tuck is following right along behind me and when he had a ten minute rant about the "scorning of the shire" i nearly ate my heart. so although we go about it in one direction ("you must read the book if you want to see the movie"), while i think many people tend to see the movie and then decide whether to read the book, i will concede that sometimes books into movies, and i mean great books into movies, can lead children to great books. lots of children read "charlotte's web" for the first time this winter (because of the movie), and while part of me feels like --how can they have not already read it and loved it?-- on the other hand, if it takes sending piles of cash to hollywood in order to get people sucked into "where's papa going with that ax?" then i'll accept it. some people need a cookbook to cook, they need to be inspired to do what might come naturally to other people. they need to see a picture of the finished product before they can imagine if they would like it for themselves. and as long as they accept that their version might come out differently, and as long as they're inspired to keep trying instead of throwing up their hands and dashing down to the drive-through... i guess i'm okay with that. i guess i can take off my judge's robes and sit down with the rest of the people at that table.

that said, if there is a hint of romance between jess and leslie; if janice is made to seem more worthy of mockery than pity ... i mean, i can handle the emo-girl sock arm thingies, but if they have changed the ending of this to make it one whit less painful and beautiful, i will go and punch david paterson repeatedly in the face.