Readers': This is why we can have nice things--Water is a Polar Molecule

In honor of Earth Day, I've been thinking about the drought. Having been away from California for the better part of seven years, coming back to a place where rain in the summertime is impossible was not much of a surprise. It was coming back to little or no rain in the winter that shocked me.

Whether you lean left or right politically, you can't deny that not having enough water in the most populous state is a problem. It doesn't help that California leads the nation in the agricultural profits, a position which requires a great deal of water. This year, we are left without a snow pack and without any solution that we can all agree on.

I don't want to make a big political statement here. I don't want to bewail the drying streams and rivers and not be able to offer a workable solution. What I want to do is remind myself and everyone else of the most basic reasons why we need water.

Now, here I am forced to recall vague memories of high school biology. Very vague memories, with some confusion and distaste, because science wasn't my subject and who cares about molecules anyway? Luckily, I'm related to someone who does care about very small things and their impact on everyday life. My sister has informed me that chemistry is vital to understanding life because, as she said, it is life. And one of the things that makes our world possible is the fact that water is a polar molecule. H2O, means water of course, but it also stands for two hydrogen molecules that sit on top of a big oxygen molecule in such a way so as to look very much like Mickey Mouse.

Maybe this doesn't seem important. And maybe you think that this has nothing to do with the impending California desert; that Mickey Mouse shaped molecules--molecules you can't even see--aren't rocking your boat.

But the reason that boats can rock at all is because water is a polar molecule. Boiled down to my general understanding, it is the angle of those hydrogens sitting atop the oxygen molecule and the corresponding transiency of those bonds that allows water to do such interesting things. Like create surface tension. Like changing form so often within normal ranges of temperature--ice to liquid to gas in a range of 180 degrees Fahrenheit. On a basic molecular level, water is pretty awesome.

Whenever I try to do my part to save water--changing how I hand wash dishes; taking shorter showers; helping my family rethink our front lawn--I like to remember the individual brilliance of the molecules. It's a little thing, but something we can all agree is  important.

Crossposted on Readers' Books Facebook

Really, in the end, what ARE they Seeking?

Seeker
Arwen Elys Dayton
448 pgs
Copy: ARC
Read: Ides of March. Ish.
Spoilers: Lots: it is hard to criticize in loose terms.
Recommend to: People who liked Matched and Divergent

I didn't hate this book. In fact, I found it a decent read: entertaining, if not thought provoking; interesting, if not entrancing. Set in a vaguely futuristic world, with vaguely mystical elements, Seeker features Quin Kincaid as the intrepid, yet suffering heroine. Quin has been raised by her family in an isolated estate in Scotland, trained to become a Seeker. What Seekers seek and why is purposefully shrouded in confusion at the beginning of the novel. Unfortunately, even after her lover John's dismissal from the training program, a grim truth has been revealed to Quin and her (second) cousin Shinobu, "after [which] there is no going back" (back matter). Acting as a watcher and occasional interference for the young people is an unaging figure called Young Dread; named Maud she is plotting the downfall of the abusive Middle Dread and causing mischief while awaiting the return of Old Dread.

The adventure is good, propped up by the well-written and interesting sections featuring Maud. However, the world-building, character-building, and, indeed, set-building, fall down at the slightest hint of a breeze. The story is told in alternating third-person points of view; the world, close to our own, features weapons which open doorways to different places, which are owned by families of Seekers. (A major issue in the novel: it is never made clear what exactly they are supposed to be Seeking)

Let the spoilers begin.

Firstly: Quin. Her character development relies mainly on a forced, wooden kind of passion (portrayed by a repetition of fact, rather than sentiment, without any backing of emotional cues). Upon escaping--barely--from an attack upon the estate (instigated by John, her love-interest) Quin chooses to forget all that she has done and her past. While I am not against amnesia as a plot point, Dayton treats the issue with the same cookie cutter attitude as the evolution of Quin's romances ("I love him!" "I love him, but he attacked my family!" "I kinda remember who he is, even though I have amnesia!" "I love him now that I kinda remember him!" "I love my (second) cousin, I have all along!"). 

This clunky character development extends to John and, to a slightly lesser extent, Shinobu. John spends most of his life thinking a set series of thoughts, all boiling down too: "I'm not doing anything too bad, not if it is for the sake of good." Shinobu is given a few more interesting plot/character developments. I appreciated his drug addiction phase--he actively chooses drug use as means of forgetting (while Quin passively forgets everything in the middle of being mystically healed: a pattern of male vs. female agency that repeats throughout the novel).

The book is redeemed by the aforementioned Young Dread, whose well-written and almost lyrical passages make the other chapters fail in comparison. Maud is patient, clever, complex, and driven; she easily steals the stage from the flighty Quin. One can believe Maud has been trained over centuries to become the killer and victim that she is; picturing Quin with her "whip-sword" (a device which changes into different weapons on command) is almost impossible.

The ending of the novel leaves it open for a sequel (because God forbid we have a stand-alone YA SF story). It is a book that some teens will like, while others will feel cheated by the shallow characters and the bare-bones world-building. Since the movie rights have been sold, and the publisher (Penguin Random House) has spent a great deal of time and money promoting this book, one can only wonder if today's teen readers are nonintellectual and incurious or if writers, publishers, and movie executives merely think they are.

Crossposted: Children of an Idle Mind, Librarything

Readers': Cats and books should not be made into sandwiches, but they go awesome together

Why is it that there are such things as bookstore and library cats? We don’t have a cat at Readers’--for a myriad of reasons, possibly including perpetually open doors, price of cat food, and the increase in vacuuming duties--and instead have the occasional dog biscuit for pets that are so obliging to have brought their people into a bookstore. However, there is something so iconic--in my head, at least--about a cat curled up on a pile of books.

Authors are fascinated by cats. From The Cat in the Hat to Old Possum Book of Cats; from Pete the Cat to Behemoth, cats are intertwined with books. Hemingway had so many that they interbreed and created cats with (very useful and adorable) multiple digits. Some popular names of cats are bookish names--Dewey is a famous library cat; I’ve met a Yossarian; and if I were to be given the honor of naming a female cat, what else could she possibly be but Diana Wynne Jones? (Her nickname could be Winnie)

I already have a very literary cat. My cat is polydactyl, or, as some people call them, a Hemingway cat. Many cats with extra toes merely have a few extra claws, but mine is unusual in that he has opposable thumbs. This allows him to get into all kinds of extra trouble (like dragging his water bowl around the floor, and hooking open closet doors) but has also led to his venerable name: Tennyson.

This is a self-indulgent cat caregiver’s way of saying that cats and books seem to go together. I like dogs a lot, and I think they are also very excellent companions for a reader. Not only are dogs good at cuddling and staying still, but they occasionally take their reader for walks, to, say, the bookstore. If you are lucky enough to have a cuddling cat (I don’t; Tennyson likes to sleep in boxes and grocery bags instead), they provide excellent reading partners. But we have another cat who only likes to cuddle if one doesn’t have a book with one and will attempt to engulf any reading matter with his sizable fluffy mane. So they do not beat out the dogs “sitting still” contest and cats certainly don’t like to join their people on walks around the neighborhood. That is, after all, why we don’t have a box of cat treats.

I am not sure why cats and books are such great partners. Perhaps it is that cats and books have the same kind of transformative abilities. When looking at a new book, or meeting a new cat, there are all kinds of possibilities inside. Will this be a good book? Will this cat be a friendly cat? Will it be easy to read? Will this be a shy cat who runs away as soon as you say hello? And when it is a book you have read and loved before, it is just as it is with your own cat: you may think you understand it and love it, but it will some day surprise you again with some beautiful passage or by developing the propensity to sleep in your laundry baskets. A book, like a cat, will always surprise you. With this in mind, Readers’ doesn’t need a bookstore cat, seeing as we already have books aplenty. You can add your own cat, if you wish (but only at home--we don’t have cat biscuits).


Crossposted: Readers' Books Facebook

List: my favorite mugs for coffee

1. The white one with the funny little wrinkle ridges on the upper half
2. That amazing handless one that I got in Wales that is all kinds of wonderful blues and greens and made it all the way backpacking through the UK
3. The one with the Jane Austen quote my sister gave me for my 20th birthday ("You can not be more than twenty I am sure/so you need not conceal your age)
4. The chipped one with the wide mouth and the penguins that Mom wants to throw away, but that I might have to hide from her because for some unknown reason, I don't like the one that's the same shape but read with funky cats on it
5. The one with the whales on it
6. My 101 Dalmatians mug (this far down on the list because it is usually used for tea at work)
7. The one that's almost the same size as the white one, but a little thicker in the brim and with a vaguely Mediterranean pattern.
8. That one with the zoo animals as Santa's reindeer that we only use at Christmas
9a. (tie) Downtown Keene New Hampshire mug from the 1994 Pumpkin fest
9b. (tie) Those amazingly interesting greenish GLASS mugs that my Aunt Nancy has
10. My mug with the sheep on it.

Readers' Books: The Book is Always Better Than the Movie

The Book is Always Better Than the Movie

I'm playing a game with my friends--who are reading this and hopefully not annoyed with me for spilling this--where we are dream-casting Terry Pratchett's Discworld. There are no rules. Basically, we just have to put what particular era each actor is actually coming from. Thus, we have accidentally set up a love match between Matt Damon and Katherine Hepburn. Then there's the comedy duo made up by the actor--Mark Sheppard--at his current age, and Mark Sheppard from a dozen years ago. Time, in this case, is most definitely relative.

This makes a fun game. But it also drives home how impossible it is to concoct a movie out of a book. There's all the obvious problems: time, length, setting. The infinite range of a reader's imagination is much more complex issue. Maybe an author starts off with a pretty clear image of their character and that character is set down on the page. But when that page is read, that same person can be read as such disparate people as Simon Pegg, Spencer Tracy, or Clive Owen. There isn't a single character on our list that has only one choice; there isn't one casting choice that all of us agree on.

From what we know of Ancient Greek tragedy, most of the violence occurred offstage. (Spoiler: that's why Oedipus stabs out his eyes backstage.) It's not simply because the Greeks knew the limitations of drama without CG; scholars have considered a religious motivation--not wanting to stain the stage with blood. It could also be that they knew that whatever the audience imagined occurring was always going to be better, even if a dedicated Athenian method actor grabbed a spear and blinded himself on stage.

Consider, then, that one's eyes are the stage. We view a movie or tv and we see what it tells us to see. If I talk about BBC's "Sherlock," you know I'm talking about the wonderful duo of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. But when we read, we build the cast ourselves, taking bits and pieces of people we know and people we've seen, until we have a character that is uniquely ours. If I bring up Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, your memory is of a very different person than the one that I'm talking about. A character has as many doppelgangers as it has readers.

There are some movies based on books that are great in and of themselves. I personally like the Lord of the Rings better on screen. I've never bothered to read The Godfather, since Marlon Brando has "branded" himself so well into the story it'd be a waste of time. But there's also those movies that made a complete hash of it. "Ella Enchanted" came out in 2004 and I'm still peeved at the gross misinterpretation of one of my beloved childhood novels. "The Borrowers" was completely unacceptable.

It isn't necessarily the book that is better than the movie. There are movies that are just as creative and wonderful and thought-provoking as books. There are books that translate nicely into movies--"Shawshank Redemption", "Pelican Brief". It's the brain, it's the imagination, it's the individual experience of the story that occurs most often when reading. The story we read, the one that we create behind the scenes, is always better than something plopped down in front of us like overcooked spaghetti. As readers, we feast upon the food of our own gleaning: as readers, we are never alone.

Crossposted: Readers' Books Facebook

List: Why I Like Real Weather

1. Easily recognition of the passage of time
1. Oh, look, it rained on Friday and hailed on Tuesday, which was yesterday, so it must be Wednesday
2. Yes, this has been a problem when the weather is the same from Friday to Wednesday
3. Not to mention: it is snowing? it is winter; it is sunny? it is summer. Surprisingly useful information.
2. Clouds are more interesting to look at 
1. Yes, I still look for shapes in clouds
2. Why don't you?
3. Cupping warm beverages when it is cool out
4. Mittens!
5. Parking whilst watching a thunderstorm
1. Much more fun than parking to make out
2. Never really got that point of that one.
3. Also, incidentally, is it actually safe to watch a thunderstorm from inside a car?
4. I mean, it doesn't really matter, since I'd still do it, but for form's sake? 
6. Rebirth of flowers means more
1. Without real seasons, it just means sneezing.
7. Wardrobe changing
1. When confronted with the fact that one can wear one's whole wardrobe all year round, one is also confronted with the full amount of clothing
2. This then causes space issues.
8. More things to write odes on
1. Don't really want to write odes, but it would come in handy.
9. Local news channels are more interesting
10. One doesn't feel guilty when taking a shower
1. I'm so sorry, Gov. Brown and the state of California, but I just really need to shave my legs. 

A "Phantom Tollbooth" for Over-scheduled Modern Girls

The Lost Track of Time
Paige Britt
320 page
Copy: ARC, publication date: 31 March 2015
Read: not sure; probably back in January
Spoilers: A fair bit, including ones for The Phantom Tollbooth
Crossposted: Children of an Idle Mind, Librarything

I adored this book. Scholastic has really hit it out of the park for the 2015 (more on this in later reviews), but this one has the making of a classic. Remember The Phantom Tollbooth? Or, at any rate, hopefully you remember it? (When I finished reading this book, and gushed about it to my best friend, she informed me that she hadn't actually read Tollbooth, and if she were living near me, I would have thrown copies at her. As it was, I just mailed one)

Most of the point of Phantom Tollbooth, aside from the word-play--complete with vocabulary: that's how I learned words like dodecahedron and din and doldrum and a lots of words starting with letters other than d--and the sheer adventure of the story, was that one needs to use one's mind. It was aimed at teaching young readers that boredom is laziness and that intelligence creates the best kind of adventure. It is, in short, truly inspiring.

But in multiple re-readings over time, I came up with a few quibbles. Firstly, the main character Milo is a boy. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with being a boy. I suppose we need a few of those hanging around, and, frankly, at this point in children's literature, it is actually becoming more and more difficult to find books for intelligent boys who don't like spaceships or Greek gods. However, Tollbooth was published in 1961, and the only female characters are the Princesses of Rhyme and Reason, who have disappeared and are waiting to be rescued up in their Castle in the Air. Although I love the book, we don't need more princesses-in-need-of-rescue and, to be perfectly frank, why the fuck didn't a pair of sisters named Rhyme and Reason rescue themselves? (In more sympathetic moments, I suspect that they were taking a nice vacation and Milo's rescue was something of a nuisance). So: feminism is quibble one.

Quibble two: from what I can see, as neither child nor parent, kids don't seem to have any time to be bored. Sports, and lessons, and enforced hobbies; camps, clubs, classes; the horror that is smart phones: I don't actually think that middle class kids with well meaning parents actually have time to get bored. Getting bored is really important--as long as one doesn't get too bored, of course. Getting bored is what makes one's imagination kick into gear, it's what makes us go on adventures. No one goes on a true adventure because it would look good on a college transcript.

The Lost Track of Time addresses both of these quibbles. To be honest, my beef with Tollbooth was mostly subconscious until I came across this book. Penelope, the intrepid adventurer, suffers under a well-meaning organizational development type mother who runs her daughter's life like Penelope is another event to plan. Their various schedules--during which every fifteen minutes is accounted for--might be humorous to the target audience (8-12), but was verging on tear-jerking for me. To never have any free time! It is bad enough as an adult(ish), but for a child! Heartbreaking and all too much a part of reality.

Penelope, like Milo, escapes her predicament into an allegorical world of word-play and adventure, complete with anthropomorphized puns (my favorite was the Wild Bore), and a mythic figure to be rescued (The Great Moodler, moodling being day-dreaming). Her journey teaches the reader that schedules, just like boredom, can always go overboard.

Recommended for over-scheduled girls (if they can sneak away from their mothers to read it); for grandmothers to give to over-scheduled girls; and for anyone who has been an over-scheduled girl (warning: in that case, there could be tears.)

Readers' Books: Art vs. art

There are a lot of classes I regret not taking in college. Something sciencey might have been useful, for example, and maybe something more about costume design instead of that second class on James Joyce. Right now, I’ve been thinking a lot about why I never took an art course.

Unlike the whole lack-of-science thing, which really only was justified by my distaste for remarkably boring and expensive textbooks, there were legitimate reasons against taking anything on creating art. First of all, there was the fact that you had to take a whole year of drawing before you were allowed to do any other art course. In a school where you can only feasibly take four, maybe five, courses a semester, throwing in this extra bit when you’re trying to gain a double major would be self-sabotage. There was also the uncomfortable feeling of Judgement--of whether whatever one creates is good enough. Most importantly, there’s the fact that while I create beautiful things, most people don’t call it Art. My school wouldn’t even teach pottery--it was much too philistine of an activity.

Some part of me has to admire the double standard of making art history students study ancient pottery as Art while simultaneously denying art students the opportunity to create it, but mostly this brings me back to an internal debate: art vs. Art.

Here’s the actual reason I never took that basic drawing course: I was chicken. I’ve never been naturally good at drawing--knitting, sure; sewing, yes; color theory explored in post-modern collage of empty tea wrappers and magazine ads, certainly--but my drawings tend to look like fun house mirrors done by a hesitant grade-schooler.

Here’s something else: I love to write and I’ve only ever taken one fiction writing class. It was made clear to me, in that course, that the writing I liked to do--fantasy, mostly--was not worthy of my talent or my skill, that I needed to bare my soul and write Literature, that, in short, I was wasting my time. I learned that beginning short stories with either an alarm clock or a commute was completely verboten, and that peer editing is largely useless. Mostly what I gained was three years of writer’s block and the accompanying heartbreak, a feeling like someone had chopped off one of my limbs.

I found this book in the store called Art Before Breakfast*. It is a basic drawing course for the busy, “a zillon ways to be more creative no matter how busy you are”. This is not normally the sort of book I read, but I flipped through it and was immediately both charmed and inspired. David Gregory, the author, marries an encouraging tone with matter-of-fact information, but most importantly, he talks about the difference between art and Art. You’ll have to read it for yourself to find out exactly what he says--I don’t have the space to give it justice--but he lays out that interior debate I’ve had and shines a light into the shadows.

The epiphany Gregory states is one I have been slowly embracing, but have never thought to apply to drawing. It is simply this: who cares if it is Art or art? You’re being creative, you’re doing something different and making yourself happy. Unless you’re planning to sell it at a fancy post-modern gallery, or if you want to bill yourself as the Great American Novelist, do what makes you happy. Do it for yourself, not for the sake of Art.

So here I am, sketching every morning before breakfast. I scribble away for a few minutes, then eat my toast, and feel accomplished for the day. Sometimes the results even resemble my coffee mug, the waywards folds of newspaper, or my plate. I even think I’m getting a bit better, every day, and every day, simple art wins out a little over Art. But before you ask, no, you can’t see my drawings. I still a little too chicken for that.

*Art Before Breakfast, David Gregory, 2015

[Cross-posted: Readers' Books Facebook]