Reading and Resolutions: 2010

My reading resolutions for 2010 were modest:

• Middlemarch, by George Elliot
• The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan
• Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
• The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas
• Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Middlemarch was very nice (as was the BBC miniseries), The Lightning Thief was... eh... Our Mutual Friend was outstanding, reminding me that yes, Dickens is one of my all-time favorite authors. (And the miniseries was good, too.) I'm halfway through The Count of Monte Cristo, enjoying it a lot, and plan on listening to Crime and Punishment as soon as I'm done with Dumas.

Resolutions aside, my numbers for 2010 were squashed by European travel--instead of averaging around 100 books, this year's count was 55. More than a little demoralizing. My brain looks at that and feels half empty. But, I remind myself, quality is worth more than quantity. Last year, one category in this list was Books I Won't Be Reading Again. I certainly don't need that heading today!

So what were the highlights?

Best New Discoveries of 2010
Author: Elisabeth Elliot (Keep a Quiet Heart, A Chance to Die)
Novel: We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson

Favorite Classic
Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens

Favorite MG/YA Novels
The Boneshaker, by Kate Milford
The Chestnut King, by N.D. Wilson
Finnikin of the Rock, by Melina Marchetta
Heist Society, by Ally Carter

Most Difficult to Complete (But I Did!)
The Bondage of the Will, by Martin Luther

Disappointments from Authors I Liked Last Year
Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
Keeper, by Kathi Appelt
Penny Dreadful, by Laurel Snyder

Surprises from Authors I Didn't Like Last Year
Crunch, by Leslie Connor

Favorite ReRead
Winner two years running. Possibly the best book that will ever enter my life.
Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta

Books I Didn’t Think Would Be That Great But Ended Up Amazing
The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church, by Roland Allen

Books I Thought Would Be Amazing But Really Weren't That Great
Illyria, by Elizabeth Hand
How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff

Hopes and Goals for 2011: An Eclectic List

I'm probably being too ambitious, since March-June will see me nannying four boys under four. But there are 72 books on my Goodreads to-read shelf!

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas

Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens
The Piper's Son, by Melina Marchetta
Fallen, by David Maine
Two Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage, by Madeline L'Engle
Uncommon Criminals, by Ally Carter
Fly Trap, by Francis Hardinge
Affliction, by Edith Schaffer
What is a Family? by Edith Schaffer
Common Sense Christian Living, by Edith Schaffer
Heretics, by G.K. Chesterton

What's Wrong with the World, by G.K. Chesterton
Pilgrim's Inn, by Elizabeth Goudge
The Dragon's Tooth, by N.D. Wilson
Five Red Herrings, by Dorothy Sayers

The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde
Okay for Now, by Gary Schmidt

And to all a good night!

A few small random gifts this merry Christmas:

• The discovery of David Taylor.

I think this is one of the qualities that separates good art from mediocre art. Mediocre art always seems to feel the need to rush to the point. It leaves nothing in question and, if you will, seems embarrassed about any leisurely, meandering spaces, the kind that appear to bear no direct import on the "point" of the art but of course in the end make the point all the more richly--and rich.... Unfortunately so much of art made by Christians is burdened by the need to "make the most of time" rather than letting time, artistically speaking, find its inner telos. But if the Bible teaches us anything, it is that God positively delights to take his time.

• The discovery that Nate Wilson is involved in a 100 Cupboards film adaption.

• And a lovely bit of G.K. Chesterton:

This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dullness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.

Yes, thank you, Jane and I had a lovely birthday yesterday (if you have to ask Jane who, you really aren't her friend). We attended a ballet (Nutcracker), spent hours at an excellent Salvation Army, and opened a certain faded letter. We are now freshly cultured and newly attired, ready to take on the impending year: me, 24, and Jane, 235.

Your foolish, Old Self

"May 19, 19--

"This is my birthday. I am fourteen years old today. I wrote a letter 'From myself at fourteen to myself at twenty-four,' sealed it up and put it away in my cupboard, to be opened on my twenty-fourth birthday. I made some predictions in it. I wonder if they will have come to pass when I open it...” --Emily Climbs, L.M. Montgomery


Tomorrow night, I will open my own letter from Fourteen, written ten years ago in the midst of a passionate affair with Maud Montgomery, and with Emily, especially--a passion that will never, ever completely die. It will be ghostly, in a way, reading the letter, and no doubt its contents will seem bare and foolish after a decade of anticipation. But still, I cannot wait.


From Emily's Quest:

On her twenty-fourth birthday Emily opened and read the letter she had written "from herself at fourteen to herself at twenty-four." It was not the amusing performance she had once expected it to be. She sat long at her window with the letter in her hand, watching the light of yellow, sinking stars over the bush that was still called Lofty John's oftener than not, from old habit. What would pop out when she opened that letter? A ghost of first youth? Of ambition? Of vanished love? Of lost friendship? Emily felt she would rather burn the letter than read it. But that would be cowardly. One must face things--even ghosts. With a sudden quick movement she cut open the envelope and took out the letter.

A whiff of old fragrance came with it. Folded in it were some dried rose-leaves--crisp brown things that crumbled to dust under her touch. Yes, she remembered that rose--Teddy had brought it to her one evening when they had been children together and he had been so proud of that first red rose that bloomed on a little house rose-bush Dr. Burnley had given him--the only rose that ever did bloom on it, for that matter. His mother had resented his love for the little plant. One night it was accidentally knocked off the window-sill and broken. If Teddy thought or knew there was any connection between the two facts he never said so. Emily had kept the rose as long as possible in a little vase on her study table; but the night she had written her letter she had taken the limp, faded thing and folded it--with a kiss--between the sheets of paper. She had forgotten that it was there; and now it fell in her hand, faded, unbeautiful, like the rose-hopes of long ago, yet with some faint bitter-sweetness still about it. The whole letter seemed full of it--whether of sense or spirit she could hardly tell.

This letter was, she sternly told herself, a foolish, romantic affair. Something to be laughed at. Emily carefully laughed at some parts of it. How crude--how silly--how sentimental--how amusing! Had she really ever been young and callow enough to write such flowery exultant nonsense? And one would have thought, too, that fourteen regarded twenty-four as verging on venerable.

"Have you written your great book?" airily asked Fourteen in conclusion. "Have you climbed to the very top of the Alpine Path? Oh, Twenty-four, I'm envying you. It must be splendid to be you. Are you looking back patronizingly and pityingly to me? You wouldn't swing on a gate now, would you? Are you a staid old married woman with several children, living in the Disappointed House with One-You-Know-Of? Only don't be stodgy, I implore you, dear Twenty-four. And do be dramatic. I love dramatic things and people. Are you Mrs. ------ ------? What name will fill those blanks? Oh, dear Twenty-four, I put into this letter for you a kiss--and a handful of moonshine--and the soul of a rose--and some of the green sweetness of the old hill field--and a whiff of wild violets. I hope you are happy and famous and lovely; and I hope you haven't quite forgotten

"Your foolish

"OLD SELF."

Emily locked the letter away.

"So much for that nonsense," she said scoffingly.

Then she sat down in her chair, and dropped her head on her desk. Little silly, dreamy, happy, ignorant Fourteen! Always thinking that something great and wonderful and beautiful lay in the years ahead. Quite sure that the "mountain purple" could be reached. Quite sure that dreams always came true. Foolish Fourteen, who yet had known how to be happy.

"I'm envying you," said Emily. "I wish I had never opened your letter, foolish little Fourteen. Go back to your shadowy past and don't come again--mocking me. I'm going to have a white night because of you. I'm going to lie awake all night and pity myself."

Yet already the footsteps of destiny were sound-on the stairs--though Emily thought they were only Cousin Jimmy's.

He had come to bring her a letter--a thin letter--and if Emily had not been too much absorbed in herself at fourteen she might have noticed that Cousin Jimmy's eyes were as bright as a cat's and that an air of ill-concealed excitement pervaded his whole being. Moreover that, when she had thanked him absently for the letter and gone back to her desk, he remained in the shadowy hall outside, watching her slyly through the half-open door. At first he thought she was not going to open the letter--she had flung it down indifferently and sat staring at it. Cousin Jimmy went nearly mad with impatience.

But after a few minutes more of absent musing Emily roused herself with a sigh and stretched out a hand for the letter.

"If I don't miss my guess, dear little Emily, you won't sigh when you read what's in that letter," thought Cousin Jimmy exultantly.

Emily looked at the return address in the upper corner, wondering what the Wareham Publishing Company were writing to her about. The big Warehams! The oldest and most important publishing house in America. A circular of some kind, probably. Then she found herself staring incredulously at the typewritten sheet--while Cousin Jimmy performed a noiseless dance on Aunt Elizabeth's braided rug out in the hall.

"I--don't--understand," gasped Emily.

DEAR MISS STARR:--

We take pleasure in advising you that our readers report favourably with regard to your story The Moral of the Rose and if mutually satisfactory arrangements can be made we shall be glad to add the book to our next season's lists. We shall also be interested in hearing of your plans with regard to future writing.

Very sincerely yours, etc.

"I don't understand--" said Emily again.

Cousin Jimmy could hold himself in no longer. He made a sound between a whoop and hurrah. Emily flew across the room and dragged him in.

"Cousin Jimmy, what does this mean? You must know something about it--how did the House of Wareham ever get my book?"

"Have they really accepted it?" demanded Cousin Jimmy.

"Yes. And I never sent it to them. I wouldn't have supposed it was the least use--the Warehams. Am I dreaming?"

"No. I'll tell you--don't be mad now, Emily. You mind Elizabeth asked me to tidy up the garret a month ago. I was moving that old cardboard box you keep a lot of stuff in and the bottom fell out. Everything went--so--all over the garret. I gathered 'em up--and your book manuscript was among 'em. I happened to look at a page--and then I set down--and Elizabeth came up an hour later and found me still a-sitting there on my hams reading. I'd forgot everything. My, but she was mad! The garret not half done and dinner ready. But I didn't mind what she said--I was thinking, 'If that book made me forget everything like that there's something in it. I'll send it somewhere.' And I didn't know anywhere to send it but to the Warehams. I'd always heard of them. And I didn't know how to send it--but I just stuffed it in an old cracker box and mailed it to them offhand."

"Didn't you even send stamps for its return?" gasped Emily, horrified.

"No, never thought of it. Maybe that's why they took it. Maybe the other firms sent it back because you sent stamps."

"Hardly." Emily laughed and found herself crying.

"Emily, you ain't mad at me, are you?"

"No--no--darling--I'm only so flabbergasted, as you say yourself, that I don't know what to say or do. It's all so--the Warehams!"

"I've been watching the mails ever since," chuckled Cousin Jimmy. "Elizabeth has been thinking I've gone clear daft at last. If the story had come back I was going to smuggle it back to the garret--I wasn't going to let you know. But when I saw that thin envelope--I remembered you said once the thin envelopes always had good news--dear little Emily, don't cry!"

"I can't--help it--and oh, I'm sorry for what I called you, little Fourteen. You weren't silly--you were wise--you knew."

"It's gone to her head a little," said Cousin Jimmy to himself. "No wonder--after so many set-backs. But she'll soon be quite sensible again."

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

It's been seven years now since our family first heard whisperings of a potential Narnia movie. While we waited, we filmed our own version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe--twelve cousins working 18 months to produce a faithful, creative, hilarious family treasure that will ever tie us together ... and ever bore viewers whose surname isn't De Vries.

Seven years later, and Walden has completed their final Narnia film. It certainly isn't a poorly-made adaption, but our post-theater spirits were rather low. The film fluctuates between didactic, in an ambiguously moral sort of way, and Typical Fantasy Movie. It is okay; but when a film is just okay, there's no need for Hollywood to dip their fingers into any more of the series.

The Dawn Treader is faithful to the structure of its source, but lacks that singular, elusive charm that Lewis' stories emanate. Notice I said Lewis' stories. It's not just about book vs. movie. It's story vs. story. His tales give a certain thrill that this film lacks in all but a few small scenes. Eustace is very good, his scenes as a human are the glue that holds the film together. However, I read this recently:

"If I read David and Goliath as basically giving me an example, then the story is really about me. I must summon up the faith and courage to fight the giants in my life. But if I read David and Goliath as basically showing me salvation through Jesus, then the story is really about him." (Tim Keller)

There is an essential difference between moralistic and Christ-centered storytelling. Every Hollywood film, no matter its source, preaches some degree of morality. Sometimes it's obvious. Sometimes the filmmakers are more subtle, and create a desire within the viewers to emulate the hero. But either way, it's about us summoning up the faith and courage to fight the giants in our lives.

In the film's story, Eustace is pulled into Narnia so that he can overcome certain character defects, to help complete a mission and save hapless lives. In the original story, he is drawn into Narnia for one great adventure: Aslan saving him.

The men and women behind The Voyage of the Dawn Treader focus on good deeds and summoning strength from within and completing a seven-point task because it's the way that storytelling works within their worldview.

But for a story to live and breathe, to be more than okay, you must replace the moralistic center. Heroic deeds flow naturally and painlessly from a cast that is anchored by the character of Aslan. Such a story is only possible when the artist's work is Christ-centered. That doesn't mean Christ dominates the story. On the contrary, such a center frees the story from being overwhelmed by its Quest, balancing the twin engines of plot and character. In this novel, Aslan only appears a few times. But his presence under-girds and motivates everything.

Thank God for the nonpareil awesomeness of the Radio Theatre’s Narnia. If you haven't listened to one of their broadcasts lately, dust off The Dawn Treader today. Right now. And enjoy.

Illyria

This is not a post about Elizabeth Hand's novel, Illyria. It is a post about her prose.

Because if I wrote about Illyria, you would glimpse a self-conscious novel, like one of those thin, early ventures into young adult fiction from the 70's, replete with open-ended characters who smoked a lot of drugs, swore prolifically, used archaic sexual terms, and left the reader wondering, what was the point? and, what does it prove?

But to write about the prose of Elizabeth Hand, ah, now there is a topic worthy of your time.

Prose that paints a chair "meat red."

That describes a woman buying up, "one by one, all the houses surrounding her own. Her children ended up living in those homes, like hermit crabs scuttling into empty shells..."

"A harlequin pattern of sunlight filtered through the trellis..."

Prose that knows how to trip along the tongue: ""Unforgettable." That was the word attached to Madeline throughout her career, in every torn clipping I ever read, every review of every performance, every stagy publicity photo that appeared as ancient and remote to me as a stone tablet. Madeline's Unforgettable Cleopatra. Her Unforgettable Viola. Her Unforgettable Series of Unforgettable Triumphs, Never to Be Forgotten."

With prose like that, the first ten pages of Illyria were purple velvet.

She can paint a scene, paint a novel's entire tone, in just a few sentences:

We retained theatrical superstitions, as well, unmoored from their element and thus meaningless. Peacock feather were banned from all our homes. It was considered lucky for a cat to sleep on one of our parochial school uniforms. In the carriage house where Madeline once stored her tattered scripts, and where Aunt Kate now lived, a ghost light burned in an upper window, a forty-watt bulb in a floor lamp without a shade. Our attics were full of ruined costumes, tattered moths'-wings of burned velvet and lace that had been court gowns; crinolines reduced to hoops of whalebone; black satin that, when smacked upon a cousin's unsuspecting head, burgeoned into top hats; lady's gloves that still smelled like the ladies who had last worn them; sinister puppets and jointed dolls used as models for the wardrobe mistress; old photos of Fairhaven, the island in Maine where Madeline had kept a summer home.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant prose.

I wish I could leave it at that, but prose cannot be dissected from story, like so many internal organs. Illyria is a corpse--still warm, yes, a few blood cells still glittering ruby red--but dead all the same.

At first, it's difficult to tell whether the novel was written in those early years of formal young adult literature or if the author allowed her setting to overwhelm her novel. The characters scream, we are Young Adults! Notice our dashing recklessness! Notice our exessive absorbment in drugs, sex and casual profanity! We are Young Adults!

Call me low-brow, bourgeois, but what is the point of this novel, and what does this novel prove?

The prose proves wondrous talent. But in the end, the author's choices create a story that, unlike Madeline's Cleopatra and Viola, is completely forgettable.


On a separate topic, I find it interesting that so many everyman readers have had such strong, sickened reactions to the "kissing cousin" element of the novel. My question is, who are they to judge romance between close relatives as taboo? Yes, yes, they know about DNA and genetic evidence and all that. But they also know that other, formerly stigmatized romances produce their own set of health problems. Whence comes this almost moral repugnance on the part of readers who, on any other day, accept all colors of sexual orientation? Just wondering.

Frances Hardinge has a new book coming out this spring--a sequel to the excellent Fly by Night!

UK: Twilight Robbery. Great name, but obvious marketing problems with that many-lettered t word.

US: Fly Trap. Granted, it doesn't sing like the other title, but a book's cover isn't everything. And when the insides are written by Frances, well, then.

From the publisher: Mosca Mye and Eponymous Clent are in trouble again. Escaping disaster by the skin of their teeth, they find refuge in Toll, the strange gateway town where visitors may neither enter nor leave without paying a price. By day, the city is well-mannered and orderly; by night, it's the haunt of rogues and villains. Wherever there's a plot, there's sure to be treachery, and wherever there's treachery, there's sure to be trouble - and where there's trouble, Clent, Mosca and the web-footed apocalypse Saracen can't be far behind. But as past deeds catch up with them and old enemies appear, it looks as if this time there's no way out...