Reading at Random
Of course I try to be somewhat discriminating, and have managed to avoid the lure of Meg Cabot (The Princess Diaries, Queen of Babble) and Megan McCafferty’s novels, wittily titled things like Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings, which appeal heavily to our older teen girls. Meanwhile I was glad I’d already read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy as with the first movie coming out in December the resident copies have been in high demand. I was quickly alerted to Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse) about high-school-attending vampires and werewolves in perpetually rainy Forks, Washington (now in movie production) and tore through the first three novels. Although the premise may sound a bit dicey, the characters are totally compelling and the dialogue in particular is genius. I’m now pining for the fourth (Breaking Dawn), currently being written and due to be released in August 2008. Meanwhile I received a tip that led to my discovery of Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy, an account of late 19th century English boarding school girls dabbling in the occult, and whizzed through the first two novels. The third, The Sweet Far Thing, was just released in December 2007, and I was in a good position to lobby the head librarian to add the final chapter of Gemma’s adventures to our most recent order of books.
What am I reading this week? Yesterday I finished John Cowper Powys’ The Brazen Head. I hadn’t read Powys before, and I’ve come away with the impression that he’s a little like a mystic British Rabelais—he has some of that same Rabelais-voice, the sound of enormous elephants in a manic mood, a sort of ponderous cuteness coupled with a need to grab everything, everything, and tally it up and look at it—worms, trees, dirt, the stratosphere, and, in one chapter, a monster at the centre of the earth whose babies (perhaps imaginary) peer through crevices at a Jewish-Mongolian giant ("the Hebraic Mongol,” Powys calls him at one point) having sex inside a cave. Faster-paced than Rebelais though, and with no lists and no vomiting, as far as I remember.
Then I read Colette’s Ripening Seed, all sea-atmosphere and nuance, with her usual sly trick of turning gender on its head so that the recently deflowered boy comes out of his experience looking like a devastated, ravished maiden, while a girl in the same situation sings a song and cheerfully waters flowers. Then finally polished off a book on Baroque and Rococo art that I’ve been staring at like a dumbass for ages. After that, two Brian Michael Bendis TBPs, Jinx and Goldfish. (Lovely dialogue that man has, such a great way of not telling you too much.) Now I’m fiddling around with a Doris Lessing. It’s in the other room and I can’t remember the title. Summer-something? The Summer of Something? The Summer Before the Dark: that’s it. A woman is working as a Portuguese interpreter while her husband flies overseas. Her children are grown and pursuing archaeological digs in Sudan and climbing holidays in Norway. She is disregarded and restless. Something’s going to come of this dissatisfaction of hers, but I haven’t read enough of the book yet to know what it might be.
Comment by Deanne Sole — February 28, 2008 @ 6:00 pm