Kristin Cashore's Blog, page 27

Remembering

When I told my sister, codename: Cordelia, how it feels to be here today on the first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing, she pointed out that maybe it's better that the anniversary is almost a week before this year's marathon (next Monday). It gives people space to grieve. I hadn't thought of that; I had been thinking only that it feels like two anniversaries rather than one, one day of terrible sadness, then, a few days later, another day of terrible sadness. But I think she's right. It's good to have a day dedicated to looking back and mourning, and another day dedicated to reclaiming our marathon.

It's very sad here today.

Here's a link to the metta meditation I posted last year.

April in Cambridge

Spring, you are a MOST welcome guest.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TED Talk on the Danger of a Single Story

Have you seen novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TED Talk yet? Called "The danger of a single story," it's beautifully composed and full of compassion. If you make 19 minutes for it, I think you'll be glad you did so.



Here's the link to the talk on the TED page, where you can access subtitles and also the transcript of the talk in many languages.

Reading and the Cosmos

I'm almost always in the process of reading a book; often I'm reading two. It's not unusual for me to be reading three. (There's also a scattering of a half-dozen books that I read at the pace of a snail across years, but I'm not counting those here – I'm talking about books I'm actively reading now with the intention of finishing them soonish.) That's usually my limit, and when I'm reading three books, two of them will almost certainly be either nonfiction or short stories; I rarely read more than one novel at the same time.

Right now, however, I'm in a few days of taking a break from all writing, which means I have more time to read. I am also preparing, in invisible ways, for the next bunch of writing – which means I'm finding myself drawn to more nonfiction than is usual for me. Putting together the pleasure reading, the reading that is obligated for various reasons, and the reading specifically directed toward informing my writing, I'm currently reading:

The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin. Such a wonderful book to soak up slowly (I'm also alternately listening to the audiobook, which is a delight), and I'm noticing the way Le Guin manages to describe a landscape or a room with one simple, searing sentence which leaves me with a clear vision and does not numb my mind with boredom (as so much descriptive language tends to do). In Urras: "They came into the reading room of the library. Aisles of old books, under delicate double arches of marble, stood in dim serenity; the lamps on the long reading tables were plain spheres of alabaster." Done; no more description of the reading room needed. In Anarres: "The wide streets of Abbenay were quiet in the winter night. At each crossing the dim streetlight made a pool of silver, across which dry snow flurried like shoals of tiny fish, chasing their shadows." Obviously there are grander things to talk about in a book like this, but I'm also loving the little things.

Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice, by bell hooks. This is a collection of essays, published in 2013 by Routledge, in which hooks talks about systems of domination and how we can challenge them. A dominator culture hurts everyone in that culture; hooks has a way of presenting things clearly, helping me see the bigger picture. A couple of excerpts: "Accountability is a more expansive concept because it opens a field of possibility wherein we are all compelled to move beyond blame to see wherein our responsibility lies. Seeing clearly that we live within a dominator culture of imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, I am compelled to locate where my responsibility lies. In some circumstances I am more likely to be victimized by an aspect of that system, in other circumstances I am in a position to be a victimizer. If I only lay claim to those aspects of the system where I define myself as the oppressed and someone else as my oppressor, then I continually fail to see the larger picture. After more than thirty years of talking to folks about domination, I can testify that masses of folks in our society – both black and white – resist seeing the larger picture." (30-31) Also: "As we move away from dominator culture towards a liberatory culture where partnership and mutuality are valued we create a culture wherein we can all learn to love. There can be no love where there is domination. And any time we do the work of love we are doing the work of ending domination." (37)

Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas, by Eva Saulitis. From the cover copy: "Ever since Eva Saulitis began her whale research in Alaska in the 1980s, she has been drawn deeply into the lives of a single extended family of endangered orcas struggling to survive in Prince William Sound. Over the course of a decades-long career spent observing and studying these whales, and eventually coming to know them as individuals, she has, sadly, witnessed the devastation wrought by the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 – after which not a single calf has been born to the group. With the intellectual rigor of a scientist and the heart of a poet, Saulitis gives voice to these vital yet vanishing survivors and the place they are so loyal to. Both an elegy for one orca family and a celebration of the entire species, Into Great Silence is a moving portrait of the interconnectedness of humans with animals and place – and of the responsibility we have to protect them." Here are a few random but beautiful excerpts: "It felt like a dream, as if I'd asked, before sleep: Show me how to be part of this place." (Page 4 – though I'm reading the e-book, so I'm not certain how the page numbers translate to the paper book.) "Most of all, I agonized over stories of the roundups of the 1960s and '70s, live captures of wild orcas for aquariums, juveniles torn away from mothers. Normally residents stay with their mothers for life. Some of those orcas, having been herded with powerboats and seal bombs, surrounded by seines, culled from their pods, isolated in net pens, and shipped all over the world, still circled tanks, day after day." (7) "I fingered my sweater's hem. My mother had knitted it to keep me warm in a wilderness utterly foreign to her." (22)

The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, by Orlando Figes. This book is largely about paranoia, treachery, and heartbreak at the family level during Stalin's regime and I'm honestly not ready to formulate any personal reactions yet, beyond that it's a difficult read for a lot of reasons. Here's a link to the Kirkus (starred) review and an excerpt from the PW review: "One in eight people in the Soviet Union were victims of Stalin's terror—virtually no family was untouched by purges, the gulag, forced collectivization and resettlement, says Figes in this nuanced, highly textured look at personal life under Soviet rule. Relying heavily on oral history, Figes, winner of an L.A. Times Book Prize for A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924, highlights how individuals attempted to maintain a sense of self even in the worst years of the Stalinist purges. More often than not, they learned to stay silent and conform, even after Khrushchev's thaw lifted the veil on some of Stalin's crimes. Figes shows how, beginning with the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, the Soviet experience radically changed personal and family life. People denied their experiences, roots and their condemned relatives in order to survive and, in some cases, thrive. At the same time, Soviet residents achieved great things, including the defeat of the Nazis in WWII, that Russians remember with pride. By seamlessly integrating the political, cultural and social with the stories of particular people and families, Figes retells all of Soviet history and enlarges our understanding of it."

Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I have never read this book, have only just begun, and am already delighted to be adding it to the mix (though I may need to finish The Dispossessed before I can really get into this other big novel).

When I'm reading this many books on so many different topics, you'd think I'd have this sense of great learning and accomplishment. What actually happens is that I become more and more overwhelmed by how little I know about anything. Oh my goodness, I know nothing about science fiction, philosophy, political structures or sociological revolutions, imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, orcas or Alaska, and I know doubly nothing about Russia. Seriously, I feel like the more I try to understand the political history of Russia, the more confused I get, none of which is creating any insight into that nation's current bizarre behavior. I AM IGNORANT!!!

But then I watched the most recent episode of Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey and found that host Neil deGrasse Tyson has a knack for pulling everything together so that suddenly everything fits. Of course, this isn't the first time I've noticed that backing yourself up so you're looking at the entire universe is a great way to get perspective and make everything fit :) – I've even blogged about this, more than once – but this wonderful TV show reminded me, just when I needed it, that there is room for everything and that it's valuable for me to remember, always, how much I don't know. Then Tyson made some remark about how every time a genius astrophysicist makes some new discovery, it comes hand-in-hand with an appreciation of how much he or she doesn't know yet (I am paraphrasing) and I was very happy. I may be confused, but I belong here. :o)

This blog post is kind of dense and all over the place, but I'm going to go ahead and publish it, because I need to clean my bathroom and go buy a pie. These are my important responsibilities to the universe today.

Tiny Vid in Which I (Attempt to) Talk about Upcoming Books

I tried to make a video about what it's like to be working on my upcoming books with my editor, Kathy Dawson. It's 40 seconds long. I think you'll like it.



(If you can't see the video, go to my Blog Actual.)

Window Displays at Bergdorf Goodman

Guess Where I Actually Am

Weights in a window.
 Butterflies in a room.
 An interesting collection waiting by the side of the road. (See the horse in the middle?)
 Someone keeps their hat on their stoop.
 Time to walk many dogs.
 Getting somewhere…
underground.
 Look closely for clues…
 Some clues are at your feet.
 Some are backwards
 and some are very, very tall.
 I ♥ New York.These pictures were taken (in no particular order) in Greenwich Village, Soho, and Tribeca; inside the Butterfly Conservatory at the American Museum of Natural History; in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn; on the F train; at Lincoln Center, where occurred the BEST SWEENEY TODD EVER; someplace in midtown where I got a good view of the Empire State Building; and at the southern end of Central Park.

Guess Where I Amn't

I intended to publish a "Guess Where I Am" blog post during a recent trip but never made the time. So I'm not actually there anymore… But guess what lovely city is pictured below!

 It's a city with lots of new glass
 and signs of old industry.
 Tall old buildings tucked among the new shiny ones
 and houses perched at the top of snowy hills!
 Pretty reservoirs.
 Pretty snowstorms through the windows.
 While I was there, I disposed of some enemies
and engaged in sundry other misbehavior.
 Won't you be my neighbor?
 In fact, it is possible to ride a little red trolley in this city. It's a funicular, called the "incline" by locals...
 and takes you to the top of one of the biggest hills in the very hilly city…
 of beautiful Pittsburgh, PA.

(Thank you to my sisters, codenames: Cordelia and Apocalyptica the Flimflammer, for being the kind of people who think it's hilarious to be photographed being thrown off a bridge.)

ETA Sunday morning. Just in case any of my blog readers decide it would be hilarious to dangle a loved one over a drop for the purposes of creating a Kodak moment (and having just remembered about seabane), I figured I'd point out that it does, in fact, require massive strength to dangle a  person. Much more strength than I have and I expect more strength than most people have. If you look closely at the picture, you'll see that Apocalyptica is holding herself to the bridge and is well-balanced, with me there to tip her legs down should anything go wrong. Please don't dangle your people! :o)

2Cellos for a Thursday

Life has been full and blogging has fallen through the cracks. I've been writing a lot of blog posts in my head – I don't suppose any of you have been getting them? :) I hope to post another "Guess Where I Am" post soon, plus say something about all the audiobooks I've been listening to, plus, commend Amtrak for their wonderful new "writers in residence" program… In lieu of a more thoughtful post, here's an extremely entertaining five-minute break with 2Cellos, performing AC/DC's "Thunderstruck." I've seen these two gentlemen in concert twice, and for the record, they are just as good live as they are in their videos. Though sadly they weren't wearing guyliner or 18th century dress when I saw them live.

Hope to see some of you Tuesday evening at the Harvard Book Store with Marie Rutkoski.

March 4 Event, Marie Rutkoski and Me, Harvard Book Store, 7pm

There's a new book coming out on March 4 that I'm wildly excited about, because it is just so wonderfully excellently super-good… It's called The Winner's Curse and Marie Rutkoski wrote it. Those of you who read my blog carefully know that Marie is a dear friend of mine, so I wouldn't blame you if now you're thinking, Oh, sure, she's going to say it's wonderful, because her friend wrote it – or even, Oh, sure, she's going to think it's wonderful, because her friend wrote it. This sort of dilemma arises when one's friend writes an amazing book: How to convince others that the book itself is amazing and I'm not just speaking out of love for my friend? Well, how about I bring in Kirkus Reviews to help me. From their starred review of The Winner's Curse:

"Rich characterization, exquisite worldbuilding and rock-solid storytelling make this a fantasy of unusual intelligence and depth.... Precise details and elegant prose make this world fresh and vivid. The intricate and suspenseful plot, filled with politics, intrigue and even graphic violence, features neither heroes nor villains; every character displays a complex mixture of talents, flaws and motives. Kestrel is an especially compelling protagonist, both determined and hesitant, honest and manipulative, ferociously observant and painfully naïve.... Breathtaking, tragic and true."

In case you're wondering, all those parts in the middle that I didn't quote are also glowingly positive. There isn't a word of criticism in the entire review, which you can read in its entirety here. I LOVE THIS BOOK. If you're eager for more details about what the book is about, I also recommend reading that review – it's nicely detailed but also somewhat spoiler-sensitive. If you want some details but not too many, only read the first four or five lines. By the way, this book is classified as fantasy because it takes place in a made-up world, but it's one of those fantasies which contain no actual magic. I mention this for the fantasy-phobes among you, although I suppose there's a chance not many fantasy-phobes are reading my blog, unless of course they are masochists *cough*. Also, if you'd like to look at some beautiful, spoiler-free, moody images that create a sense of the book, check out The Winner's Curse Pinterest board that Marie has created.

Marie is coming to Cambridge on her release day and she and I are going to have a conversation together at the Harvard Book Store at 1256 Massachusetts Ave in Cambridge (02138). On March 4 at 7pm. We're tentatively calling it "Marie Rutkoski and Kristin Cashore: Secrets, Power, and Love in Imagined Worlds." Yay! Please come!