Devon Trevarrow Flaherty's Blog, page 38

Book Review: There There

Well, I guess I liked it. As is often the case, I am torn after reading There, There by Tommy Orange. As is not often the case, I am of two minds myself. For a moment, I am in the camp with the Hemingway/PEN committee and the New York Times and all those many fans. And then a second later I’ve run over to the other camp, where the naysayers dwell. The thing is, I agree with everybody on this one, all at once. I am a There There waffler.

[image error] Cover image from Amazon.com

Yes, Tommy Orange can write beautifully. His prose is good, and his insight is exceptional. He can take you there, though his writing is not picaresque or especially immersive: it’s clean and cutting and is about showing us the character. I love the style of weaving together a number of protagonists (as it is also my favorite way to write) and also stringing along a lot of small things to culminate in a big bang at the end. There are scenes that will stick with me over time, searing moments, and of course he has something to say about the topic he carefully chose: modern, urban Native Americans. I am interested in hearing about this topic, curious and concerned.

The thing is, I also felt like this book wasn’t as great as many people made it out to be. It was disjointed at times, as well as lopsided. The first chapter was really well-written and poignant, but it didn’t really belong in the book: it was a separate essay. There There also feels a little too self-aware at times. Tommy Orange is basically Dene Oxendene (at least without me knowing anything about him) and I feel like the curtain’s been pulled aside in Oz with this character. It was unnecessary to spell things out so much. Also, I’m not a fan of reading about the criminal element, though this was done in a way that I could just about tolerate it. It was necessary, too. And even though there is the big kaboom at the end, there are some danglers and I’m sure I’m not the only person who was like “Wait! Did that guy die or not?!”

There There is not at heart a read-to-escape kind of book, even though it does have the set-up of a traditional, weaving plot and climax. It is not especially long and goes down pretty easy. There is a character list at the beginning, which is necessary to keep track of all the main characters. I wish there had been a family tree too, but maybe not, because that would have spoiled some of the surprises. Speaking of which, I loved all the little twists and turns and surprises, but at the same time I was very aware of them, like a guilty pleasure. Maybe they were a little cheesy? I guess cheesy isn’t the worst. The novel is about several characters in Oakland, California. They all have at least some Native blood or family ties and though they come from different places they also all have things in common in their experience. They’re all headed to the Oakland pow wow, as well, some with stars in their eyes, some for work, some reluctantly, some on accident, and some with malcontent.

I can’t help but think about The Night of One Hundred Thieves. On the surface, my second novel is nothing like There There because Hundred Thieves is a fantasy novella set in medieval times. However, it is remarkably the same. The ring is the prize money. The burial is the pow wow. There are thirty main characters with a character list at the beginning, all weaving toward the robbery at the end. Follows the good guys and bad guys and gives them all some backstory. It left some dangling threads but also tied up a few afterwards. So it was a little weird reading it, that way. It was like a book I had already written, and yet completely different.

I would recommend There There for two main reasons: the content and the talent. You just don’t come across a dearth of Native art on your average bookshelf, and this story is going the extra mile by telling us the story of modern, urban Natives. Also, there is no doubt that Tommy Orange is an author to watch. His writing is great; in doubt is exactly how wonderful it is. At any rate, it’s somewhere up there and this is not a difficult book to read (unless you don’t want to think about difficult things or watch people struggle). It’s only like 250 pages and with just a dozen flips to the character list, you’ll be through it in no time.

PS. I read this book as a suggestion for Thanksgiving reading. I would say that the first chapter–the one that reads like an essay–would make interesting Thanksgiving reading, but the rest is a stretch. I get it: it’s about Native Americans, so you can leave it in that category if you like. But I’m more content to just leave it in the general reading space, except for that first chapter.

QUOTES:

“They tore unborn babies out of bellies, took what we intended to be…” (p8).

“…you can’t leave a war once you’ve been, only keep it at bay…” (p9).

“The quiet of the reservation, the side-of-the-highway towns, rural communities, that kind of silence just makes the sound of your brain on fire that much more pronounced” (p9).

“Stray bullets and consequences are landing on our unsuspecting bodies even now” (p10).

“Everything is new and doomed” (p11).

“Money didn’t never do shit to no one. That’s people” (p20).

“Don’t ever let anyone tell you what being Indian means. Too many of us died just to get a little bit of us here, right now, right in this kitchen” (p119).

“Only those who have lost as much as we have see the particularly nasty slice of smile on someone who thinks they’re winning when they say, ‘Get over it’” (p137).

“…and it turns out that who you spend time with ends up mattering more than what you do with that time” (p175).

“Crying because they wanted him gone. Crying because they wanted him back the way he used to be” (p176).

“You could see it in her eyes—DeLonna without DeLonna behind them” (p223).

Holidays Change

When I was nineteen, I studied abroad in Israel. I took an Egyptian history class which culminated with a ten-day trip across the Sinai and down the Nile. On Thanksgiving, 1998, I had just been to the Museum of Antiquities and a few friends—a smattering of students from across the U.S.—were crossing the most dangerous intersection I have ever encountered and looking for a place to have our Thanksgiving dinner. The most American place we could find was a Pizza Hut. So, crowded around a café table with incessant honking and the wafting aroma of cumin and exhaust, I ate my least favorite pizza and discussed what we were all thankful for.

[image error] Sick in bed with the flu for Thanksgiving 2019.

Thanksgiving is a confusing holiday, historically, anyways. These days, with a growing awareness for the con-sides of the founding of our country, it’s become a minefield to celebrate the holiday consciously. Even trying to acknowledge the sins of the fathers (who may or may not be your fathers), it can come across as inauthentic, affectation. But then again, even though holidays seem staid in their steeped traditions, they have always been a fluid thing. Easter and Christmas have morphed from sacred to secular, but then we hear about other less-sacred beginnings mashed up in even the old traditions. Thanksgiving, too, has changed in its observation and even its meaning, over the years. Currently, it is a holiday for three things: family, gratitude, and the onset of the Christmas season (so shopping, dragging home a tree, and cranking up the holiday music). Also, it is the foodie holiday, the foodiest by far, like over-the-top and competitively. I know, because I am guilty. But scrape away the gut-busting, groaning board buffets and the mad perusing of Black Friday ads, and you have a holiday somewhat divorced from its patriotic history, where families cross countries and continents to be together and ask the ubiquitous question from mouths and on paper tablecloths, potted tree ornaments, and painted pumpkins: what are you thankful for?

[image error] At the farm for our turkey.

In 2010, I spent my Thanksgiving crouched in front of the oven in an embroidered, turquoise kurta and eyebrows plucked into a startled expression, having just gotten off a plane from India. I was jet-lagged, but supported by my two little children and a husband who unceremoniously broke my sister’s couch. I was counting my blessings after returning from a) a trip of a lifetime and b) humanitarian work among rescued trafficking victims. I also recall the one Thanksgiving that I spent Flaherty-style, in Rhode Island with a bachelor uncle, surrounded by new-family faces, new-family traditional foods, and real-live heirloom, polished silver. Only once, early in our marriage and before children, we spent a Thanksgiving with friends and I distinctly remember refusing to tell what the two secret ingredients in my mashed potatoes were, tasting butternut squash souffle for the first time, and watching a young man I wouldn’t truly know for years making bananas foster in an overly-crowded, townhouse kitchen full of loud conversation and mind-blowing alcohol-fume flames.

Perhaps my favorite Thanksgiving disaster memory comes from a long season when we used to order our turkey straight from a farm and pick it up a couple days before Thanksgiving, freshly plucked and butchered. A few days before, one year, I received an email telling me that foxes had gotten into the turkeys and that I might not get the turkey that I ordered (which was probably about 12 pounds for the extended family) because it might be in the belly of a fox. The four of us—the kids still little—pulled up over the rutted, dirt road and beside the barn we recognized from year after year. Ten minutes later, we were driving back down the road and I was in the passenger seat with the turkey wrapped in my lap, a shell-shocked look on my face: the turkey was no larger than the average chicken that I roasted up for dinner. And then we laughed. And I held up the chicken-turkey. And we laughed more. And we laughed when I dressed the bird and put it in the oven. And we laughed when we took it out and carved it up for something like eleven people.

[image error] An early iteration of my Thanksgiving feast. Hors d’oeuvres course.

For the past several years, Thanksgiving has been allocated, gifted to me, the family foodie who would prefer to spend all holidays behind a roasting pan and apron. I have spent those years acquiring punch bowls and chafing dishes as well as growing a menu that requires five days of prep work and a nod to the favorite dishes of thirteen different people. Last year, the day before Thanksgiving, I sighed and retired to my bedroom to sleep for days, letting my family know that they were on their own to rush to the grocery store on the night before Thanksgiving to cobble together their own meal. I had the flu. This was a bummer to me: imagine a singer-actor on the opening night of the year’s big musical where they are to star, coming down with laryngitis and sitting home instead on the couch with a thermometer and a mug of tea and a very large frown. This was me. This had become my day, the big show. My husband would also run to the grocer and grab what was still on the depleted shelves, including potato salad which he fashioned into mashed potatoes as my daughter—not feeling too great herself—gave culinary pointers from the kitchen barstool. For me, too bad, so sad. There’s always next year.

Of course, there wasn’t next year. In a year where nearly all traditions and normalcy have been thrown out the window and blown to smithereens, family Thanksgiving dinner went with them. After a summer of loosening restrictions, I planned Thanksgiving with a vengeance only to give it up in the eleventh hour and just in the nick of time as our little family of four would have not one, but two Covid scares during a week of unprecedented pandemic numbers. Our extended-family story is the same as everyone’s: we have two medical workers (including my husband on a Covid unit), two more frontline workers, two kids in actual school, and two people with compromised immune systems/lungs. So long, world. We’re in it for another city-, state-, country-wide quarantine (even as, yes, many people chose to just carry on). Still, I dove into days of prep—this time for just the four of us—blaring Christmas music early and with a vengeance, donning a different apron every day. At noon on Thanksgiving, my night-shift-working husband lumbered out of his slumber, put on a pot of coffee, and ate a few hors d’oeuvres that I had left out beside the punch. The kids and I set the table and dotted the needlessly-long table with the accoutrements and a giant pitcher of gravy and then waited for Kevin to come back for his coffee. He never did. The coffee sat there, cooled, was forgotten about and went stale as the kids and I ate Thanksgiving alone, chatted on Zoom with relatives, drank sparkling cider out of the bottle as we began a Christmas movie marathon that is month-long. Meanwhile, Kevin retired to bed and we sealed up the master suite. I moved to the family room couch. He went to a drive-through Covid testing site and we re-sealed the master suite. Now under quarantine and awaiting results, we didn’t go to drive through the Christmas lights, we didn’t head to Trosa to get our Christmas tree and decorate the house together, inevitably with popcorn and cocoa and even more Christmas music. We slumped and had our Christmas tree delivered where it sits, as yet undecorated.

For the past few years, I have used different mediums to ask the question, what are you thankful for? This year, we had a pumpkin left over from Halloween that never got carved. I painted it white with a gold stem and set it out on the Thanksgiving table. While whisking gravy and eyeing a foil draped turkey with no electric knife I begged my daughter to grab a Sharpie and write “I’m thankful for…” in a nice font on the pumpkin. She did. That night, before bed and with the day in shambles, only she and my son had written all over it. I sauntered over and read their list this year and added my own, noticing that amidst all this loss and stress and bewilderment this year there was a definite theme: it’s people we are all thankful for, each other. And in those last few hours of depressed confusion before we quarantined Kevin, I slept alone in my bed and woke up to a plate of weird leftovers. I made a cup of tea at our coffee bar and looked down at the abandoned coffee and the pumpkin. In the night, between sleepy stupor and discomfort, my husband had wandered through the dining room and like a shoemaker’s elf had left his unsung mark there in a small list on the side of the pumpkin: Devon, Windsor, Eamon. For us.

There’s little left that we recognize these days, and these many, small losses and sufferings take their toll. I’m tired of 2020 and there is only a small flame of hope left back there in the garret of my mind that is already planning next Thanksgiving in all its normal glory, a re-do of all the things that didn’t happen this year: the beach with Lauren, jumping from a plane, the Harry Styles concert, Windsor’s sweet sixteen, our anniversary trip, relatives who hadn’t visited in twelve years, a family reunion at Mackinac Island, school, church, tea with friends, hugs, interactions with strangers that didn’t involve plastic sheeting and suspiciously raised eyebrows.

[image error] This year’s green bean casserole waiting for the oven.

No day has gone unscarred since March 13th. It is November 28th. We are not done yet. The four of us are still alive, thank God, Kevin still has work, and we have grown and made different sorts of memories which we can truly appreciate once we’re looking back and taking a deep breath. We have had our annual day of gratitude and we have scrawled each other’s names on the pumpkin. One more day down and one more Thanksgiving memory left in the dust.

A Very Pandemic Christmas

Well, we’re working our way around the calendar. We’ve now had Easter ham nuggets at our own, quiet Easter tables surrounded by homemade sanitizer and either a mountain of or a lack of toilet paper, birthdays consisting of only people in our “bubbles,” masked and in open parks despite the weather, Halloween picking sanitized bags of candy off of deserted display tables, and we’re about to embark on whatever modified Thanksgiving we have planned amidst a fever-pitch panic of Covid cases, general unrest and uncertainty, and pandemic fatigue. When next week is over, we’ll be staring down the rest of the curve of the year with Christmas and New Year’s within turn-of-the-calendar-page distance. This is going to be a pandemic holiday. Don’t bother to hold out hope that there will be some sort of significant resolution in 2020. Just hunker down, folks. Cobble together yet another holiday from the ruins of 2020, shooting for a resemblance to the real thing but with acceptance that no, it will not be the same. It shouldn’t be the same, because we’re keeping ourselves and our family safe in the middle of an outbreak. I have heard that the Elf on the Shelf is immune to Covid, so there’s that.

[image error] Image from Amazon.com

For this cozy (I hope for you), quiet holiday season, I have compiled another list of books and movies to get you through. With kids on break and vacations that need to be spent at home and without the annual frenzy of work parties, ugly sweater competitions, Christmas concerts, and days spent rushing from movie theater to packed mall to restaurant, you might need something to fill the time and emotional space of the season. Perhaps the perfect book or movie (or ten and a binge) helps you to unwind and to enjoy more? They do, for me.

(BTW, I did a little looking at Hanukkah and Kwanzaa books, and they centered around educational picture books for children. I felt enough out of my depth to let other people make recommendations, though one day I may get around to reviewing some. Many of the books and movies that popped up on the list below, however, are not specific to Christmas as a sacred observation, but as a holiday season involving gift-giving, time with family, feasting, Santa Clause, gingerbread, twinkly lights, etc.: Christmas as it is celebrated as a secular-option holiday in America.)

As usual, I compiled these lists as a mash-up of recommendations from sites that I trust for that sort of thing. I have not (yet) read or watched them all.

CHRISTMAS/HOLIDAY SEASON READS

[image error]



A Christmas Memory, Truman CapoteThe Greatest Gift, Philip Van Doren SternA Christmas Story, Jean ShepherdA Christmas Carol and Other Stories, Charles Dickens *Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, Agatha ChristieLittle Women, Louisa May AlcottAfterward, Edith Wharton Wuthering Heights , Emily Bronte *Mr. Dickens and His Carol, Samantha SilvaThe Usual Santas, compilationThe Deal of a Lifetime, Frederik BackmanWinter Street, Elin HildebrandThe Valancourt Book of Christmas Ghost StoriesStarry Night, Debbie MacomberHiddensee, Gregory Maguire Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , J.K. Rowling ***Christmas In London, Anita HughesBridget Jones’ Diary¸ Helen Fielding *Comfort and Joy, Kristin HannahChristmas on the Island, Jenny ColganThe Man Who Invented Christmas, Les StandifordP.S. Your Cat Is Dead, James Kirkwood“The Gift of the Magi,” O. HenryOne Day in December, Josie SilverA Treasure of African American Christmas Stories, Bettye Collier-ThomasLast Christmas in Paris, Gaynor and WebbThe Night Before Christmas, Nikolai GogolRoyal Holiday¸ Jasmine GuiloryCelebrations, Maya AngelouA Redbird Christmas, Fannie FlaggSeven Days of Us, Francesca HornakMy True Love Gave to Me, Stephanie PerkinsLet It Snow, Green, Johnson, and MyracleSkipping Christmas, John GrishamHolidays on Ice, David SedarisThe Christmas Train, David BaldacciDash and Lilly’s Book of Dares, Cohn and LevithanThe Christmas Box¸ Richard Paul EvansThe Stupidest Angel, Christopher MooreSilent Night, Stanley WeintraubWhat Christmas as We Grow Older, Charles DickensThe Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, Frank Baum“Christmas Trees,” Robert Frost“The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” Sir Arthur Conan DoyleThe Chimes, Charles DickensMiracle on 34th Street, Valentine Davies

PICTURE BOOKS THROUGH MIDDLE GRADES

[image error]



Greenglass House , Kate MilfordRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Robert L. MayThe Tailor of Gloucester, Beatrix PotterThe Polar Express, Chris VanAllsburgThe Nutcracker, E.T.A. HoffmanAmazing Peace, Maya AngelouLetters from Father Christmas, J.R.R. TolkeinHow the Grinch Stole Christmas, Dr. SeussThe Night Before Christmas, Clement Clarke MooreThe Snow Queen, Hans Christian AndersenA Child’s Christmas in Wales, Dylan ThomasThe Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Barbara RobinsonThe Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey, Susan WojciechowskiThe Nutcracker and the Mouse King, E.T.A. HoffmanThe Elves and the Shoemaker, The Brothers GrimmThe Steadfast Tin Soldier, Hans Christian Andersen and Marcia BrownA Letter from Santa Claus, Mark TwainThe Fir Tree, Hans Christian Andersen and Bernadette WattsChristmas Day in the Morning, Pearl S. Buck and Mark Beuhner“The Little Match Girl,” Hans Christian AndersenThe Cricket on the Hearth, Charles DickensThe Snowman, Raymond Briggs

RELIGIOUS (CHRISTIAN)

[image error] Image from Christian Book Distributors



The Case for Christmas, Lee StrobelWaiting Here for You, Louie GiglioOn This Holy Night, compilationBecause of Bethlehem, Max LucadoChristmas Playlist, Alastair BeggHidden Christmas, Timothy KellerWhy the Nativity?, Dr. David JeremiahThe Greatest Gift, Ann VoskampThe Christmas Miracle, Jack W. HayfordThe Dawning of Indestructible Joy, John PiperADVENT: Celtic Daily Prayer , The Northumbria CommunityWatch for the Light, VariousThe Day Christ Was Born, Jim BishopAdvent with Evelyn Underhill, Christopher WebberSimply Wait, Pamela Hawkins

COOKBOOKS

[image error] Image from booksamillion.com



Hallmark Channel’s Countdown to ChristmasChristmas with Kim Joy, Kim JoyTaste of Home ChristmasThe Unofficial Hogwart’s Holiday Cookbook, Rita Mock PikeHoliday Cookies, Elisabet der NederlandenThe Official Downtown Abbey Christmas Cookbook, Regula SewijnChristmas Baking, KlynstraReindeer Food, Kayla GallagherCharles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Garten, Stewart, et. AlJamie Oliver’s Christmas Cookbook, Jamie Oliver

CHRISTMAS/HOLIDAY MOVIES

Day after Thanksgiving: Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

[image error]



ElfA Christmas StoryHome AloneThe Muppet Christmas CarolIt’s a Wonderful LifeOne Magic ChristmasLast HolidayWhite ReindeerOffice Christmas PartyThe Night BeforeJack FrostFour ChristmasesBatman ReturnsJust FriendsHappy ChristmasThe HolidayLove ActuallyJingle All the WayPrancerMixed NutsDeck the HallsChristmas with the KranksThe Family StoneMetropolitanIt Happened on Fifth Avenue Edward Scissorhands (1990) *** (but as a holiday movie? I dunno)The Santa ClauseHow the Grinch Stole ChristmasA Very Harold and Kumar ChristmasDie HardWhile You Were SleepingKiss Kiss Bang BangThe Shop Around the CornerA Christmas TaleBlack ChristmasEyes Wide ShutMeet Me in Saint LouisRudolph the Red Nosed ReindeerA Charlie Brown ChristmasThe ApartmentThe Nightmare Before ChristmasA Christmas Carol (1951)The Muppet Christmas CarolBad SantaMiracle on 34th StreetScroogedWhite ChristmasNational Lampoon’s Christmas VacationAnna and the Apocalypse ()The Family StoneRise of the GuardiansArthur ChristmasBridget Jones’ Diary

There’s also a Christmas Carol movie marathon, mentioned HERE.

As for music, you’re own your own for now because there is just so MUCH of it. Maybe at some point I’ll share my list, which is a picky mashup of classics and obscurity. As for right now, I’m too busy talking to grandparents about gifts and making my October-to-January back-to-back series of to-do lists to work on it.

Book Review: Greenglass House

Another week, another middle grades book under the bridge. It is true: I seem to read almost nothing but middle grades book these days. You’re just going to have to take my word for it that I have much wider interests in literature than middle grades books. However, between curriculum-writing for seventh and eighth grade language arts, homeschooling a seventh grader, and Eamon’s book club, I spend perhaps half my reading time reading books appropriate to middle grades, which usually means written specifically for them. (Occasionally, at this age, they read up to Animal Farm, Tuck Everlasting, or even Ender’s Game, but that comes more when they reach high school. If kids this age read classics, it tends to be adapted classics, which is why I have graphic novel versions of The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Les Misérables on my TBR.)

[image error] Cover image from Amazon.com

If you have a middle grades child, then this blog has probably been helpful to you over the past few years and will continue to be so for another 1.5. If you don’t… Well, the value in The Starving Artist, I think, has always been a combination between entertainment and aggregate information. All these books go into the archives, and if you want recommendations for literary fiction or philosophy or something, you can click on a button or two (or search) or follow a rabbit trail—into the past or the future—and get there around whatever I’ve happened to write about this month or year or life stage.

Greenglass House by Kate Milford is the first book in a limited series. (It might even still be going.) Considered a middle grades mystery, the first book, at least, is also perfect for the holidays, filled with snow and presents, hot cocoa and family, strangers and smugglers and nautical intrigue. Wink, wink. This first book, too, is enjoying enormous popularity, several awards, and is a New York Times Bestseller. Published in 2016, it was followed up by Ghost of Greenglass House, Bluecrowne, The Thief Knot, and The Racounteur’s Commonplace Book. From what I can tell, they form a nontraditional series, with the first two novels in chronological order, the next two stories based in the same world, and the fifth a book which appears in the series itself. (In book one, Milo is reading it and some of the tales relate to what is happening.)

This is exactly the kind of middle grades book I would pick up off the bookshelf, at least as an adult. It looks nice, has all those awards, a lyrical title, and a pretty good hook on the back. It is a mystery, a Christmas story, is about cooky characters and sailors and friendly criminals, about a twelve-year-old boy living in an eccentric inn at the top of a hill in a port town. It has themes of adoption, role playing games, friendship, family, and growing up. (It also has another category, but to disclose it would be to destroy the ending for you.) Milo’s a smart kid. He deals with a little OCD and some shyness and inflexibility, but he’s got a lovely family and a holiday season with the inn all to himself. Or does he? A normal-looking man with crazy socks arrives and he won’t at all be the last unexpected Christmas guest, not by a long shot.

And yet, despite the awards and the fans, I didn’t love this book. There were a few things standing in my way and I’m finding it’s not easy to spell them all out. Alright, what can I say for sure? I am not into role playing games, so that element got a little lost on me. It would be an interesting introduction to someone, or a quaint addition for someone who used to… I don’t know. I never have played an RPG in my life, and my son, who does, didn’t seem to find some sort of kinship here in the book. Not that I have to be interested in every subject that a book covers, but I felt a little out of place, like when a book is really heavy on the sports or something. I’m also not sold on the vocabulary and writing style, especially for a middle grades reader. This seems like the type of book to me that adults or librarians would get more excited about for kids than the kids for themselves. (Like A Series of Unfortunate Events.) It does speak up to tweens, which is good, but when your kid is a reluctant reader, it can be difficult because one, the vocabulary is advanced and two, the structure is clunky. I often wonder if my experience with how a lot of these books read is just because I am reading them aloud. I don’t read them all aloud these days, but I did read this one aloud, and it was difficult. My eyes were constantly having to loop back, my tongue turning over the awkward turns of phrase. In other words, it was far from fluid. Not a plus, especially in this context. Also, like most mysteries I have read or seen, the plot depends an enormous amount on coincidence and luck. In the case of this book, I would say way too much for my enjoyment. I also can’t quite place my finger on where I am in space and time, which does bother me. It feels like a real place, but I’m not given enough context to land in a genre, let alone a subgenre with its location and time. (This is a common complaint about the book, and Milford has created a fake website acting as the Nagspeake home page. This site is more confusing than helpful.)

Many of the other unimpressed call the book “boring,” but say it has plenty of atmosphere. This seems accurate, to me.

Perhaps one of the biggest issues of this book is the moral ambiguity. I mean, the difference between a good guy and a bad guy in this book is basically the difference between who you know and who you don’t, who is nice to Milo and who is not. Or something even more convoluted. While using a smugglers inn as a backdrop does pose both problems and intrigue (and even though this was one of the most compelling bits to me as my ancestors may have actually owned a smugglers inn), it’s one that Milford doesn’t really get around. There is no regard for the law. Quite the opposite. Cat burglars are portrayed as cute, friendly young women, smugglers as dashing, daring, humanistic heroes, and the regulatory people as homewreckers and cold-blooded killers. Milo spends most his time snooping around, breaking and entering, and eavesdropping. While it feels like this story is innocent and light, even homey, it’s more a moral confusion. There’s worse out there, but I did find it distracting.

So what did I enjoy? The story itself. And the characters. And definitely the twists at the end, which all good mysteries should have. Yet, I say all of these things reluctantly, because despite the interesting story, it didn’t sparkle for me. Despite the characters, Milo is the only one we get to really know (besides the house). And despite the ending, there were some loose ends. Maybe they were less loose ends than a need for a more focused main plot. There were so many things going on in this book, I’d be hard pressed to tell you the main thing that the protagonist had to accomplish. And I’m not sure everyone’s going to be pleased with the big twist. I liked it. It has been done before. And it made sense and it might be the one thing that really hooks the younger fans.

It sounds harsh, I know. There was so much to love that I really wanted to. (Similar to The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, I found myself double-disappointed when a book that should have been so me ended up being a magicless chemistry.) It’s one of those books that I know plenty of people are reading and enjoying right now. You can find copies at your bookstore, at your library (if you were allowed to visit either in a pandemic) and on Christmas lists. In fact, that is what I would recommend this book for: holiday reading. If you are intrigued, then save it for the month of December. It will be more nostalgic and appropriate as a Christmas story. Hand it to a middle grades student on Christmas vacation and let them enjoy it without having to read the whole, darn thing aloud. Provide plenty of hot cocoa and some crazy socks, and–if they’re not too picky–you might just have another Greenglass fan on your hands.

Book Review: Frankenstein; or, the Modern Day Prometheus

Well, I did read this book maybe a dozen years ago, so giving it a re-read for Halloween-time, I expected to really like it. I have recommended it as seasonal reading for years and I remember being really excited about it. Perhaps I was surprised by it the first time, but this time the fact that it differs tremendously from our cultural perception of Frankenstein did not overwhelm or impress me. Also, I already knew it was an old-fashioned story, written before traditional horror (and as a precursor to it), and much more of a cerebral, internal exploration of a social topic (playing God in science and the human reaction to those who appear different from us, as well as the origins of criminality). It was a forward-thinking novel, embodying Enlightenment thinking by a woman who was at the center of the Enlightenment. As such (and as an atheist, to boot), Shelley leaves us unmoored a bit, as Frankenstein, the monster, everybody waffles about looking for some sort of meaning. (That’s not what she intended: word on the street is that she was trying to prove that morals could come from elsewhere than religion and the church, but as far as Frankenstein goes, I would call it a failed experiment). It’s not very long, so even though it can be slow reading at times, it is of novella-size. There are themes of ambition, guilt and revenge, and lines of romance, family, and friendship.

[image error] Cover image from Amazon.com

Would I still recommend it, after this read? Yes? Yes, I would. But I would be clear that this is not light reading and it is not horror. It’s written in a much older style than most of us read day-to-day, right down to the story-within-a-story-within-a-story. That’s right: in order to get different perspectives, before the modern assumption of an omniscient narrator, Shelly tells her Frankenstein story through the letters of a ship captain to his sister, and when we haven’t gotten enough perspective, the Creature actually sits Frankenstein down to tell him what he’s been up to. (And that’s also right: Frankenstein is not the name of the monster—he goes mostly by the being/demon/creature/monster—but the name of the science student who makes him, Victor Frankenstein.) There are really long speeches, extrapolation on things modern readers could care less about, and the ol’ telling instead of showing. We’re told things are pretty or cold or desolate, but there is not as much description as these passages might warrant to set the mood. But lots of thoughts. Lots of people telling us what they’re thinking and who they are instead of letting their actions show us. It’s also more of a tragedy than scary. It has certainly inspired many an imagination and is also written very well for the populace of the time, reflecting the thinking of the time, at least for the intellectual elite.

So, if you either like Gothic-Romantic literature or are curious about the origins of Frankenstein’s Monster, then I would give this a read before Halloween. I can also see a dark-minded teen or moody young adult getting into this book, like thinking about existentialism and aesthetics, and perhaps even extending to humanitarianism and ethics. But I also think you can improve your read by making it a Frankenstein-themed October and, when you are done reading, watch a series of Frankenstein movies, through time. The ones I list below are perfect for observing the metamorphoses.

QUOTES:

“I was their plaything and their idol, and something better—their child” (p33).

“It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of your own can have departed forever” (p43).

“In other studies, you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder” (p49-50).

“If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possible mix, then that study is certainly unlawful” (p54).

“I was myself when young, but that wears out in a very short time” (p66).

“He can no longer be a subject for pity; we must reserve that for his miserable survivors” (p71).

“…hers also was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for awhile hides but cannot tarnish its brightness” (p84).

“…eternal woe and tears she then thought was the just tribute she should pay to innocence blasted and destroyed” (p88).

“Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness? (p89).

“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it” (p95).

“I was partly urged by curiosity, and compassion confirmed my resolution” (p97).

“…and yet a man is blind to a thousand minute circumstances which fall forth a woman’s sedulous attention” (p147).

“I was formed for peaceful happiness …. But I am a blasted tree” (p153).

“Here also we made some acquaintances, who almost contrived to cheat me in to happiness” (p154).

“How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess misery” (p164).

“Of what materials was I made that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture?” (p169).

“Ah! It is well for the fortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace” (p181).

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change” (p188).

“…the monster whom I had created, the miserable demon whom I had sent abroad into the world for my destruction” (p189).

“But revenge kept me alive; I dared not die and leave my adversary in being” (p192).

“They know our infantine dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified, are never eradicated” (p201).

“…and so, poor souls, they were chilly and returned to their firesides” (p204).

“Be men, or be more than men” (p204).

MOVIE REVIEWS:

[image error] Image from Ebay.com

Frankenstein (1931)

My kids thought I had gone off the deep end when I monopolized the family room TV one night to watch a movie from—gasp—1931. This is the one with Boris Karloff as the Monster, though it’s not the first film adaptation of Frankenstein: that would be the 1910 version. By 1931, actually because of this version, we now have many of the changes that have obscured the original story. We have the hulking, square-headed creature (did he have bolts on the side of his head, too?), all the whirring gadgets and tessla coils, the gurney that lifts through the ceiling so that the monster can be electrocuted to life. We have the movement of Frankenstein’s hand to hearten a disappointed creator. The fear of fire. The town’s inhabitants as a mob with their pitchforks. The drowning of a little girl. The hunchbacked helper. Etc. etc. Much of what happened in this movie would become the tradition, and the schtick, of later Frankenstein, though none of what I just listed is in the original story. If you have any interest in this, then you will want to begin with this movie. Otherwise, it’s an okay movie and it is interesting to observe the differences in movies from then until now. (I don’t watch movies this old, very often, and certainly my kids don’t.) The story is now on it’s way to being horror, but isn’t very scary to the modern viewer at this point.

The Bride of Frankenstein follows this movie, but I skipped it.

[image error] Image from Amazon.com

Young Frankenstein (1974)

Well. I can’t say I expected what I got, here. It’s like National Lampoon remade the 1931 Frankenstein, and I was not prepared for all the innuendo and cleavage-baring. Though, as my kids passed through the room, they were more appalled that the director chose to leave the film in black and white when he didn’t have to, and would not accept my explanation of style. Well, this version is interesting because of all the continuation/spoofing of the earlier versions of the movie. It is funny, though most of the time it’s more goofy. It has an old-timey feel but is even more at home in the 1970s. As with the other movies, the story is changed significantly from its original, leaving me wondering, again, why these movies even bother calling themselves “Frankenstein.” It is a Halloween favorite for plenty of fans, but I probably don’t need to see it again. Just make sure your kids are in bed.

[image error] Image from Amazon.com

Frankenweenie (2012)

There is an original, short version of this movie, a live-action film from 1984, which was based on Tim Burton’s idea. Tim Burton remade his own movie into a feature-length, Claymation-style blockbuster that remains popular at this time of year, every year. It is clearly nodding, over and over, to the 1931 film and to all the kitsch that has arisen from the early movies. I’ll bet you can tell from the name, however, that this is about a dog brought back to life, instead of a human created from corpses. It has plenty of its own thing going on: it’s the story of a little boy who lives in a super creepy town (classic Burton all over it) whose best friend is his dog. When the dog is hit by a car, Victor (of course) uses his science genius to bring the dog back to life. And while it pays tribute to the Frankenstein story, it is really it’s own story. This is my favorite of everything I watched, but I am a die-hard Tim Burton fan, though some of my appreciation came from my watching of the earlier movies. This could be a family movie, too, just for older kids.

[image error] Cover image from Amazon.com

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)

This one is out of order chronologically, because it brings it all back home. In other words, this is the remake that tried to curve back around to the original story. Starring Kenneth Branaugh and Helena Bonham Carter, it is definitely the film that follows the novel most closely, discarding most of the added traditions of the earlier films. It is decently acted and has some beautiful scenery, sticking pretty close to Mary Shelley’s telling. Until. Al Pacino plays an unlikely Monster, and he does a pretty good job except for one thing: the make-up in this movie destroyed it. With the Monster looking only a little disfigured, it completely changes your reaction to the story. The Monster is supposed to be so horrifying that people can’t find it in themselves not to be terrified or even to relate, and Pacino’s Monster isn’t even close to how the book describes him. Nor is he large, agile, or strong enough, which also changes the way the world sees him. Add to that the crazy last several minutes of the movie in which we devolve suddenly—really suddenly—into the accumulated bizarreness and gore of a more modern telling, and I don’t know if I can recommend this or not. I want to. It is perhaps the best one. But between the Monster and the bizarro-world climax, I just don’t know. It makes me realize that with modern CG, we could finally make this movie as a true-to-the-original that really works.

[image error] Image from Amazon.com

BONUS MOVIE REVIEW: Mary Shelley (2017)

First off, it wasn’t dark or scary. Personally, I think a movie about a person who is known for writing Frankenstein should have been a little jumpy and creepy, or at least very Gothic. Besides that, the movie was okay. I love to watch movies about writers, so I wouldn’t unwatch this movie, but sometimes I watch or read something and think, Wow, I’m glad I wasn’t these people. This was one of those times. It’s funny, though, because it’s the same feeling I got from reading the novel: these people, floundering around in new Enlightenment ideas, were so very lost. They were trying to reinvent which way was up and of course they got confused. They made life so hard for themselves. Also, of course, as with most movies these days, the history of this movie was completely on steroids. There are some facts in there, and if you are going to watch the movie I suggest a little biographical research following. However, the movie here took a lot of speculation and pumped it up into a rather seditious and sensuous life that is probably much over-dramatized. It is interesting to note, though, that Shelley really did hang out with (and marry) these other famous authors and her sister really did mother the child of Lord Byron. While the period-details and acting were notable, the overall story was a roller coaster and the movie was only okay, at best.

More to Be Thankful For

I’ve been perusing best-ofs lists for a number of years, online. I like them, and as you might know, I like making my own or building to-do lists from others’ best-of lists. One of the lists that I have come to like the best is from Oprah Magazine. The following list of Thanksgiving reads and Thanksgiving movies leans heavily on Oprah Magazine, but I looked at plenty of other sources and, to be frank, they all seem to draw on each other and therefore repeat a whole lot.

There are more Thanksgiving options for both reading and viewing than I would have guessed. (And remember, I haven’t read or seen most of these. I will provide links and zero-two stars once I read/watch them.)

[image error] Image from The Globe and Mail



There There, Tommy OrangeHome Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Laurie ColwinThe Nest, Cynthia D’Aprix SweeneyStill Life, Louise PennyHow to Bake the Perfect Pecan Pie, Gina CalanniThe Book of Delights, Ross GayThe Harrowing, Alexandra Sokoloff (too scary?)The Ice Storm, Rick MoodyA Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler“Turkey Remains and How to Inter Them,” F. Scott FitzgeraldThree Thanksgivings, Charlotte Perkins GilmanThanksgiving Night, Richard BauschOldtown Folks, Harriet Beecher StoweThe Ghost at the Table, Suzanne BerneThe Thanksgiving Visitor, Truman CapoteStrangers at the Feast, Jennifer VanderbesBilly Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ben FountainThanksgiving, Janet Evanovich (?)American Pastoral, Philip RothCourting Disaster, Julie EdelsonNothing with Strings, Bailey WhiteThe Holiday Season, Michael Knight

Picture Books:

[image error] Image from Amazon.com



Balloons Over Braodway, Melissa SweetWe Are Grateful, Traci Sorell1621: A New Look at ThanksgivingGiving Thanks, Chief Jake SwampThanks a Million, Nikki GrimesThe Accidental Tourist, Anne TylerAn Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Louisa May AlcottAnkle Soup, Maureen SullivanFat Chance Thanksgiving, Patricia LakinMolly’s Pilgrim, Barbara Cohen

Movies:

The Day After Halloween: The Nightmare Before Christmas

[image error] Image from Amazon.com



Jim Henson’s Turkey Hallow (2015)The War at Home (1996)The Myth of Fingerprints (1996)The Oath (2018)The House of Yes (1997)Alice’s Restaurant (1969)Home for the Holidays (1995)Funny People (2009)The Vicious Kind (2009)Holidaysburg (2016)Tadpole (2002)Avalon (1990)The Ice Storm (1997)Pieces of April (2003)Scent of a Woman (1992)Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987)Krisha (2016)A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973)Anne of Green Gables: Fire and Dew (2018)Arlo Guthrie: Alice’s Restaurant 50th Anniversary (2015)Free Birds (2013)Tower Heist (2011)The Blind Side (2009)Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009)You’ve Got Mail (1998)Garfield’s Thanksgiving (1996)Nobody’s Fool (1994)Grumpy Old  Men (1993)Addams Family Values (1993)Son-in-Law (1993)Scent of a Woman (1992)Curly Sue (1991)The Big Chill (1983)Rocky (1976)Babes in Toyland (1934)Dutch (1991)Soul Food (1997)What’s Cooking? (2000)Dan in Real Life (2007)The Daytrippers (1997)She’s Gotta Have It (1986)The New World (2005)Prisoners (2013)

Media in Review: October 2020

Though, as of today, we have officially moved into the next “season,” Thanksgiving and (let’s be honest) Christmas, we put Halloween to bed until next year. Most of these reviews, however, are for Halloween-themed stuff because I really wallow in it in October. It’ll make a better reference in 2021, the year when the holidays go back to normal. Right? Right? Please?

[image error] Image from Amazon.com

BEETLEJUICE (1988)

I’ve seen this movie several times because I like it, but it’s always years in between. It seemed like a fun, mildly-spooky movie to introduce to the teens this year, especially since it felt like Beetlejuice and Ghostbusters were having a sort of revival in 2020. We watched it for the first family movie night of October. One of our kids refused to watch it (sigh), but since he spent the time outside instead, we just let it go. The other one watched it with us and then found out it was the movie she was supposed to watch for Movie Club this month. (Check!) Let’s see. There are awkward moments in this Tim Burton classic, like when you feel you need an explanation for why you like it. But then you just remember that it’s a classic and was also very popular in its time. Considered a comedy, though not the LOL kind, it’s more of a satirical ghost story. It’s quite quirky, and has a moment or two when it’s more adult than kid-friendly, but it really is full of iconic moments, and has a story that pulls it all together and good performances all-round (though, against the opinions of others, it’s one of my least favorites of Michael Keaton). After watching, we decided to be Adam and Barbara for Halloween.

[image error] Imagr from Amazon.com

CORALINE (2009)

This is one of those spooky, not-exactly-horror, animated movies that appeals to the whole family. When my kids were little, they claimed these types of movies made the “melancholy,” and would bow out. Now, it’s an easy pick off the DVD shelf. Based on a teen horror novel by Neil Gaiman, Coraline the movie has become a classic. Not by Tim Burton (thought so many people assume it is), it has gritty and sad undertones which don’t often come with the Claymation style. There are some really creepy moments, and the rest of it is just bizarre, but the story, animation, and quirk is memorable and it’s one of my personal favorites.

[image error] Image from Amazon.com

THE ADDAMS FAMILY (1991)

And then I made the list of Halloween reads and watches, and found this—another classic—on it and thought I would try it. It always looked silly to me. Aaaand when something came up about three-quarters of the way through, I didn’t come back to finish it. It was just so predictable and stupid. I know stupid is not especially descriptive, but among other things I mean that the humor and scenarios were dumbed-down and the acting was schticky. There are plenty of people who like that and lots of people who consider this a Halloween must. There were moments of more subtle humor, attempted largely by Wednesday, that I liked, and with another director I might have liked to see this setting and this general situation. I’m wondering if the much-lauded Addams Family Values would be more to my liking? The new animated film, we didn’t even both. It has pretty rotten reviews.

[image error] Image from Amazon.com

HALLOWEEN FOOD SHOWS

There are a half-dozen Halloween food shows, though only two big, annual ones that I know of: Halloween Wars and Halloween Baking Championship (the Halloween version of the other Baking Championships). I also watched a few one-offs, like Freakshow Cakes, Kids Baking Championship Halloween special and All-Star Halloween Spectacular. Halloween Gingerbread Bake-Off is another one that I watched, somewhere between a one-off and a regular series. A spin-off, I guess, of Gingerbread Bake-Off, which is obviously for the Christmas season. It’s had a few seasons, and I like it okay. It does feel a little strange to have gingerbread experts sculpting Freddy Kreuger, but I like to watch their processes and think about an epic house for Christmas. Someday. One of the seasons begins with like nine or twelve bakers, and three of them are from North Carolina (and all places I can point to on a map), two of whom made it to the finale. Otherwise, for the most part, the one-offs were produced in such a way that they felt way too one-offy, if that makes sense. They felt cheap and temporary. On the other hand, Halloween Wars and Halloween Baking Championship, after several years, have really found their flavor and feet. I love all the Baking Championships, partly because I love to learn about food and baking and I get to see techniques and baked goods that I wouldn’t elsewhere, more up-to-date and creative. The production is sleeker than some shows. I generally enjoy the contestants and the judges (especially Carla Hall, who is now the host—and queen—of the show). This year they must have filmed during the pandemic, but they managed a season anyways, with the contestants (with no explanation) standing in a large grid and the judges at their own, tiny tables, spaced apart. As for Halloween Wars, this is an October tradition that has become a mother-son thing (and it is, it seems, a huge draw for Food Network). Despite me not liking the gore or horror of the holiday, I love seeing what bakers, sugar artists, and pumpkin carvers can do with flour, sugar, and gourds. It’s pretty amazing and pretty enormous, at times. I do wish they would just give them more time and make it less about the scramble and more about what they can do, but I’ll keep coming back to this one, with my son, every fall.

[image error] Image from Wikipedia.com

THE WITCHES (2020)

We waited for this Roald Dahl release and watched it on the day that it came out on streaming. Starring Anne Hathaway and Octavia Spencer, it is an interesting twist on The Witches: moved from an 80s publication that is set in Norway and England to a 1960s American South, involving references to being black at that time and place. I have to admit that part of the charm of Roald Dahl is the particular feel of his childhood from mid-century Britain, so I was sad to see that we had to Americanize it and also make it more obviously relevant, without letting old stories be relevant in their own way. I would say the movie is okay, and it could warrant another watch, but despite the great CG and acting, good cinematography, as well as the pretty direct following of the original story. The ending, which is also more true to Dahl’s vision than the earlier movie, feels unsatisfactory, despite claims that it is more appropriate to the modern child and our current pandemic/civil rest situation. I mean, Dahl has never been afraid to explore violence and the macabre in childhood, but the movie doesn’t feel like it matches the ending, at least for our family. Worth a watch.  

[image error] Image from DisneyPlus.com

CINDERELLA, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, ALADDIN

My daughter, one day, got me on a Disney animated-to-live-action movie streak. It began with Cinderella, and then we continued with Beauty and the Beast and, on my own, I watched one I’d been meaning to see since it released years ago, Aladdin. (I still have yet to see The Lion King, or Mulan, which is still cost-prohibitive and looks like it might be my favorite.) There are some themes with the live-action remakes of the Disney “Princess” movies. For one, they go all out with the visuals, including the costumes, which I go gaga over in at least Cinderella and Beauty. For the remakes of the newer stuff, they stick really close to the original Disney films, sometimes repeating songs and even whole scenes, at times frame for frame, prompting my daughter to ask why they remake them at all. (Others, like Maleficent, a remake of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White’s Mirror Mirror explore different angles of the stories. Perhaps our tip-off is in the title, and I’ve heard tell they are going to do more direct remakes of those same films.) I grew up watching the movies that they have been revisiting in the last decade, so for me these are nostalgic remakes, and I’ll watch out of compulsion, just as I will The Little Mermaid. I liked all three that I watched, and would watch them again, happily, especially Beauty and the Beast, which is probably my favorite Disney movie, anyways.

[image error] Image from Apple.com

IT’S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN

I finished the season with a whole Frankenstein theme (see review with the book) and then It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. I had assumed I enjoyed this short movie because I grew up watching the TV special every single year. However, watching it this year (by myself, my kids think it’s too old-fashioned), I noticed some of the great things about it besides the softness, nostalgia, and message. The animation, even now, is of a style that I can appreciate, with the beautiful washes of watercolor in the background and the simplicity of the characters, facial expressions, movement, and foreground. I find it a little awkward the way all the Charlie Brown specials cut—a result of the original material having been comic strips, I think. Of all of it, my least favorite has also always been The Red Baron plotline with Snoopy, but still I love Charlie Brown, and no doubt my allegiance is one of tradition. I’ll continue watching this one and the other holiday specials year after year after year.

[image error] Image from Amazon.com

HALLOWEEN MUSIC LIST

And as a bonus for you, I made a list of Halloween music. I have been playing the songs in bold for years, but I realized I hadn’t changed this seasonal soundtrack in a while, so I dig some digging to explore more. I am sure I will be deleting some of these from the shuffle playlist I made on YouTube Music, but this is a place to start. I’ll star those that I recommend, so far.

“Thriller,” Michael Jackson *“Monster Mash,” Bobby Pickett *“I Want Candy,” Bow Wow Wow *“Ghostbusters,” Ray Parker Junior *“Rocky Horror Time Warp”“Monster,” Lady Gaga“Disturbia,” Rihanna“Superstition,” Stevie Wonder *“Bury a Friend,” Billy Eilish *“The Addams Family Theme Song” *“I Put a Spell On You,” Nina Simone *“Haunted,” Beyonce“Evil Woman,” ELO *“Somebody’s Watching Me,” Rockwell *“Zombie,” The Cranberries *“She Wolf,” Shakira“Killer Queen,” Queen“Hungry Like the Wolf,” Duran Duran“This is Halloween,” The Nightmare Before Christmas or Marilyn Manson *“Calling All the Monsters,” China Anne McClain *“One Good Scare” from Phineas and Ferb *“Scooby-Doo Theme Song” from Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? *“Monster,” Kanye West, etc.“Shadows of the Night,” Pat Benatar“Determinate” from Lemonademouth *“Black Magic,” Little Mix“Super Freak,” Rick James“I’m Your Boogie Man,” KC and the Sunshine Band“Candy,” Mandy Moore“Witchcraft,” Frank Sinatra“Spirit in the Sky,” Norman Greenbaum *“Dead Man’s Party,” Oingo Boingo“Black Magic Woman,” Santana“Bad Moon Rising,” Creedence Clearwater Revival“Sympathy for the Devil,” The Rolling Stones *“A Nightmare on My Street,” Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff *“The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” The Charlie Daniels Band *“Don’t Fear the Reaper,” Blue Oyster Cult“Werewolves of London,” Warren Zevon“The Monster,” Eninem and Rihanna“Demons,” Imagine Dragons“Halloween Sharks,” Pinkfong“I Put a Spell on You,” Bette Midler“Costume Party,” The Pop-Ups“One-Eyed, One-Horned Flying Purple People-Eater,” Sheb Wooley *“Grim, Grinning Ghosts,” from Disney’s The Haunted Mansion“It’s Halloween,” Lucy Kalantari“Witch Doctor,” Sean Bone *“Moonlit Town,” Dan Zanes“Halloween Night,” Like Father, Like Son“She Writes Frankenstein,” Mr. Singer and the Sharp Cookies“Halloween is Finally Here,” Bears and Lions“Skeletone,” Caspar BabypantsHalloween Theme, John Carpenter *“Magic Dance,” David Bowie“Scary Monsters,” David Bowie“Season of the Witch,” Donovan *“Heads Will Roll,” The Yeah Yeah Yeahs“Ghost,” Ella Henderson“Witchy Woman,” The Eagles“Black Magic Woman,” Fleetwood Mac“The Boogie Monster,” Gnarls Barkley“True Blood,” Justin Timberlake“Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” Ella Fitzgerald *The Phantom of the Opera “Overture,” Andrew Lloyd WebberStranger Things Theme (Extended) *“Creep,” Radiohead *“Haunted,” Taylor Swift“Wolves,” Selena Gomez and Marshmello“Dark Horse,” Katy Perry and Juicy J.“I’m In Love with a Monster,” Fifth Harmony“Get Ur Freak On,” Missy Elliot“Freaks Come Out at Night,” Whodini“Psycho Killer,” The Talking Heads“Sally’s Song” from The Nightmare Before Christmas or Amy Lee *“Black Widow,” Iggy Izalea“Midnight City,” M83“Spooky,” Dusty Springfield“Haunted House,” Jumpin Gene Simmons“Halloween Spooks,” Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross“Werewolf Bar Mitzvah,” Tracy Jordan“Dinner with Drac,” John Zacherle“The Werewolf Watusi,” Boris Pickett“The Headless Horseman,” Bing Crosby“Punky Pumpkin,” Rosemary Clooney“The Boogie Woogie Man,” Brian Sisters“Skeleton in the Closet,” Louis Armstrong“The Monster Hop,” Bert Convy“My Body’s a Zombie for You,” Dead Man’s Bones“The Wobblin’ Goblin,” Rosemary Clooney *“Spooky Scary Skeletons,” Disney *“Spiderwebs,” No Doubt *“Season of the Witch,” Lana Del Rey *“Magic Works,” Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire * “A Monster in Paris,” Sean Lennon *“Do the Hippogriff,” Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire *

Mid-Series Review: Harry Potter Illustrated by Jim Kay Edition

Well, well, well. I put the Jim Kay illustrated versions of the first three Harry Potter books (all that was available so far) on my Christmas list last year. They seemed like fun. And my husband and kids got them for me and they were so beautiful under the Christmas tree and then I looked through them, so carefully, and then put them on the shelf. Why? Because I read Harry Potter in the fall? Yeah, basically. I knew I’d get to them soon enough. It’s the fall! I pulled the books back down and started reading them, gingerly. As the fourth one is now available, I ordered that one and read it too before moving on to my old paperback copies to finish off the series for the year. And now I wait impatiently for the rest of the illustrated series to release, oh-so-slowly.

[image error] Image from Amazon.com

Honestly, I didn’t expect to like them very much. They seemed more like a collector’s item, and they are, because they are expensive and pieces of art as much as of literature. But so are many other picture books, just not as expensive. Not that they are expensive for money’s sake. Actually, at around $40 a piece and cheaper in a set and at many places (I paid more like $25 for my fourth one), they’re not more expensive than they should be: they’re enormous things (and I wonder what books five and seven will be like!), on thick, glossy paper, and colorful throughout, the illustrations extending to the very tips of the pages. I also, upon perusing the first one in a book store way back, was not that thrilled with the illustrations themselves. I thought they just weren’t my style.

[image error] Image from Amazon.com

I was wrong. I love these books. Let me first tell you the downside (besides price): they are too hefty and pretty to carry around with you. They take up a lot of lap space, and I feel like I’m handling a precious artifact as I try not to smudge the pages. (Perhaps cotton gloves is an idea?) That’s it. If you are okay with curling up at home to read these, using a table instead for your snack which you’ll eat with frequent napkinning, then they are definitely worth it for someone who loves Harry Potter. Even newbies could really enjoy reading Harry Potter the first time with these books, especially children. (Though later books in the original series get grimmer and more mature and are not really appropriate for children.)

Plus sides: first of all, they are NOT abridged. Full text. Second, the illustrations are beautiful and they are plentiful. Many pages just have a pattern set behind them, but there are illustrations about every other or every third turn of the page, it seems, and some of them are very elaborate. These are paintings, paintings that took research, planning, sculpting models, mocking, and time. They are also detailed, and I have enjoyed sitting and looking around at all those details, which does mean I’m reading slower, but it’s a fun experience. Other great things? Seeing the Wizarding World through new eyes. I have grown accustomed to seeing it through the eyes of Universal Studios, but not only does Jim Kay have a different imagination and the approval of J. K. Rowling, but he is able to do things on the page that a movie studio can’t do, due to limitations with money, CG, and casting. For example, Kay can present the characters just as they are described in the books. It’s a slightly different world with Kay than it is with Universal. And the best part? At least for an Anglophile? Though they are not straight-up UK editions (still The Sorcerer’s Stone and not The Philosopher’s Stone), they are put out by Bloomsbury and as far as I can tell, the British English remains in the text. I have been looking to buy a paperback set in the UK edition and have found it difficult, so I was super excited as I read these to see that the original language and expressions were left alone. I love it.

[image error] Image from The Guardian

So, obviously a recommend. They are a bit of an investment, especially over a used paperback set (or one from your library), but I am really enjoying them. (Note: there is also a deluxe illustrated edition. They cost more and have cloth covers, but I can’t say what else.) This set has a place at the top of my bookshelves and I will continue to collect them. Book five—The Order of the Phoenix—is scheduled to come out in 2021. After that, who knows? I also want to point out that Minalima is releasing an illustrated version, one book at a time. The first one came out this year, but I have not held a copy in my hands, no thanks to the pandemic. It is a totally different style from the Jim Kay ones, with simpler, more animated-feeling illustrations and, so I hear, papercraft interaction? Like a fold-out letter, etc. They are in about the same price range, but dare I own another thing Harry Potter?

I believe I do.

Book Review: Among the Shadows

Whew! I better get to reviewing my Halloween reads, or it’ll be useless, at least for you this year. While I’ve already given my list of recommendations, I have read a few new books and watched a few new movies this year, expanding on my same-old.

[image error] Cover image from GoodReads.com

I travelled a few weeks back. It was in some ways against my better judgement, at least as a cautious, pandemic-restriction-abiding citizen, but it was an important moment for me to do it, anyways. One of my best friends, from college, was getting married. I had meant to visit her for twenty years and had also been waiting for this wedding for twenty years. While I felt at first like I couldn’t go, my other best friend sent me an email and said, “Darn this pandemic! Let’s do it together.” So I did. (Personal note: so glad that I did. It was important and wonderful, though shadowed some by the state of everything and also the brevity warranted by the same state of everything.) I did do a little mental hyperventilating on the four planes it took to get to St. Louis, but part of my strategy was to get a window seat and bury my double-masked nose and goggled-eyes in a book. October? Halloween reading.

The book I finished on the flights (and in the airports) was a tad bit embarrassing. I don’t embarrass easy, so when I do, I shake it off and try to be me without apologizing. However, the cover on this one doesn’t read “Devon,” so I tended to hide the cover or at least some of the cover under my hand. It just looks like some sort of cheesy, romance, trade paperback. What is it, actually, if not a cheesy romance? It’s a book of short stories, first of all. The cover is old fashioned and meant for teenage girls, but the “dark-side” short stories inside are by none other than L. M. Montgomery. Yes, the author of Anne of Green Gables. Which means that the stories aren’t super spooky and definitely not gory. Some of them are ghost stories, some of them are about the darker elements, like criminals and crimes. In other words, it’s all the darkest of Montgomery’s stories, which tend to be lighter, airier, and downright wholesome.

These stories are still basically wholesome and, having been written in Canada in the 1800s to early 1900s, still old-fashioned. If this is your style, then this is a good find for you, because it’s much easier to come by grit and bleakness, gore and screams, for your October reading. This is softer and sweeter, but still has small creeps and, mostly, a discordant note playing in the background, giving Montgomery’s usual stories an eerie twist. (Not that her stories are saccharine—they have sadness, complexity, tension and small-town adventure in scads. And not that none of her novels have that eerie note: the Emily of New Moon series is a little darker than the usual.) On the down-side, if you are familiar with Montgomery’s story-telling, there are going to be few surprises here and there are whole lines that were pulled for use in her novels. Then again, maybe you are comfortable in that world.

As in all of Montgomery’s writing, the stories are well-written and the characters and lives are engaging. It’s simply a matter of style. Do you enjoy short stories? Do you like old-fashioned tales from a simpler time and place? Then this is your October read.

Computers for Writers

Tech doesn’t usually interest me. In fact, it frustrates and disgusts me more than interests or amazes me. I still have fantasies in which I am sitting in my front window in the chair and I am reading and sipping tea and contemplating my evening and whether I will paint or embroider and the TV doesn’t exist, the laptop doesn’t exist, the smartphone does not exist. Technology is getting in the way of my peace. Maybe.

[image error] copyright Devon Trevarrow Flaherty, 2020

Yes, I have a blog and a webpage and I have an Instagram and a Facebook page and post to GoodReads, blah blah blah. When my kids teach me something on my iPhone, I make them actually teach me because I do not want to be obsolete. I want to be able to function in my world. These are the cards I have been dealt, and while I have considered many times going off the grid into the mountains, that is not the reality I have chosen for myself. Yet.

I have been working with a poor computer for the past, well, none of us can remember properly but at least four years. The laptop on which I spend a significant portion of most days has been slow (think slower than that), wonky (think wonkier than that), and temperamental (think more temperamental than that). For a long time, it sounds like a jet engine when it starts up, takes more than twenty minutes to turn on or wake up, takes several minutes to toggle between apps, moves like molasses through the internet, and won’t print, among other things. This has infused a lot of tension and sucked a lot of energy out of me. I have avoided some things and have set very wide margins around tasks that others don’t even think about, like printing a ticket or jotting down a paragraph that has popped in my head for one of my stories. I thought I wasn’t complaining, though when looking back, I was complaining and yet insisting that I stick with the old laptop until it turned over and died, itself. I refused to put it out to pasture, though it was sapping me. That sounds like a personal problem.

Some, it came down to money. Laptops are not cheap. And though a dozen times someone tried to convince me to go with a Chromebook, which I could get cheaper, or some other almost-laptop, I was stubborn about it. No. I just couldn’t see myself with something so stripped down, so dependent on the Cloud, so lacking in Microsoft software. I’m a writer, for pity’s sake, and an old-school one, at that. So here’s the story:

[image error] copyright Devon Trevarrow Flaherty, 2019

A couple weeks ago, I turned on my computer and it went to a factory-blue screen and I thought, That’s weird. Continuing on, I noticed that during the fifteen minutes it takes for my apps to pop up, only a few of them did, and the bar at the bottom of my screen was woefully empty. Hmm. I opened File Manager and, yes, that sinking in the pit of my stomach was warranted, there was nothing there. Not one file. Not one book, one short story, one lesson for home school, one family photo, one stupid video of the way the sequins on my pillow shimmered in the fan light. I looked a little further, but still nothing. Ooh boy. I did not panic. I took a deep breath, I used my phone to do a Google search, and I found a local computer repairman with excellent credentials and reputation. I called him. I got an appointment and an estimate and we chatted a little bit. I told him I would call him back. I woke my night-working, day-sleeping husband before I committed us to a $300 fix that was not guaranteed to work. He said, “Check your Cloud.” I said, “I’m lousy at the Cloud and my laptop is (surprise!) always giving me error messages about the Cloud.” He said, “Check the Cloud and shop for laptops.” I said, “What?! It’s a pandemic and I don’t know what I’m looking for. You’re the one with an amicable relationship with technology.” He said, “Check the Cloud and shop for laptops and I’m going to bed.”

I usually think I can do anything. I embrace challenges, things out of my depth, more than I can chew, etc. There are random things that I avoid having to conquer, and shopping for new tech is one of them. I literally let my husband go get me a new phone when mine dies, or I take free ones from relatives. But what I heard from my husband was a combination of “Put on your big girl panties” and “If you can raise children, cook a chocolate tasting menu for 160 people, ride a camel, and complete three novels, you are capable of shopping for a laptop.” Fine.

The spaces in our house, during the pandemic, have shifted their functions a little. Since these four-plus walls have become most of our world, the rooms and objects get used differently than they used to. I sat down where I stood, which was at the bottom of the upstairs staircase, and opened my phone’s browser, again. I began by checking the ol’ Cloud (with a sigh, because I hate these sorts of tasks.) I was amazed to discover—I mean it: amazed—that everything was in the Cloud. Like everything. Even all the photos and files that I never dreamed were being automatically backed up. Plus, with my storage on Shutterfly and the SD card in my camera, well, I wasn’t really missing a darned thing. Say que? So I called that computer guy back and told him I and my laptop were much better at backing up our files than we had ever dreamed and I was going to spend my money on replacing my tired, old, and cheap HP with something else. To his credit, he was very happy for me. Then,I started searching. What was I searching for? Something not too small. Something on the old-fashioned side. Something that meets my needs as a writer and a home-schooler. Aha! Aren’t there tech magazines out there that write about these very things? So I found a few reputable tech magazine articles that were actually about, drumroll, the best laptops for writers! One of the best ways to conquer a new task is to put yourself under good tutelage. These tech writers would be my gurus. So I spent the next while—still on the stairs because that’s what happens with ADHD: you either can’t focus on a single thing or you go all in and can’t be torn from your focus—looking up individual laptops, prices, and where to buy. It happened to be Prime Day, which was a small miracle since my old laptop had been on its last legs for years.

What did the magazines say that I would want, as a writer? Well, let’s see what I can remember. A large-enough screen, presumably for seeing layout and whole pages at once. Something lightweight and slim, for travel. A fairly long battery life, also for travel. A comfortable keyboard for all that incessant tapping. Access to programs that writers use most, which as far as I can tell is the Microsoft suite. What writers don’t need: fancy graphics, a high-end camera (though they need a decent one for Zoom calls), or super-storage (because we’re not using it for gaming or lots of movies, but for fairly simple document files). The articles, by the way, did recommend some Chromebooks, but I still avoided them and landed on a selection that was moderately priced (plus on sale), on the old-fashioned side of what I was seeing, and would work seamlessly with the programs I was used to using on a daily basis: Word, Excel, Notes, a browser, etc. So I landed on a Surface, the specific one that was recommended in one of the articles, which is a Surface Laptop 2. (The 3 is the newest one available.) I was pretty nervous forking out the cash (it normally comes in at $1000, but recall that it was Prime Day. Still). I had never spent that much on a laptop but everyone—me included—was sick of my debilitating tech.

Shipping said it would take nearly a week and I whined and freaked out and then settled in to a long weekend with no home school planning or story submitting. Then it arrived in two days and I panicked again, like I don’t have time to set up a computer! But somehow, after the sun set, I sat down on the family room couch with a book and flipped on a Halloween baking show in the background (because I was so used to making sure I had some entertainment at my fingertips when I did anything on my laptop, there was always that much waiting) and opened the fancy, new box. I would say it was love at first sight, but honestly, looking at the slim, silver thing with it’s sorta-carpeted keyboard area, I was unsure. Then I plugged it in, and it had this weird, new, magnetic connecter that was sure to fall out at the least provocation, and I was downright homesick. Still, I turned it on. The screen immediately popped on and a voice spoke to me in reassuring tones about walking me through the set up. The computer asked me a series of quick questions, got to know my face, and then logged me into my Microsoft account which automatically inserted my old, familiar backgrounds and some of the apps and all my freaking files! Alright, Laptoppy (I have yet to name her,) you can be my assistant until I can afford a human one.

Like daylight dawning, I am beginning to see the upsides to this tech, again. It has been a couple weeks, and I am very slowly changing my old habits. When I want something off my laptop, I am learning not to sigh and carve out a half-hour, but to just pop the darn thing on, touch the screen on the app and file I want (!!!), and watch it do what I want when I want it done. I can pull up my recipe files, my work files, my school files, in a matter of seconds. Holy Toledo, folks. And the fact that the tech is what held on to all those precious files for me while I wallowed in self-pity and irritation? That counts for something, too. (I also really like the combination of touch screen–including stylus capabilities!–and keyboard.) I am happy. I am in harmony with my biggest of writing tools, thanks to those smart people at the tech magazines, an empathetic computer repairman, a sleepy and believing husband, the Cloud, and Laptoppy.