Mountains Made Low

I finally sent my Christmas list out to my family this morning. The funny part is, I had a hard time thinking of books to put on it. This is a big screaming deal, since Mom is a bookstore manager, and buying me books for Christmas (and my birthday) is, generally speaking, part of her plan. I did come up with a few to put on the list (the first three of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books, for example), but I noticed that I didn’t have much that I actually wanted to put on the list this year, and — in particular — I didn’t have any heavy, academic tomes to add. For someone who’s made the family go, “WTF?” in the past with such requests as the Liddle-Scott Greek Lexicon (a huge volume) and the two-volume Complete Works of Aristotle, this is a new and different feeling.

In part, it has to do with the fact that I’ve got the new books from three authors I really like who published in October and November this year — Under the Dome (Stephen King), Breathless (Dean Koontz), and Her Fearful Symmetry (Audrey Niffinenger). And it part it comes from the fact that my reading habits have really taken a nose dive in the second half of 2009 (were you wondering why I haven’t been keeping track of that New Year’s Resolution or posting about books any more?).

I have been reading some, again, lately, though. I’ve been on a sort of nonfiction kick. Or as I admitted to a friend the other night, I’m actually on a “people behaving badly and then writing about it kick.” I recently finished Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (Tucker Max is a fair writer who’s built his writing career on the back of having lived some quite humorous stories), and have since moved on to Chelsea Handler’s My Horizontal Life (some 40 pages in, I’m not quite sure what to make of Handler, yet: Knowing that she’s a comedian in addition to her writing makes it hard to know what’s cynicism and what’s sarcasm in her work, and I’m having a difficult time with what’s funny because it’s true, much of which would then be funny and very sad simultaneously, and what’s funny because she wants to be funny, much of which is apparently not coming off in print; but we’ll see).

But I do know that today, I am getting written — and listening to oral — book reports from my developmental reading students. As a sample of what I’m looking for in the written report, I gave them all a slightly reworked version of what I wrote here about Arthur Nersesian’s Chinese Takeout. I remarked that when I talk about that class — book reports and vocabulary tests — I sound like I teach the 7th grade. And then I give them my analysis/review of a artfic novel as an example of what I’m looking for in the book report.

Yeah. This will go well!

Surprisingly enough, this brief post is about work, not True Blood (which I’m watching on DVD at the moment), the Southern Vampire Mysteries books, or even my love life (or total lack thereof). Granted, it does touch on the characters of the former two, and may hint at the latter, but it’s really not about them. Really.

Call me Vampire Bill.

No, I have not taken up with a much younger, attractive, virginal blond cocktail waitress/telepath.

I’m not even saying, “I wish,” on that one.

But here’s the thing. A fact presented itself in my head the other day, a fact about my work, and the people I work with.

Since I started the new job (which, now that I mention it, I’m not sure I’ve even bothered to take the time to write about here, though the fact that I’ve been busy with it might explain at least part of my lack of having written much — if, that is, I hadn’t already stopped writing before I got the new job), I’ve noticed that though all of us basically work for someone else, the people I interact with the most in my work are — wait for it —

Eric. And Pam.

But our collective boss is not, I repeat not, Sophie-Anne. Nor is she a queen.

Like Bill Compton, though, I do work a lot with Eric and Pam.

So call me Vampire Bill.

Book #22 (2009)

And now for something completely different.

The Last Summer (of You and Me) is a novel by Ann Brashares, perhaps most noted for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and its sequels. Perhaps Brashares realizes that her primary audience has grown up a bit (though there are always a new crop of tweens and teens ready to pick up where the last bunch left off), because rather than teenage protagonists, this book focuses on a small group of 20-somethings.

The novel centers around two sisters, Alice and Riley. Alice is 21, has just graduated from college, and has her eye set on beginning law school in the fall — after one last idyllic and reminiscent summer spent in the family cottage on Fire Island. Riley is four years older, but the perpetual child, the lifeguard stand on one of the island’s beaches is her home, and she works in other outdoor adventure settings throughout the rest of the year. Rounding out this group is Paul, the girls’ neighbor on the island, Riley’s age, and Riley’s best friend throughout life growing up; Alice has always felt on the edge of Riley’s friendship with Paul, but has also always felt something other than friendship for him.

And Paul has felt the same about her. Following Alice, and to a lesser extent Paul as they drift from their childhood quasi-friendship into an adult partnership as lovers, makes this novel interesting, particularly as they both navigate their on-going relationships with Riley (Alice’s sister, Paul’s best friend) and their sense that in coming to love each other, they have somehow betrayed her.

Perhaps most interesting to me as a reader is Brashares’s portrayal of Paul. His torment over his life, his decisions, and his future with or without Alice in it. She has captured a young man’s doubts very well, and I always am impressed when any writer captures the intimate thoughts of a character of the opposite sex as well as Brashares has here.

The story unfolds almost as a morality tale on the value of communication in relationships of any type: romantic, platonic, familial. So much of the pain in the story could have been avoided if the characters would just have talked, and by the end, much of the hurt is mended by that simple and open communication.

And that’s really my only critique: I could have done with a less obvious lesson in this book. But maybe, too, it’s a lesson we could all do with hearing on occasion. Because it seems that so many of us have a tendency to keep everything in.

Book #21 (2009)

And then installment #9 in Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries series (and since this is the most recent one — published in May 2009 — I’ll be done with these for a while, though I’ll admit to a temptation to look into some of Harris’s other works).

The Weres, Shifters, and other shapeshifters come out and join the vampires in the legitimate supernatural community in Dead and Gone. There are repercussions, of course. And the activities of the Fellowship of the Sun continue to get more and more personal for Sookie. Her former best friend, Arlene, who has fallen in with the Fellowship, sets a trap for Sookie, particularly because of her close association with the vampires, even though she’s fully human.

After the weres come out all over the world, including Sam Merlotte, Sookie’s boss at the bar, a rash of violence against Weres and shifters ensues — though, in one of Harris’s better twists in this series — the culprit isn’t who you think; the victims, however, include Sookie’s sister-in-law, Crystal, and Tray Dawson, Bon Temps’s own local Werewolf.

But the shifters’ revelation is only half of this story. There are also the fairies to consider, because they are on the very brink of civil war, and Sookie’s true great-grandfather, the fairy prince Niall, is at the center of it. His enemies will get to him by attacking her. But Sookie is not without her own supernatural protectors. Werewolves, werepanthers, a true Shifter, and a number of vampires treat Sookie as one of their own. But there is, as almost always, a cost.

There is a cost to the shifters coming out; there is a cost to the fairy civil war; and Sookie learns that even good deeds carry their own costs: because of her actions, helping to rescue the wounded, humans and vampires alike, in the wake of the bombing at the Vampire Summit, she has attracted the attention of the FBI, who are interested in finding out exactly how she and Barry were able to do what they did, and how that ability — whatever it might be, which they don’t understand or really seem to believe — might be useful to them. It’s really true, for Sookie, that no good deed goes unpunished.

But that situation is unresolved at the end of Dead and Gone. And those of us who like these books are left waiting — an unspecified period, as of now — for the next book to come out. Punishment for the good deed of reading them all, I suppose.

Book #20 (2009)

From Dead to Worse is the eighth entry in Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries. It deals, largely, with the aftermath of terrorist attack at the vampire convention that took place in All Together Dead, an aftermath that includes a hostile takeover of the land controlled by Sophie-Anne LeClerq, the erstwhile queen of Lousiana and newly recognized rightful queen of Arkansas.

Because Sophie-Anne was so badly injured in the bombing, she has become a prime target for such a takeover, and the vampire King of Nevada is in a position to exploit that situation. By the time Sookie Stackhouse, cocktail waitress and telepath, finds out that her ultimate employer (on the telepath side of her professional life) is being targeted and her immediate employer (in that same sense) — Eric Northman, the vampire sheriff of Lousiana’s Region Five — shares his queen’s danger, the coup d’etat is tout finis.

With Sookie’s help, Eric manages to survive both the takeover, and the reprisal from Sophie-Anne’s remaining and highly loyal bodyguard, the hulking Anglo-Saxon vampire Siegebert, whom Sookie runs over with a car as he tortures and plans to kill both Eric and the new king — which is too bad, since Sookie rather likes him.

But this is just further evidence of Sookie’s deepening bond with Eric, born of their having shared each other’s blood so many times. Sookie knew that Eric was in danger in the parking lot behind Merlotte’s bar, where Sookie works on the waitress side of her life, and she killed a vampire she really liked to protect him. This really disturbs her.

The bond between Sookie and Eric is spiritual, and a little bit sexual — they spent a week as lovers at a time when Eric had lost his memory — and it is complicated by the fact that Sookie is involved with Quinn, a weretiger who has been blackmailed by the Nevada vampires into helping them with their takeover. Sookie realizes that, though he’s between a rock and a hard place, she cannot be with Quinn because he would always choose his mother and his sister — his family is the leverage in the vampires’ blackmail — over her; he has put her in danger to protect them, and though that was not his intent, Sookie cannot tolerate that effect.

So once again, Sookie loses a promising relationship to the politics and vagaries of the supernatural world. By this point, that’s three or four, depending on whether you count her week or so spent with Eric.

As time goes by, in this series, Sookie both becomes more comfortable with, and grows more resentful of her whole life in the supernatural world. She’s more a part of it, and it’s populated by people she can be more comfortable around because of her limited (or nearly-non-existant) ability to read their thoughts. But then again, Sookie herself is only human. With a twist, to be sure, but only human.

Book #19 (2009)

Southern Vampire Mysteries #7. This is the book where Sookie really learns what the vampire hierarchy is all about. While she knew before that Eric Northman was a Sheriff, and that Bill Compton somehow worked for Eric just as Eric himself somehow worked for Sophie-Anne LeClerq, the vampire Queen of Louisiana, she learns in this All Together Dead that even vampire Kings and Queens are not a law unto themselves.

Sookie travels to a vampire convention in the Sophie-Anne’s retinue. In addition to conferring on matters that affect them all, and trading goods and services with one another, the vampire royalty handle a number of top-level matters, including the wedding of the Kings of Indiana and Mississippi (I love Harris’s touch of irony there, choosing Indiana and Mississippi as the states where the vampire kings’ sexual and romantic interests run to men, and having them join in a marriage not only political, but a genuine love match, as well).

The other major event on the calendar is Sophie-Anne’s trial in the death of her husband, the former King of Arkansas. Though it is clear that Arkansas attacked her, in an attempt to take his potential inheritance by force, the politics of the situation mean that the trial could, really, go either way. In the end, Sophie-Anne is cleared.

Complicating Sookie’s life at the convention is the fact that these formal events are being planned by Extreme(ly Elegant) Events — the supernatural arm of which is run by Sookie’s new boyfriend, Quinn, a weretiger. Working the events with Quinn is his slightly disagreeable, “no one’s good enough for my big brother” sister, Frannie. Add to this that Sophie-Anne’s closest adviser, Andre, feels the need to bind Sookie even closer to the vampires of Louisiana, by himself exchanging blood with her, the fact that Eric stops this from happening by stepping in and doing the blood exchange himself, and that Quinn walks in on the end of this rather intimate process, and Sookie’s world becomes a blur of tangled commitments, jealous supernatural beings, and confused emotions.

The story climaxes with the vampire convention being bombed by the Fellowship of the Sun, and Sookie and the only other adult telepath she has ever met, Barry (the) Bellboy, who works for the King of Texas, help the emergency services by sifting through the rubble and finding buried humans and vampires alike.

Sookie manages to protect those vampires most important to her (Eric and Pam) from any harm, though Sophie-Anne is badly injured, and Andre, injured in the blast, is killed in the bombing’s aftermath. Quinn, too, is badly injured, and in helping with the search, Sookie loses track of him.

The bombing of the vampire summit, and the events of the summit itself, cause a great deal of upheaval in Sookie’s life, and All Together Dead ends on that note. The Fellowship has struck a mighty blow against vampires, Sookie is more closely bonded to Eric, Sookie and Barry have outed their ability at least on a small scale, and it’s unclear what any of this might mean for the future.

For a while now, I’ve been counting audiobooks in the list of books I’ve “read.” And from those who know me a little better — on- and offline both — I’ve taken a fair ration of crap about this. After all, I’m an English professor — I, therefore, shouldn’t “cheat” but rather should count only the books I’ve actually turned the paper pages of, spent a chunk of time with my nose between the covers of, and in general “really” “read.”

Adding further to this particular ration is the fact that I tend to read (on paper) “brain candy” and save the “heavy” books for audio. Thus, while I’ve consumed, voraciously, all nine books in the Southern Vampire series on paper (eight in paperback and the ninth in hardcover — to my undying chagrin), since April, the single real literature book I’ve read this year so far (Crime and Punishment) has been on audio.

To those issuing this particular ration — when they care to listen — I’ve defended myself by saying that I am, to a disproportionate extent, an auditory learner. In many ways, this has been maddening to my friends and acquaintances for years. My high school friends, many of whom I’m still in touch with to some extent, find it maddening that I am able to quote, nearly verbatim, conversations that we had nearly 20 years ago. In college and, particularly, graduate school, my lack of note-taking was particularly maddening to my classmates of the other two learning styles — though, in studying English, I envied the visual learners their ability to recall the printed word. I even remember, in the sultry summer of 1998, walking circles in my apartment in Akron (the floor plan was conducive to this), reciting Latin conjugation and declension patterns aloud, just so that I could hear them!

The reason that I bring this up is that I think I have met my match in terms of audiobooks. I’m now in the middle of listening to one — since it’s summertime, this is primarily while driving, not while in the gym — and I’m not sure that I’m getting it. I’ve found myself thinking, on several occasions, as I have gotten about 4½ hours into it, that maybe this one would be better if I were reading it on paper (or — to further inflame the book snobs out there — in the Kindle reader on my iTouch). I’m going to stick with it, because in the last half-hour or so I was listening yesterday, on my drive back from a wedding in Columbus, it seemed to get better, the narrative seemed to clarify.

But even when I’m finished, I’m thinking that I may want to read Peter Høeg’s The Quiet Girl in print at some point in the future.