I just got back from my epic and relaxing vacation at the beach, and I plowed through 3.5 books in a week–most of them from the recommendations of my friendly commenters (Thanks, guys!). In other words, I have a lot of reviews coming soon.
Before we get to that, though, I’ve gotta say: you guys are some sick weirdos! I ask for summer beach reads–more precisely, “light but engaging stories available digitally. No horror or gritty fantasy (looking at you, Game of Thrones). Genre fantasy/sci-fi is good but only if it is a bit original (ex. I read The Black Unicorn and it was TERRIBLE)”–and you guys provide suggestions for murder, disturbing deaths, horrifying wizardly accidents, and more murder.
In other words, I love you guys.
I read:
Skin Game, the latest Dresden Files book, recommended by KokkieH.
The Bride Wore Size 12, by Meg Cabot, recommended by me to myself. (yes, the title intrigued me)
Sick Puppy by Carl Hiaasen, recommended by Twitter friend @ronielise
A recap for those who aren’t following: we’ve got a possibly-turning-evil powerful wizard fighting ghouls, witches, and monsters who have a taste for dismemberment; a girl who can see people’s deaths; a college dorm coordinator who somehow ends up solving murders; and a criminal with an anger management problem and a preference for saving the environment.
You people are the reason I started imagining murder scenes at my resort. Thanks a bunch.
I’m about to speak out of both sides of my (metaphorical) mouth.
First, I’m going to jump on the “cameras are ruining everything!” bandwagon. Then I’m going to step off it. OK? Ok.
Step Away From the Camera
There have been a proliferation of “articles” and videos about how people aren’t experiencing life anymore, how even live concerts are viewed through the screen of an iPhone and how that’s horribly annoying. Here’s the most recent one I’ve seen.
This article talks about a study that found that the act of taking a picture impedes memory. Basically, by choosing to take a picture instead of just soaking up the moment, that you deprive yourself of the moment.
My first reaction was “Omigosh, yes!”
When I went to the Grand Canyon, I was stunned. I mean, I figured I was prepared: I’d seen lots of images of the canyon before. But when I got there and saw it for myself, in person… I cried. It was a really powerful moment. The wonder of nature and God and the incredible feeling of being so small in the face of something so huge and incredible and old… it literally took my breath away. One day, I tried to capture that sense and the sun sliding down the canyon, to bring home the wonder of that sunset.
And it completely did not work. Photographs just do not contain that kind of depth (I don’t know, maybe Ansel Adams could have done it, but not me and my dinky tourist camera). I envied the woman I met who was fast-painting the scene in watercolors. That image got much closer. Plus she was doing something pretty incredible.
I’m getting married soon (oh my gosh, so soon), and therefore reading a bunch of wedding blogs. One was so trollish that I still struggle to believe it was real: it was about how “rude” it was for the bride and groom to request that guests don’t take pictures during the ceremony. It was, hilariously, demolished by the commentors, who poked right through the argument.
And I agree with those folks: it’s so frustrating to see people actively missing this big moment because they are so busy trying to “catch” it. Plus I’m spending a bunch of money on an impartial professional photographer to get those photos, anyway.
But then again…
Pick Up the Camera
I saw this video just before I was going to write this post, and it changed my mind…somewhat.
First, it’s adorable. Second, I hate this guy, for making my life seem so crappy in comparison and being so methodical about his planning. Third, it is a great way to have captured 4 years of his travels.
And that is the upside to the camera. So long as we don’t live behind it–or vicariously through it–it can bring us back to those incredible moments. I know my photos of the Grand Canyon don’t really capture the grandeur of it, but I remember the trip when I look at it. I can imagine myself back there under the sun and I can practically taste the wind. The photos make the memory more vivid. They ground us, give us a sense of space and time and history. For some of us, like my grandfather, they are literal doorways to memories.
So pick up the camera. Do capture your life. But remember to live it, too.
And maybe take a few trips, like the proposal guy there. Me, I’m going to Jamaica.
One of the glib phrases people toss out in times of stress goes something like, “Don’t worry: your real friends will be the ones who are there for you.”
Which is no solace when they aren’t.
Our safety nets in life are designed in layers: while you’re up there, teetering on that thin wire and juggling some flaming sticks, you have several layers of protection you’ve built up. You have your friends; your family; maybe another tier of friends–coworkers, maybe?; people who helped bring you up but you don’t confide in; and so on and so on, all the way down to strangers.
The number of nets you’ll have will depend upon much, but most people have more than one.
Aside from my high-wire partner in life, my first tier of netting was built up of my close friends. Yes, they were newer to my life, but we’d celebrated birthdays, trashed-talked bosses, helped each other move.
And then I slipped, and I fell off my balancing act, and…
They weren’t there. They didn’t even drop me; Worse, they just let me fall.
I am lucky that I had farther layers below that net, that I was caught elsewhere, but the pain of the fall was sharp.
Some people have told me “at least I know how my true friends are.” And I worry, because I don’t trust myself to know anything at all.
But then I discovered I have other people, with relationships so tenuous that they couldn’t count as a safety net, but with each faint touch of support, they strengthened this guide rope. They couldn’t be called “real friends” at all, by even a generous interpretation: I’ve never even met them.
These are people I met online, who live several states away. A friend from one quiet corner of the internet used to talk video games with me; lately we’ve been swapping wedding-planning horror stories. A sweet sweet girl on the wedding forum APracticalWedding reached out and, out of her own kindness, made me dozens of paper flowers–just to be nice. Others have offered advice, support, sympathy, and friendship.
Those friends kept me going when I felt bleak about everything. They helped in ways I can’t measure and I can’t thank them enough.
Which calls into question the meaning of “real friends.” What makes something real, anyway?
Though it’s lessoned, people still disparage these internet connections. It isn’t the same, not at all, but those “unreal” internet connections have been far better friends than some of the “real” ones I thought I had. And so I am grateful, and walk steady on my wire toward the big finale.
Another day, another spate of articles bemoaning the state of today’s youth. This most recent is a bunching of studies that found that kids aren’t reading as much.
NPR put it this way: “Nearly half of 17-year-olds say they read for pleasure no more than one or two times a year — if that.That’s way down from a decade ago.”
GASP! The horror! Let’s trot out the motifs of the way this generation is RUINED FOREVER!
…but wait. It said “read for pleasure.” Hold the phone there. Perhaps there is another, different explanation beyond “the internet/video games/drugs/television did it.”
Terrifyingly, I’m now old enough to be considered part of the “adult” quotient, but I was in high school not too terribly long ago, and I can tell you something: there was a lot of required reading. And I like to read! I read all the time! But, during the school year, my reading fell to being mostly required reading.
And let me tell you, reading the Crucible for the fourth time in the same year (“to really understand the text” *gag*) gets really old and I would not consider that enjoyable!
So that’s me, a kid who loves reading and literally never leaves the house without a book. When I was 17, I wouldn’t necessarily have said reading was “pleasurable” either: I was maxed out, and, yeah, preferred to play video games or watch TV. How must it be for the kids who are ONLY exposed to school reading? They never get the opportunity to develop a fondness for reading because they’ve been conditioned to view it as work full of meaningless “symbolism.” (yes, I’m still scarred from “The Scarlet Letter.” Sometimes a tree is just a freakin’ tree, teach!)
In an increasingly technological society, I find it hard to believe that kids are not reading in general. We’re all reading and writing MORE than ever, with so much communication switching away from in-person or on the phone to texting, email, status updates, and online forums. It’s becoming MORE important, but that kind of reading and writing wouldn’t show up in these studies.
Essentially, I think the problem here is not with teens and reading for pleasure, but with the studies. I DO think there are probably plenty of things to distract kids from reading, but those things could be bolstered not by writing ominous-sounding articles about “kids today” but instead folding more “fun” books into required reading. As much as I loved “A Handmaid’s Tale,” would it kill school districts to allow some trendy stuff–maybe middle schoolers would really benefit from doing an analysis of “The Hunger Games” instead of a nonfiction book for a change.
What do you think? Should we be worried about teen reading levels?
I’ve been reading Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew. (Pro tip: It may not be a great idea to read horror when you’re going through a stressful time! The more you know!)
It’s taking me awhile. I picked it a) because it’s Stephen King and I feel like there’s a lot I can learn by studying him, b) my fiance brought me the book when I didn’t have one to read, and c) I figured hey, short stories! Perfect for when I’m busy!
I sort of forgot that I don’t read Stephen King generally because he writes horror. …The subsequent nightmares reminded me, don’t worry.
Anyway, so I’ve been reading this book. And you can tell he’s talented, even though many of his successful books, including On Writing, hadn’t been written yet. But the really interesting thing, to me, is the prologue. He writes about how he likes to write short stories, how he got started with them, selling a thing or two to a magazine (back in the day when mainstream magazines bought fiction to publish) to keep his family afloat. He writes about how it’s been harder, since he started in on novels, to find time for the shorts.
And–critically–he talks about how the contained stories aren’t really “winners.” (He specifically calls them “losers” and then details why, and why you should read on anyway.) I don’t know if that’s an author’s critic chewing away at him or what, and I haven’t read enough of his works overall to know for sure but… I believe him.
Some of the stories don’t really work. Some are dalliances with other genres and then remember they’re supposed to be horror so make a sharp and weird turn at the end, like The Jaunt (science fiction), The Wedding Gig (1920s crime intrigue) and The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands (maybe Poe-sian or Doyle? I dunno, it just didn’t work). Some are clearly horror but are so undefined that it’s hard to be frightened, like The Raft, which read like an episode of Supernatural, except those guys would have killed the monster somehow. Then there are those where you can see the ending coming from a mile away, like the charming wish-fulfillment fantasy Word Processor of the Gods.
Nevertheless, I feel like I’m learning a lot from these “losers.” (I mean, they were still published, some of them twice, so they aren’t so bad, really). King is great at giving his characters baggage; everybody has issues of some kind. This makes his people relatable. I think I can work on that in my writing. I also feel like I know the general landscape of Maine, even though I’ve never been anywhere near it; he does a great job mining his geography for detail, and maybe I need to work on embracing Texas in my writing more. His word-choice manages to have depth without ever feeling too out of reach for a general audience, and it feels like you’re getting to know him.
But the biggest lesson, perhaps, I’ve gotten so far? Failure doesn’t always mean the end.
Skeleton Crew was published in 1984. In 2007, the first story in the book became a movie:The Mist. I haven’t seen it, but it seems like it stays pretty true to the text…with a critical and gut-wrenching change to the ending.
23 years later, his “loser” became a success–or at least a pretty good movie, with a slight change. It has a rating of 7.2 stars on IMDB right now. That’s not so bad for a “meh” story, is it, Stephen?
Twenty-three years seems like a long time to wait, but it does give me hope. (Though I’d prefer things come along a tad faster.)
Disney offered up a brightly wrapped package of Angelina Jolie in a family-friendly live-action updated version of Maleficent. And while it was fun, kids would probably like it, and it was visually awesome…it wasn’t exactly a “classic” tale that will endure forever.
Heck, while the original Sleeping Beauty movie isn’t one of the best, it holds strong as a fairy tale and has some of the all-time best villainess scenes: classic.
But trying to make an obviously Big Bad into a Good Gal is … tough. I’m not sure it works in every case, or even if it ought to be done. I mean, the musical “Wicked” does a great job of it (but I personally found the book to be an unnecessarily dark/sexualized story that didn’t need to be told). Maleficent… would have been a great movie if it didn’t try to interlock with the original.
So I’d like to see someone else (ok, probably still Disney…) tackle a proper Maleficent redo, one that appropriately tied in with the original without changing it.
SPOILERS BELOW
So what is the problem with this incarnation?
The curse is totally changed. In the original, Maleficent curses the baby to prick her finger by sunset on her 16th birthday, causing her to die. It is only through the intervention of the Good Fairies that the curse is transmuted to “sleep-like death.”
(forgive the bad voice acting. The words are the same, though it isn’t the real actors. Disney being so tough on copyright makes it hard to find the original.)
But this one, in an effort to make our pal Maleficent not as evil, the curse is always “sleep-like death,” and we never even find out what the third fairy blesses Aurora with! (What kind of weak-sauce curse is sleep? I mean, yeah, inconvenient, but not nearly as bad as it couldda been!)
Other things that are changed:
The Good Fairies are not just adorably ill-equipped to be human, they are downright incompetent and therefore deadly. In this iteration, it makes exactly zero sense that the king would entrust his cursed baby to them. Aurora’s near-death experiences would probably make a good drinking game.
King Stefan is a bad dude. Like, not “could be interpreted as bad from a certain perspective”–just… bad. He’s probably in need of the creepy asylum guy from Beauty and the Beast. Maybe that guy can come pick him up?
Maleficent is not the dragon. Instead, she has a companion who changes into the dragon. Color me disappointed. More dragons, please?
The true-love kisser situation. I get it; it’s modernized, and we now (for good reason!) have a lot of discomfort with kissing sleeping maidens you just met. I don’t even mind the change here, but it’s a big one.
The whole kingdom isn’t put to sleep. I’m probably the only one disappointed by this, but I thought it was pretty cool that the whole kingdom was affected by Maleficent’s curse, and the short-circuiting of it in this film was a letdown. The kid’s been gone for 16 years; people aren’t the least bit harmed by this magic.
Alright, so they changed a lot of things: Maleficent doesn’t just embroider the original, it tore it up and started something similar but totally different.
So what would I like to see?
First, full-on no-holds barred EVIL Maleficent. I’m ok with evil folks having reasons for evil; that’s nice nuance. But make my toes curl! Scare me a little.
Second, she’s a dragon. The wings thing was neat and all, but no, I want her to be a big old scary dragon who likes to hang out in human form for some reason, except those darned horns won’t change.
Third…let’s get gritty. In my world, the kingdom’s main export is its fine fabrics and woven goods. The spinning wheel is Big Business, so this curse (to death, let’s not sugarcoat it) cleverly both imperils Aurora AND the economy of the entire kingdom. If he wants to save his daughter, the king has to destroy his people’s livelihood. If he doesn’t banish the spinners, he has doomed his daughter.
Makes the curse a whole lot more sinister, right?
So King Stefan banishes the spinning wheels, choosing to try to save his beloved daughter. But almost immediately the effects of his choice are felt, and his kingdom plummets into poverty. People start to curse the name of his daughter, and he fears for her life even more, so he sends her away to live in the woods, entrusted in the care of three fairies– a different class from Maleficent, and therefore safe from her magic.
Adopting a bit of the trope from the new Maleficent movie, maybe then we could have Maleficent come in and observe her handiwork. But I would have REALLY liked it if the curse itself is what changed Malificent’s heart: in the recent wording, Maleficent says “all who encounter her will love her…” I’d like that to extend to Maleficent, as well. So she’s hanging out, lurking around the kid, and the curse forces her to love the baby. In increasing exposure, she is helpless not to fall into her thrall.
I’d like to see where that story could go.
Like I said, a fun movie with INCREDIBLE costume design, but there were a lot of problems and plot holes (your big defense is a hallway full of spikes that you can easily dodge? Ok, Stefan, I’m thinking you weren’t really ready to be king there, buddy).
So if someone could get this version together for me–maybe Jolie can even reprise her role?–that would be swell.
Sometimes I marvel that human life exists for longer than a mayfly’s. With news of wars, car accidents, freak accidents, illnesses, and more, sometimes it feels like we are constantly living in some kind of Final Destination scenario: everything is trying to kill us.
And yet, here we are, living another day.
It flummoxes me. It feels like, what with all the peril we encounter every day, that we are all, individually and collectively, beating the odds. And that amazes me.
Sometimes, because of circumstances or age or geography, it seems like the odds get really stacked against us. That things almost compete to try to off you first.
I knew someone who worked at a cancer-education place. She said it was crazy how nonprofits competed to be “worst.” See, if your illness was “worst” or “deadliest,” you could pull more funding, get more grants. In a twisted way, it was like the nonprofits were sort of hoping that their illness would be the most horrible.
Maybe the illnesses and other maladies are competing. Maybe they really are conspiring to get us.
It feels that way. A family member of mine is dealing with a cascade of health problems now… I’ll be macabre and say it: it’s like a race. Will it be age that does it? The broken hip? Maybe that mole is really a cancerous growth. Perhaps it will be pneumonia, slipped in on the hand of a healthcare aid.
Are they placing bets?
When I was recovering from a rough patch in life, I wrote a short story, attempting to highlight this: how many things are trying to get you any given day. I laced it with real death statistics to try to hammer the point home. And yet, my conclusion went somewhere totally different (in the way that writing sometimes does). It ended up not bleak but hopeful: there are all these things, and yet…life goes on.
Life goes on. What a miracle.
In the immortal and wise words of Kurt Vonnegut: So it goes.
I’m going on vacation soon (soon, but not soon enough! I’m too excited to wait!!) and it’s not my typical thing. Normally I’m a plan-every-minute sort of gal, but this time we’ll be relaxing on a beach, swimming lazily, maybe exploring the local area if we get ambitious, and drinking ourselves under the table (woo all-inclusive resort!).
And I hate to admit it but I’m really anxious that I’ll get bored of relaxing.
But, thanks to the wonders of technology, I’ll be able to bring as many books as I care to via a well-stocked Kindle.
Except I don’t know what to read.
I like to read a lot of things, but I gravitate toward the contemplative, heavy stuff. And that’s just not going to work for the beach and the “vacation” sensibility. I need to lighten up.
I liked In Her Shoes and The Secret Life of Bees, but those sorts aren’t my usual repertoire and I’m not sure what to look for. I would almost categorize Leviathan Wakes–a sci-fi epic–as this sort, because it was engaging and could be read on a “lighter” level, but that’s an unusual fit.
So, here’s what I’m looking for: light but engaging stories available digitally. No horror or gritty fantasy (looking at you, Game of Thrones). Genre fantasy/sci-fi is good but only if it is a bit original (ex. I read The Black Unicorn and it was TERRIBLE).
Can y’all help me out? Recommend anything amazing?
Before it happened to me, I did not realize it, but being a bride–a female person intending to get married in a ceremony in front of a group of people–comes at a price.
Being a bride, just a few weeks out from the wedding, means you are suddenly completely open to judgement, direct and indirect, on EVERYTHING.
(This is said in no way to diminish the realities of those people who still, in 2014, have to face a LITERAL bride-price: those women and, frequently, girls who are bought and sold for “marriage” because women are not worth much in their society. I realize I am privileged in that my problems are very first world. My heart hurts for those women, and I wish I had an answer to banish the practice forever. )
Growing up in the American South, I expected some of this. I more or less knew the protocols for attending a shower and had a vague sense of what was required of me. But I had no idea it would be this long and tiring a stressful slog that it has been.
First, there’s the pressure from the “WIC” (the Wedding Industrial Complex). These are the folks whose only aim is to make you feel shitty so you’ll spend more money on their products in an effort to reach an unattainable ideal (looking at you, The Knot!). This came out from the bridal shop who was dismayed that I’m not a size 6…and then was dismayed when I did lose weight before the fitting (told ya so, lady!). It’s the patronizing way the vendors call me “sweetie” or “darling.” It’s cloying, but I can write it off (most of the time) as someone just trying to wring cash out of my little fists.
But there is also family pressure. People who, despite my directly asking “is there anything in particular you care about a lot that I should know?” coming up at game time (or when it is too late to change the choice!) and expressing their shock that I’m not doing something “traditionally.” (I’m marrying a man, while wearing a white dress, in a church, followed by dinner. What isn’t traditional about that?!) This was/is more painful and there just isn’t anything I can do, as far as I can tell.
There was the expectation by some of my bridesmaids that weddings follow one script all the time, and that if I was not going out of my way to accommodate them and their vision of what that meant, that I was a “bridezilla.” (And then, when I tried to ask them for support, decided to quit instead. Both those things hurt a great deal).
But even when I win, I lose. After a bridal shower, I wrote my thank you notes. I was super-proud of myself for finishing the 20+ notes in a weeks’ time. But by Sunday, I was informed that I had “caused a kerfuffle.” Apparently my heroic thank-you-note feat had made some other girls look bad, and feathers were ruffled. (I “joked” with the worried parties that, don’t worry, I don’t be able to keep up that pace for long.)
Can’t win for losing.
It’s exhausting to try to be “perfect” all the time. I don’t even really WANT to be perfect–I’d so much rather just be myself.
I apologize, wedding-reality-show girls and real-life brides, for any judgmental thoughts I had about you. That’s not what you need. That’s not helpful. It’s okay to relax; remember, it’s about the marriage, not the wedding.
Until then, let me know if you want to share a margarita. I use as heck could use one.
M.E. Kinkade 