Someone Had a Birthday

… almost two weeks ago.

Happy to be one year older? Or ready for lemon-poppyseed pound cake?These faces crack me upImpossible to not make a silly face when waiting for cake

Of Skull-squeezing and Maturity

I ran down the street this morning trying to convince myself that I wanted to run.  I didn’t want to run, but I was doing it anyway.  I had a perfectly reasonable argument about why it would have been better to sleep an extra forty-five minutes.  On this morning, like the past several mornings of running, a song popped into my head.  “That’s How People Grow Up” by Morrissey, delivered with irony, but true nonetheless.  Maturity may represent those moments when we do things even though we don’t want to.  

That sounds more skeptical than I mean it to sound.  I was really pondering self-reliance at the moment the song came to me.  I was considering whether I could rely upon myself to take care of myself.  A blog post yesterday by Jamie Ridler inspired the rumination.  A number of different people rely upon me to do things in any given day.  My children, my partner, other family, friends, teachers, neighbors.  I think I’m fairly trustworthy.  But it has often been the case that I sacrifice my own personal goals and intentions in order to fulfill the needs of others.  This is natural for me, and to a certain extent necessary, as a fully-functioning member of a family and society, but it grates upon me sometimes.  

Another song often occurs to me in those moments of frustration with the world and myself, also Morrissey, singing “Something is Squeezing My Skull,” delivered with the charming aplomb of the chronic depressive putting on a good show.  

I’ve heard some people say, skeptically, that if you don’t take care of yourself no one will.  I don’t completely agree with this sentiment, but it is true for my personal goals and intentions.  If I don’t run, no one will run for me (and what good would that do?).  If I don’t run, no one will force me to run (and I’d resent it if they did).  I could substitute other intentions for running: writing, updating this website, thinking.  If I can’t trust myself to take care of myself physically and emotionally, that could at some point undermine other people’s trust in me. 

So when Morrissey chides me about maturity, I can take it.  Lately I’ve motivated myself with the idea that the morning run is to scrub and tighten.  I scrub out my asthmatic lungs and the fog from my brain.  I tighten up my bones and heart and will.  When I think that way, the skull-squeezing lessens, and so does fear in all of its insidious permutations (Will my work be good enough? Will someone jump out from behind that bush and harm me?)  

I’ve written before that I was inspired to return to running by Haruki Murakami’s memoir about running.  When Murakami talks about running, it is both literal running, and a metaphor for what he can accomplish in himself, and what limits him.  When I talk about running, I am staking out a space in my life for self-reliance.  I can and will take care of myself, physically and mentally.  Don’t ever doubt that running is just as much about my mental health as it is about my physical health.  When my life is frustrating, or the skull-squeezing starts, I run away.  I run away just long enough for the endorphins to kick in, and then I can run back, confident that I can handle anything that comes along because I have taken care of myself.  

When the endorphins kicked in this morning, I did enjoy myself.  Being prickled by maturity is perhaps a good thing.  It’s when I’m prickled by the skull-squeezing that I know it’s time to run. 

Book Review: The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

The terror came to the United State in an airplane. It landed in New York. It erupted from the World Trade Center. Or, more accurately, from the tunnels beneath the WTC site. This isn’t the real-life terror that spawned more than one war, but the terror of The Strain. A collaboration between filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and author Chuck Hogan, this terror isn’t jihadi extremism, but a vampire plague. 

These aren’t the sexy kind of vampires that sparkle and seduce, though there is something sexual (in a grotesque way) about their pulsing white blood. These are a cross between zombies and giant viral mosquitoes (sans flying), who behave like a pack of rats. I would not want to kiss one.

In this vampire rendering, a plane lands in New York. Everyone on board is dead. For a little while. Unfortunately, they all get up and go home and eat their families and their neighbors. Combining fantasy myth and forensic mystery, this book imagines how we might react to an invasion of vampires.

The story has one foot in the Old World and one in the New. Some common vampire tropes pop up. The vamps can’t cross moving water without an assist, and the Master is closely associated with a large wooden box full of dirt. The monsters aren’t fond of light (especially UVC) or silver, and, of course, they drink blood. Garlic and Holy Water, though, are out. Abraham Setrakian, a Holocaust survivor, disgraced university professor, and pawn broker is an obvious van Helsing. Abraham’s old world roots, at the table with his Bubbeh and her moralizing/terrifying fairy tale, juxtapose with the flashing lights of the air traffic control tower.

The airplane from Germany injects the vampirism squarely into the jugular of the United States. The writers pull the story into the 21st century New World with a scientific explanation for vampirism. The condition is caused by a blood parasite that takes over a host body, and can be transmitted without a bite if the parasite can wiggle relentlessly into a new host—or into the dirt to await the arrival of a suitable host. The hero is a hot shot doctor at the Centers for Disease control, Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, called Eph for most of the story. He is rebuilding a broken personal life, damaged by alcoholism and workaholism. He comes complete with a smart kid, sympathetic ex-wife and her loser boyfriend. Except for the -isms, Eph is portrayed as a morally sound do-gooder out to protect people and do the right thing. He is an attractive not-hero, smart, full of real emotion, willing to be a good doctor, but reluctant to face a new role as warrior/killer. (Note: I imagined him more like Grant Imahara of Mythbusters than the actor who portrays him in the book trailers. Yes, that is a good thing.)

My scary-book-(and movie)-reviewing credibility died when I became a parent. Sometime around childbirth I lost the ability to stomach any pretend gore. I came to this book in the interest of adventure after seeing a few positive references to it online and seeing a totally creepy book trailer. (Incidentally, this was also the first time I’d heard of a book trailer. Some kind of weird hybrid of commercial and music video.) I was looking for a good scare in this book.

In that sense, the book was successful. I was thoroughly creeped out to the point that I skipped my 5:30 a.m. run one day, and for a couple of days after that, ran tense, spooking at ever twitchy shadow and leaf rustle. I imagined a nasty zombie-like vamp lurking around every corner, and ran a little faster.

The dead plane on the tarmac of a major metropolitan airport is a great opening conceit. It is creepy and suspenseful all by itself, and the tension builds as the bureaucracy and confusion unwinds around it. The fear generated is both personal (in the individuals who must figure out what is happening) and public (in the potential threat to millions of people from this mysterious plane). Guillermo del Toro’s skill as a filmmaker comes through in the careful, back-and-forth cutting between the growing list of players, building tensions through the positioning. I could imagine the cuts between close-ups of Eph donning his hazard gear, and long shots of the dead plane sitting dark on the landing strip. An effective sense of dread builds throughout the first half of the book, short bursts of scary intercut among the puzzled wonderings of the investigators.  The thoughtful dismantling of the safe and familiar into monstrous and alien works very well in some of the tightly focused scenes.  For instance, when the child-vamp jumps off the kitchen counter to attack his neighbor.

Unfortunately, the book becomes less and less scary as it progresses. Once the vampires were out en masse, I was less bothered by them. An insistence on a metaphysical evil to accompany the scientific explanation of the vampires feels clumsy. And one particular pun about child custody is a real groaner. The careful explication of their rat-like nesting and rustling and sneaking and twitching is not quite as effective as the building sense of dread from the early sections of the book. And though the story starts off with a promising set of both male and female characters (good and not-so-much) the story reverts to form when things get grisly, and the women end up (un)dead, bait, or tending the children back at the safe-house.

There is nothing new about monsters as cultural/political metaphor. I’m not yet certain of the metaphoric referent of The Strain. Does the title refer to the virus-like quality of the spread of the vampires? Perhaps to the stress caused by the new (old) danger? Likely some ambiguity is intentional. This book is the first in a trilogy. I was disappointed with the lack of meaningful resolution to any of the storylines in this one. I think readers are meant to be left on the edge of our seats, waiting for the next installment. But the presentation of new characters in the final pages feels somehow awkward and predictable, and I was left a little flat as I closed the book.

One hook, one character got to me. I will likely read the sequel, if only to find out just what is going to happen to Gus and his commando-vamp kidnappers in the asbestos mine near Philadelphia. I kid you not.

The Official Site (have fun finding out what’s there; I found it too creepy to look)

The Amazon Site (the Shed Scene Book Trailer with Eph, Nora and Abraham, and an introduction by Guillermo del Toro)

The Jail Scene Book Trailer (with Gus and Abraham, ge-ross)

Sonar Photography

Documenting an attempt at a nice photo of the Sonars all-together.  At the Texas State Aquarium on Wednesday August 19, 2009.  

Stand together over here.

Uh, ok, how about you all sit down together instead.  Maybe I can get a good shot that way.

Never mind.

Review: The Gemma Doyle Trilogy by Libba Bray

The Gemma Doyle Trilogy by Libba Bray: 

A Great and Terrible Beauty

Rebel Angels

The Sweet Far Thing

Sometime over the summer, during some webby wandering, I came across a list of books to read post-Twilight.  It was something like this one, though there are many floating around.   

Full-disclosure on my opinions of the Twilight series — I read the first two books in the Stephenie Meyer series at an astonishing pace (for me), swallowing them up in a couple of days.  I think The Yummy Mummy called them crack, once upon a time.  If I’d been able to put my hands on the last two right away, I’d have swallowed them too.  Something—life probably—intervened.  During the time when I could not procure the last two books, I woke from a daze and realized that I didn’t like them (I know, shoot me now, aim low so I can still knit).  I still have no clear explanation for what sucked me in.  I do recall that there were some really rather hot NOT-SEX scenes.  Anyway, the books left me empty and hoping for something better.  

Back to the what-to-read-after-Twilight list.  I skimmed down said list, and checked a few titles for availability at my library.  I jotted down a list on the back of a plumber’s business card (is that significant?).  This list said,

     F Bray

     JF Klause

     F Gray

I tucked this note into my wallet beside my library card.  (Note, I’ve since added, ‘F Jin,’ but that’s another story).  

I picked up Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause, but couldn’t get into it.  So I tried Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty next.  I was nearly turned off by the corseted cover, but the author’s blurb suggested a woman with a brain and a wry wit, so I brought it home.  

The story begins with a teenage girl—our heroine, sixteen-year-old Gemma Doyle—thrust into a bewildering and horrifying situation, her life turned upside down. Gemma and her British family live in Victorian India, but the mysterious and controversial death of her mother sends Gemma back to England and then off to Spence Academy, a girls’ finishing school.  But I’ve left out the best parts: the otherworld creatures, the visions, and the discovery of magic.  And, of course, there’s the increasingly delicious Kartik, of the dark eyes and full lips.  

In Gemma, Bray has created a character on the edge of many things.  She is a young woman teetering in the liminal spaces between childhood and debut as an adult, wealthy but not noble, British but having grown up in India.  The time is also liminal, a period in which women’s roles are as constrained as ever (literally, don’t forget those corsets) but about to burst out into new directions (think job opportunities outside the family, voting, choices that didn’t have to involve men).  Spence Academy also provides a setting on the edge of the mundane world and the supernatural.  Spence is to Gemma what the Hellmouth is to Buffy.  Indeed Gemma’s circle of friends is poised on the edge of hope for something outside the roles traditionally stamped out for them, and Bray bravely walks right through questions of class, race, gender, and sexuality that feels refreshingly honest in a period adventure.

There is a joy of surprise and discovery and suspense in these books that I don’t want to betray, so I won’t give too much detail here.  But here are the things I liked best about this group of stories.

—A Great and Terrible Beauty is a great first-in-a-trilogy book in that it is both a great story all by itself, even if you don’t read the others, and a great opening for the rest of Gemma’s epic.   

—Gemma is a teenage girl with power.  Honest-to-goodness, it’s hers for better or worse.  She is a character who feels like a genuine teenager.  Bray delivers a young woman who is complicated, hopeful to please, but rebellious, wanting to be loved by father and others, but also wanting to be her own person, not controlled.  She is foolish and wise and petty and serious, curious and afraid.  Bray honestly portrays the alienation of the approach of maturity and of the first major decisions of a young adult life.  Gemma’s choices ring true with or without magic.  Likewise, there is honesty in the fractured emotion and confused reactions and choices in the face of extreme stress and grief.  

—Bray has created a young adult fiction that does not condescend, that has frightening moments (Will I fall on my butt when I curtsy before the queen?  Will that monster GET me?), hilarious moments (more than one proud girl falls into the lake), titillating moments that might make you wish the book took a dive into trashy romance (but don’t), joyful moments (not giving those away), and heart-aching moments (you’ll have to find those too).

—But best of all, Bray creates strong female characters.  Gemma does not sit idly, waiting to be filled up by someone else.  Gemma makes her own choices right to the end, a character who is able to rely upon her friends and allies and to draw power (magical and non-magical) and strength from those connections, but is no damsel in distress.  Bella can’t even compare.  Gemma’s friends don’t disappoint either. 

I’m just not sure Gemma, Felicity, and Ann could do all that running in corsets.  

I strongly recommend this trilogy for both teens and adults.  Bray’s next novel goes off in a wildly different direction—one that I heartily look forward to following.