Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Oh, it’s too hard. “Fisherman’s Blues,” anyone? Ah, that takes me back . . .

Anyway, ever heard of the changeling myth? You know you have. And not just when the goblins come and take Ida’s sister away, leaving an ice baby in her place (o yes, I can work Sendak into any review). A changeling is a fairy or hobgoblin who steals into your home, whisks away your young child, and changes place with him or her. It’s an eons-old folk myth, perhaps most famously put to use in W.B. Yeats’ poem (and subsequently, for nerds like me, put to song by the aforementioned Waterboys way, way back in 1988 when I was but a wee sophomore in high school). In Keith Donohue’s The Stolen Child, published this year, this myth is put to great creative use.

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. . . that foot-binding in the-days-gone-by of China was so painful. I say that at the great risk of sounding dreadfully dingy, but I just had no idea it was so flat-out bloody, even resulting in death for many young girls — oh, and that it served as a source of erotic fetishism for men when the girls became women. Who knew? Not I. When I mentioned to Eisha that I was reading about it, she commiserated, having experienced her own shuddering cringes, I’m sure, when reading about the bone-breaking, blood-tinged foot-binding pain in Donna Jo Napoli’s Bound. I know, I know. It’s pretty obvious if you think about it — that it would bring about excruciating pain. But, I’d never really thought about it or, obviously, read about it. Lisa See describes it with great candor and detail in her latest novel, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005), a book that is marketed for adult audiences but was reviewed by School Library Journal as a great title for YA audiences as well.

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Here’s the thing: I work as a children’s librarian, but I love to read adult lit too. But since I don’t have a lot of exposure to the review journals for adult books, I don’t always hear about all the cool new grown-up books coming out. In some ways this is kind of sad, and I wish I could make more time to peruse LJ and PW to see what’s happening on the other side of the library. But sometimes it results in what I like to call “happy accidents” (a phrase I borrowed from Bob Ross): I’ll come across an interesting-looking book, completely by chance, and get to read it with absolutely no idea what it’s about or what other people have said about it. The Driftless Area by Tom Drury was just such an accident, and I’m quite happy about it.

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I finished a book today that I’ve been trying to read, on and off, for about a year. A friend at work recommended it to me last year, and unfortunately the first time I started it coincided with my Collection Development class, which didn’t leave a lot of time for recreational reading. Then there was my Cataloging class, a huge bibliography I had to help compile for my library’s Summer Reading Program, etc…. and somehow this one kept being shoved to the bottom of the pile. But I finally got to page 487 today, and even though it’s not the sort of book I usually read, I am glad I gave it a chance.

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Hey. So, I just finally watched Shopgirl, that film based on Steve Martin’s novella of the same name. And I know this is “A Blog About Books,” but this is the first time I’ve ever experienced this and I think it’s worth noting: I liked the movie BETTER than the book!

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Eisha added a link to Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust here on our blog. I always have my own, little internal sturm und drang about looking at such sites — I really want to, being the book nerd I am, but perhaps I will see something I want to read and will want to add it to my already unwieldy reading list. It’s almost as if I look at them all squinty-eyed with my hands partly covering my face, not unlike you would look at a train wreck if you passed it. You are compelled to look, but you’re scared. But, well, I did. I went. I saw. I added. In fact, I was so intrigued by Pearl’s review of Elizabeth Strout’s Abide With Me (2006) that I didn’t just add it to my list. I went and got it from the library and started it and found it hard to put down.

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If you’ve spoken to me at all in the past few weeks, odds are you’ve already heard me mention The Book Thief by Markus Zusak at least once. And if you’ve picked up a newspaper, or a review journal, or glanced at anyone else’s book blog, you’ve probably read at least one review of it. Everybody, everywhere is talking about it. Which is the main reason I’ve been reluctant to talk about it here. But I must. This is that kind of book. It just will not leave me alone. This book does not lie down quietly in the subconscious – it stomps around the frontal lobe and bangs its fists on the inside of the skull. The copy I’ve had checked out for waaay too long has utterly refused to let me return it until I write some of this stuff down. So, okay already…

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Here’s something I’ve been dreading. I hate having to write down anything really negative about a book, because it’s not like I’ve had anything published, so anything I read, no matter how foul, still has one up on me. And I really wanted to like this one, too. But, in the interest of keeping this blog honest, and possibly saving anyone else from making the same mistake…

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Listen – can I tell you about one of the most beautiful books written in this century so far? A better question is, can I actually convey the utter gorgeousness and brilliance of this book in this humble little blog post? Probably not, but here goes.

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My friends — including my partner-in-crime here, Eisha — have informed me that I tend to speak in hyperbole (which is oh-so phenomenally and just categorically untrue). But with my abuse of hyperbole aside, I have to say that Sonya Hartnett, one of my favorite writers, is brilliant. Really, people. Just flat-out brilliant. Her writing is precise, exacting. It’s economical yet truly evocative. The reason she has quite a few one-sentence paragraphs is ’cause she writes like this: “My mother’s world had contracted like a dying spider.” There. She nailed it. What else do you need?

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