So, today marks the launch of Summer Reading Program at my library (and likely many other libraries), so instead of writing an insightful commentary on the most recent book I finished (a literary/poetic thing that went somewhat over my head) I’m saving my energy for the chaos at work today.

But first I want to talk about something that plays a large role in staff members’ lives all summer: the SRP t-shirt.  It’s the only tee allowed by my library’s dress code, and we’re supposed to wear them every week on program day.

And they are consistently a nightmare.

In year’s past the shirt has been the shade of orange usually reserved for hunting season (it even glowed under black light), or the barfy not-quite-yellow of school buses and highway lines. Other years the print on the shirt was the problem: an otherwise attractive shirt – black with a word search on it, for the “Get a Clue” year – was disallowed at work because some juvenile toilet humor words tucked among the reading themed ones.

This year we have this shirt.

The picture isn’t entirely accurate to the shirts we got: they are long, long shirts (men’s sizes only), and the print begins at the bottom hem.  I’m baffled as to what they were thinking: when you factor in the front line and para-professional staff, most libraries are about 85% female, and I doubt anyone under 5′7″ finds that this shirt hem doesn’t come down to their knees. As a result, from behind the desk we’ll look not like we’re promoting Summer Reading Club, but rather like we all just felt like bright cerulean shirts today.

I decided to do something about it.

This is cut from a men’s XXXL into a women’s 14/16, using Simplicity 4541 (out of print, apparently).

The neckline has a diagonal slit closed with ribbons, like so:

These adjustments knocked a good 8 or 9 inches off the total lengths, moved the shoulder seams up onto my actual shoulders, and banished the horrors of the ribbed t-shirt collar to the scrap bin.

This year’s theme is “Be Creative”… just getting into the spirit.

Now, got sign up for Summer Reading Club at your local library!

(Yes, yes, I know, another not-quite-horror series. I write about what I actually watch, and I’m in a horror mood lately. Cope.)

An unusual rumor is spreading, among both young and old, from city to countryside: a website, accessible only at midnight, where you can request vengeance against another person. Just type in their name, and the Jigoku Shoujo (Hell Girl) will take them away. Seekers with intense grudges will find this rumor to be true, and the price of revenge greater than they could imagine…

The series’ greatest strength is the artwork: the scenery is gorgeous, the layout of the scenes are well done, and the faces of even the many secondary characters have unique elements. As most of them appear for only one or two episodes, this is an especially impressive feat. (Compare to, for instance, magical girl shows where the protagonists are all one face design under various crazy-color wigs.)

My only complaint is the uneven pacing: the set up takes about six episodes, which all follow a very similar format. It picked up in a hurry and was fascinating right up to the end, but I nearly didn’t finish after six nearly identical one-episode stories. In spite of this, the rest of the series is worth the wait.

Review based on fansubbed version by the always excellent Shinsen Subs, though series is now commercially available under the translated title “Hell Girl”.

Free-Range Kids
by Lenore Skenazy

The best thing about working in a library is getting to skim the first 10 pages of every new nonfiction book that comes in. As reference is part of my job, I do try to look at every book, so that I have some basic concepts about the subject matter when trying to help people find info. In a given day, I’ll peruse political science, criminal justice, home carpentry and fad diets.

Except for the books on my own favorite subjects, those 10 pages are more than enough. Occasionally, however, the material and writing style grab my attention enough that I’ll bring a title along on lunch break for another chapter or two.

Or, in this case, every lunch break for a week so I could finish it.

Now, I should be upfront about why I referred to this book on child rearing “categorically unnecessary”: I don’t actually have any kids. Folks who do have children may interpret it a little bit differently. You’ve been warned.

The book began as an article by Lenore Skenazy on letting her 9-year-old use the subway by himself, earning her a flurry of talk show attention and the title “world’s worst mother” from many of them.

The main point of the text is the huge gulf between most people’s perceptions about the lurking dangers of the world (i.e. an unknown child predator lurking behind every shrub), and the much less dramatic picture offered by actual crime statistics and simple logic. (Apparently Amazon reviewers and Snopes readers are two discrete sets; every single one of the reviews I saw treated the poisoned Halloween candy thing like some Promethean revelation.)

While the above makes for fun trivia, what really kept me reading was the author’s style. Conversational with being cutesy, and imparting knowledge with sanctimony, with plenty of humorous asides. Recommended for just about anyone as a light but thought-provoking read.

So, my husband and I signed up not too long ago for one of those DVD-rental-by-mail services. (Yes, I realize there probably is only the one, but I’m not putting a brand name in text where search engines can index it.) It’s been quite useful so far, as there are plenty of movies I’d watch once but not want to buy and store, and the library doesn’t have all of them.

An interesting side effect revealed itself when we sat down together to start compiling films to rent: neither of us had seen the other’s favorite childhood movies. So we scattered them through the list, and take turns snickering at one another’s cherished childhood memories as the films arrive. And since I didn’t watch anything else this week, today I’m gonna talk about…


Willow.

In case you were as oblivious as I was to its 1988 release, here’s the basic idea: a human baby marked for some special destiny is found by a dwarven farmer, who must deliver the child safely to a certain wizardess, who will in turn raise the child to defeat the evil queen.

Simple, right? And rather derivative? Oh yes.

Given that this is a George Lucas film, there are plenty of elements that shouldn’t surprise anyone: major gaps in the plot logic, wretchedly bad acting, lines of dialogue that made we want to crawl under the sofa rather than witness them. The section of the film set at the crossroads is particularly puzzling: if the guy in the crow’s cage needs water so desperately, how is he jumping around in there? Would he really have that kind of energy? And when the army goes by, and Willow tries to give the baby to them, he’s unsuccessful because there are no women among them. Seriously? A massive medieval-esque army on a overland march, and there’s not a cook, or a laundress, or a soldier’s wife following them? Not even a prostitute or two? Really?

You do find women characters in places you wouldn’t expect, though. The ones who are the most powerful (though all second-tier as far as screen time) are female: there’s the queen, her daughter (who commands a portion of her army), and the sorceress; even the Child of Destiny is a girl. I must admit I have nothing insightful to say about this choice however – my analytical powers sometimes fail me in the face of a Lucas plot.

This film has all the more entertaining points you’d expect from Lucas Arts as well: Visuals are fantastic, effects are great, the filming locations (and there are many) are all stunning. I’m sure that in a theater, the pretties on the giant screen would have overshadowed all the nonsense, making for an entertaining slightly-over-two hours.

Darkborn
by Allison Sinclair

I know I usually have some little anecdote here about how or why a book grabbed my attention, but I got nothin’ today. This may partly explain how I got myself into the middle of such an overwhelming number of books; I just got a little greedy when it came to dragging things home from the library, when I should have been waiting for something to really stand out from the crowd.

Not that I regret reading this one.

The premise here is one of a divided world – due to an ancient curse, half the people can exist only in darkness, the other half in continual light. The story is set in a rather unusual city, where through cooperative effort and well maintained walls, the two groups live practically side by side. Our main character, Balthazar, is a Darkborn physician and a member of the council that negotiates the peace between the two groups. He even maintains a friendship with a Lightborn, an assassin named Floria, whose house adjoins Bal’s childhood home via a sound-permeable paper wall.

Not everyone takes such a positive view of relations between the two groups, and are always looking for trouble as a excuse to cut ties. This trouble comes to Bal in the form of an old acquaintance name Tercelle, who arrives at his door just at the sunrise bell, very pregnant by an unnamed lover. A lover she claims visited her in the daylight hours, yet was unharmed by the total darkness either. Bal does not really believe her, but when her twins are born the next night, he makes a startling discovery: the babies seem to have sight, an impossibility among the Darkborn.

The story is a serviceable mix of adventure, espionage, and romantic drama – a little too much of the last for my taste, but it does contribute to the overall plot, so I won’t quibble. The real strengths of the story, however, are the building of the characters and the world in which the reside.

Clearly considerable thought went into creating a world where humans live in utter darkness. The Darkborn have developed sonn, a thing rather like sonar, to replace sight. Their fashion is ruled by textured embroidery, their art by sculpture. And while the building of these elements was carefully done, the explanations are perfectly casual, befitting narrators for whom this world, so strange to the reader, is simply daily life.

In standard fantasy novel fashion, the major plot points are resolved in the second-to-last chapter, while the final chapter serves to arrange the players for the sequel, several of which are promised in the author bio on the back flap. As long as they don’t slide from “fantasy with some romance” into “romance with fantasy elements”, I’ll likely read future installments.

RA notes: written for adults, both reading level and subject matter fine for teens; recommended for readers who like unusual fantasy with clever world building; probably won’t be too popular with readers of sword & sorcery and other such “manly” genres.

I have something of a love-hate relationship with horror and suspense in media. For the bad ones this pretty much sums up the reason; for some of the better ones (Silent Hill on film, the book The Ring) it’s the fact that I get freaked out enough to practically stop breathing, yet I’m enjoying the piece so much I have to know how it ends.

There’s a third way with horror though – one that ignores the “rule” that our cute spunky protagonist is given a noble motivation and an arsenal of cleverly homemade weapons, then manages to subdue the Big Terrible Evil Thing while suffering no more than a few scratches. Instead of a hero and a villain, two morally neutral antagonists want one another dead, and even accomplishing that won’t bring any personal satisfaction. Basically, life deals a few people the shittiest hands ever, and they play them as best they can. A story where gruesome supernatural fantasy is cut through with the worst of grim reality.

A story like Red Garden.

Four high school girls awaken one morning sick and exhausted, unable to remember the night before. From homes wealthy and poor, scattered over the city, they make their way to Roosevelt Island, and the strict private school they attend there. Upon arrival, they find they’re not the only ones who’d had a troubled night: another student, Lise, committed suicide.

Classes are canceled, but as these four return home, they’re waylaid by a peculiar sight: glowing red butterflies that no-one else seems to notice. The girls are drawn together as they follow the mysterious insects, and discover that despite moving in very different circles (one academic elite, one party girl, one tough loner, and one nobody) they all were close friends with Lise. Then a stranger arrives with some startling news: Lise was actually murdered last night, and these four girls were too.

I hope I’ve done the setup justice, because it really was intriguing. A most necessary quality, I might add, when the music and the art style are so… ugh. The girls frequently break into song, alone or together, and none of them sing well at all. (Rie Tanaka, who plays a secondary role and actually *can* sing, is never give the chance to do so.) The opening music is decent (think Bird, but simpler and more pop than jazz) but the two ending themes are both injected with some wince-inducingly horrible Engrish. The art style is not as actively bad, but does take some getting used to: many characters only have noses in profile, and the size and placement of features isn’t always consistent. The strange art is really only actively distracting for the first few episodes.

Despite all this mediocrity, the show does have a real strength: the development of the plot and the characters. Over time, you see how each of the four came to have the personality they now display, and the interaction between them under the stress of the situation is well-realized. The balance between blood-and-guts horror and psychological suspense is delicately maintained.

The series runs 22 episodes, plus and OVA to be viewed after the series, available as a commercial sub/dub in two collections. While not so intensely scary as the popular Japanese horror films, fans of such may enjoy the similar pacing and development.

Overall, a good series, worth watching for any fan of the strange and creepy.

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness
by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein

Another in the series of post-Freakonomics books where economists explain new concepts and applications for a popular non-fiction audience. This one’s on the subject of “Choice Architecture” – basically, being aware of the ways in which the presentation of options influences the outcome of a decision, and building said presentation to maximize certain choices.

This was an interesting and sometimes frustrating read for me, because I found some of the assumptions about how the world operates (standard assumptions among economists, as far as I can tell) to be the total opposite of mine. The twin ideas that the magic of the market will generally improve people’s lives, and that government intervention is always suspect, are often underlying their statements in an “everybody knows that” sort of way. Yet many of their suggestions require some sort of government intervention, usually buried inside of such neutral language as “credit card companies should be required to”. (See the chapter on the privatization of the Swedish social security system: the government chose a default fund that really is in the best interest of the citizens; the private companies that advertised their own portfolios just had pics of celebrities saying “buy our stuff!” and weren’t generally as good for the citizen as the default plan. Yet throughout the book the “market good, government bad” truism still holds. Curious.) The notion that a business’ goal of maximizing profits may be antithetical to the general public’s goal of, I dunno, not getting bled dry by the hidden costs of buying a house or a college education, is only mentioned within 20 pages of the end.

The first few sections of the book are worth reading for anybody: if nothing else, to understand how choice architecture influences your decisions (cost aversion versus reward seeking when setting goals, for instance) and to recognize times when your choices are being pushed in certain directions.

Here are the books I’m currently in the middle of reading:

• Postern of Fate, Agatha Christie
• Bass Cathedral, Nathaniel Mackey
• Darkborn, Alison Sinclair
• Nudge : improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness, Richard Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
• Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Judith Martin (3rd time through)
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson (4th or 5th time through)
• Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, Fred Pearce
• Nine Greek Dramas, Harvard Classics Series (specifically, The Bacchae by Euripides)
• Second Treatise of Civil Government, John Locke

Clearly, I’ve gone insane.

I want to read all most of them through to the end, but the difficult ones get set aside in favor of the mental equivalent of instant pudding. Or, in the case of the two re-reads, mental chicken corn chowder — reasonably nutritious, and so familiar and comforting.

Any advice on a plan of attack would be most helpful.

I swear I am still reading serious books, but some days just call for something a little more… pedestrian. Tastycakes for the brain, so to speak.

(EDIT: just noticed that I’d already given this one a full review when I first read it. I have no idea where my brain is.)
Seven Dials Mystery
Agatha Christie

This is part of a huge haul of mystery paperbacks from the 60s and 70s that I picked up from the library used book sale — and I’m glad it was only 20 cents. This one doesn’t feature any of the big name characters, and instead centers around youngish upper-class twits with insufferable knicknames like “Bundle” and “Socks”.  While there’s still the usual murder and mayhem, espionage – rather than the usual motivations of sex, money, and power – drives the story. Not really my thing, I guess.

It was gratifying to find out that the reviews when it was first published were less than enthusiastic though.

Death on the Nile
Agatha Christie

I’d seen the David Suchet film version of this one, and really loved it. I was surprised to find the changes moved in the opposite direction from usual: the book actually has more soppy romantic elements, which were taken out for the film.* Entertaining reading, in spite of the lovey-dovey mush.

Dead Man’s Folly
Agatha Christie

Noticing a pattern here? ^_^ I hadn’t been familiar with this one until I started in on the aging paperback – it’s a Poirot with a little Ariadne Oliver – mercifully little. I suppose if I were a mystery writer, the in-joke aspect of this character would be really amuse me. But I love Poirot and Marple because they’re sharp, and Ms. Oliver most certainly is not. However, outside of the moments when this dear old authorial stand-in wanders vaguely through the scene, this one was pretty solid. Clever set-up, unusual but competent pacing, well-sketched characters, and a convincing red herring. Worth the time to read.

Ten Second Staircase
Christopher Fowler

How’s thatfor unexpected? A whole different author! And while this one isn’t from The List, it’s not exactly mental junk food either. The most recent in the Peculiar Crimes Unit series, this one features an unusual series of crimes and a highly colorful cast – including a living, breathing London, full of current lives and collected memories. The storytelling of a really great history professor, mixed with the atmospherics of Neil Gaiman. The author has very visual style, which only occasionally slipped into the “I’m writing this with a future TV series (and major $$$) in mind” area. A great mystery of regular fiction readers, and suitable for upper-level YA readers as well.

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*Death on the Nile SPOILER: can you imagine if this had been Marple instead of Poirot, what the film version from the Geraldine McEwan era would have looked like? Linnet and Simon’s characters would have been switched, so that they could throw in a Linnet/Jacqueline/Rosalie lesbian orgy. Of course, if Rachel Stirling were playing Jacqueline, I’d have watched it anyway. ;)

I’m realizing that non-fic doesn’t respond to the whole “review mixed with amateur literary analysis” thing that I like to do, because that’s just not how most of it is meant to be read. So, rather than drag myself through the attempt, I’m going to approach non-fiction commentary a little differently:

The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the True Roles of Women in Prehistory by J.M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer, and Jake Page : Yet another example of the most important phrase when re-learning history as an adult – “It’s a lot more complicated than that.” The book opens with examples of narratives and scenes we’ve all been exposed to on the idea of prehistoric human life, and then goes on the show how current research indicates they’re all completely and totally wrong. I particularly liked the fact that when the authors had a point on which they could not come to an agreement, they set aside an entire chapter explaining the evidence each found compelling, without resorting to nastiness or name calling – proving that sensible scientists, not just shrieking loonies, can write popular level texts.

True Witness: Cops, Courts, Science, and the Battle Against Misidentification by James M. Doyle : This has every element of a good social issue book for general audiences: clear writing style, a history of the problem, the major concepts in play, and concrete steps for improvement, all bookended with a human interest element. Said human interest is the story of Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton, who recently published their own book on the case, so libraries can offer this title some renewed popularity as a tie-in.

Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution by Ruth Scurr : I feel a certain obligation to read the history of France (as the home of my beloved second language), but I probably shouldn’t have begun with such a complex period. The text is by turns blood-soaked and austere, and the shifting alliances among the enormous cast of characters were difficult to follow. I get the impression that the author has written the most accessible work possible without making it inaccurate (“It’s a lot more complicated than that” strikes again), but even then this one was a pretty steep road to climb.

Guyland: the Perilous World Where Boys Become Men by Michael Kimmel : This one is part of “naming the problem” genre of non-fic: gathering vague impression into a cohsive social issue and coining a term for it. While there aren’t terribly many solutions offered, the sense of “thank goodness I’m not the only one noticing this weird trend” is worth the read. Compare and contrast with Female Chauvanist Pigs by Ariel Levy for the naming of a similar and overlapping problem.