Through a Glass, Darkly

When I discussed The Higher Power of Lucky, I mentioned that, although the concepts of alcoholism and abandonment are alien to some children, to some children they are all too real. I think The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance is the natural next step for some of those kids. Cynnie, a thirteen-year-old girl, struggles to take care of her brother and herself as her mother succumbs to alcoholism. When her grandparents take her younger brother, Cynnie is left alone with her mother, and starts drinking to help drown out her problems. After an accident, she is forced by the court into AA, where she begins to learn about forgiveness, making amends, and the choices that we make in life.

This was very clearly one of those “issue books” that I sometimes read when I was a teenager. I remember that Christian books were the worst about this - in one school year, the main character would have friends dealing with every possible issue: alcoholism, drug abuse, anorexia, teen sex and pregnancy . . . I once told my mom that my high school life wasn’t as exciting as the ones people had in those books. And I didn’t mean it as a compliment. So, while I chafed a bit at the setup for this book, fearing that it would be cheesy, in the end, it won me over with how well-executed it was and how well Cynnie’s recovery was handled. She hit “rock bottom” earlier in the book than I would have guessed, which gave her plenty of time to actually start sobering up, apologizing to the people around her, and making changes. I liked that as much time was spent on her recovery as was spent on her downward spiral, and I especially liked the emphasis that was placed on Cynnie’s ability to choose a different path than the one her mother had chosen.

I have never read any of this author’s other books, which include Pay it Forward (I did see that movie). Based on the deft handling of this story (which could have been cheesy but just managed to avoid it), I’d be interested to check out another of her books.

When Marne’s mother has to go to Paris for the summer, she goes to visit her aunt in Hawaii. She expects her summer to be a perfect paradise, not realizing that even though she and her parents are non-practicing Jews, her aunt and uncle and seven cousins are Hasidic Jews and their lives are incredibly different from hers. She has the expected trouble adjusting to the bustle of their lives and the rules that they observe. In addition, she is also dealing with some grief of her own. By the end of the summer, when one of her friends visits, she realizes that the time there has changed her, both in helping her deal with what her family has gone through and in giving her a new understanding of what it looks like to have a relationship with God.

I thought this was interesting because I have read books like this from a Christian perspective, but never a Jewish one. I also thought the style of the book was very interesting – I kept waiting for a big plot thing to happen, and there are important things that happen to the characters, but it’s a much more character-driven book than a plot-driven book. Most of the book is in Marne’s head, which gives us the opportunity to see her struggling and growing throughout the summer. I thought that the aunt and two of the cousins were particularly interesting characters, because they didn’t do everything right all of the time.

It took me about a day to read Strange Relations, and it was particularly interesting to read it just after finishing The Faith Club, which is about three women of different faiths who come together to talk about what they believe, hoping to find some common ground. A big theme of that book is that the women are on a journey in their relationships with God. Strange Relations is really about Marne taking a first step in that relationship after observing the journeys that her relatives are taking in their faith.

I’d recommend this book for people who, like me, enjoy stories about religion and faith, with the caveat that it’s not a big dramatic book. I enjoyed it, but not at all in the way that I expected.

In which, most importantly, we get to read The Correspondence. And other stuff happens, too, but . . . The Correspondence! Another great place to end. Okay, fine. We also meet the vile Cropper, learn more about Leonora. And Beatrice Nest, poor Beatrice (and through her, Ellen Ash).

There are some very interesting themes in this section. The two that pop out at me are biography and sexuality. Both Cropper and Leonora tend to see their particular poet through a specific lens. For Cropper, that lens is, essentially, himself, and for Leonora, it’s sexuality/feminism/lesbianism. The danger is that, instead of reporting the facts and then interpreting them, they are interpreting the facts and then reporting them in such a way to make them line up with that interpretation.

And when it comes to sexuality, in this section we start to see that the modern-day folk certainly can talk a lot about sex, but when it comes to love and relationships, it doesn’t seem as if they are doing any better than the Victorians. I am not sure I’d go so far as to say that all that talk of sex is stifling them, because it doesn’t seem as if it’s stifled Fergus, but it does seem to have stifled intimacy. Certainly there is something repressed about Maud.

Of course I don’t need to point you in the direction of these famous letters to get the idea of who Byatt might have been channeling. And what of the letters themselves? There are a few quotes in particular that I love. This one, from Ash:

The impulses to religion might be the need to trust–or the capacity for wonder–and my own religious feelings have always been inspired more by the latter. I find it hard to shift without the Creator–the more we see and understand, the more amazement there is in this strangely interrelated Heap of things–which is yet not disordered.

And this (of course), from Christabel:

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

What a description of the situation they have fallen into. Is “fallen into” too generous? Perhaps so. Ash, especially, charged ahead, seemingly unconcerned with the possible consequences of his actions.

Christabel’s story, The Threshold, is, indeed, set at the threshold of adventure for Roland and Maud, just as they are discovering what the letters say (actually, they discover it before we the reader are allowed to know, but that’s the concept anyway). That story is based on Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower,” which I read to see if I could gain some insight into what Byatt might have been thinking. I thought it was interesting that it’s basically about Childe Roland approaching the Dark Tower, not actually what he finds in it. I kept waiting for the poem to get to the exciting LotR stuff, but instead it was about the journey rather than the actual adventure. Which also explains why Christabel’s story ends where it does, without anything resolved.

And I guess now is as good a place as any to talk about the theme of “possession.” Cropper wants to possess all that he can of Ash’s, and so, possess Ash himself. He even imagines (in the biography) Ash considering his new wife as a possession. There are other examples, too: Beatrice being so possessive of Ellen, Roland’s possession of the letters (and wanting to do the work himself). Even Blanche with Christabel. I think that theme will continue to develop over the course of the book, but . . . well, I don’t want to give a lot away, but I think that one of the themes of the book is that even if we read someone’s most private letters or diary, we still don’t know everything about them. No matter how well Maud knows Christabel through her writing, she will never actually grasp (or possess) all of Christabel’s thoughts or experiences.

We’re given quite a bit of information about Beatrice there, and you feel (or at least I feel) pity for her, and I always felt she was kind of benevolent, but I noticed how Roland was talking to her and she just sat there smiling, and I just wanted her to do something. We’ve been given indications that she feels more deeply than she can express, and to see her sitting there with a placid smile because she’s slightly intimidated by (meek, mild) Roland is . . . frustrating.

I think I would also like to say something about the letter that Fergus sent Maud, the letter that was notable only for how petty it seemed and how much it bugged Maud. Fergus, with the last name Wolff, is clearly much more of a predator than our Roland. And Leonora sent a letter, too. I don’t think I know what to say about Leonora. She overpowers me in the same way that Maud seems overpowered by her.

Roland and Maud’s class differences make another reappearance, and this time we get more of Maud’s perspective rather than just Roland being prickly. Of course, we only get Maud’s perspective after she’s been goaded into it by Fergus. And Roland is a bit harsh, believing that Maud, used to being surrounded by beautiful things, would not be able to appreciate the beauty or romance of the bathroom.

But, in the end, what sticks with me about this section is The Correspondence. Andrea and I were talking about it a bit last week, and we both agreed that the first part was difficult to get through. The letters dragged on for longer than I’d remembered, with a slow build, but when they start picking up steam, they make quite an impression. I am not sure I have a lot to say about the letters themselves (or the revelations they make of love and treachery), but I would like to hear your comments.

I’m going on vacation at the end of this week, but I should still have plenty of time to get next week’s chapters written up. Happy reading!

I got my picture taken with Carl! Carl Kasell! He talked to me in his radio voice, which is his real voice! He was nice! And funny! Also, look at his UNC tie! Ha! I totally geeked out! Obviously! I am aware that it’s lame! I geek out over NPR newscasters!

Then we met Frank Stasio, who also talked in his radio voice! Which is also his real voice! So fun! I love The State of Things!

This is all thanks to my brother, who donated to NPR and got the tickets. I should give him some exclamation points, too. Yay, Joseph!!!

I . . . am very tired. It has been a long day. Obviously. I’ll be more coherent at some future point, I promise.

June has been a terrible reading month. I have been out-of-sorts, for one thing, and for another, I will go ahead and admit it: I think I read Harry Potter too soon. Because I don’t want to read other books now. I only want one book, and I want some answers, and if I don’t get those answers, I am going to be very cross, and, oh, wait, I am very cross anyway, all the time, so if you could give me the answers at least I would stop eating chocolate and creme brulee. I’ve been kicking it into gear with the speculating and the theories, and I should really stop, because looking ahead like that makes me feel that the world around me does not meet my very specific requirements. I am greatly dissatisfied these days.

And I’ve been dissatisfied with books, which isn’t necessarily like me. I go through phases of book dissatisfaction. I feel like I have been more picky than usual these days.

So: Annie Dillard. I like Annie Dillard very much. She says things and just blows me away. So I was, to put it mildly, looking forward to this book. I have never read one of her novels. And yet, what a time to read it, in a period of great dissatisfaction.

The Maytrees reminded me, a little bit, of Gilead (which I mentioned here and here). I must confess, Pulitzer or not, I didn’t care for Gilead, even though I couldn’t say enough about the beauty of the writing. The Maytrees, though it wasn’t explicitly about faith like Gilead, is a beautifully written book on . . . forgiveness, relationships, redemption. Life. It was so beautiful, you guys. It took me several days, even though it clocks in at just over 200 pages. I kept having to stop and take it in.

To drive her mental cylinders Lou climbed to and up Pilgrim Monument daily in every weather. Sometimes she entered fog. From the monument’s top she loosed Maytree [her husband, who has hurt her] like sand. She saw the sand drop onto roofs and yards. After only seven or eight weeks’ relinquishing Maytree, she saw the task would take practice, like anything else. She planned to work at it for a year, shedding every grain of claim. After seven months she had what she called “a grip on letting go.” When anything unwise arose in her henceforth, she attended to it by climbing the monument, at whose top she opened her palm.

That’s not just a paragraph in a book. That’s a guide to life, a textbook. How to Live. I read it, put the book down, went to bed, and didn’t read again until lunch the next day. Not because I was tired of the book, just because I had to let it really take hold. That’s not to say that everything in the book is exactly the way that life should go, or that the ways that people forgive and continue living and loving in this book are the ways that we should all choose. Just that I found Lou’s story of choosing life instead of bitterness very moving. I hope one day to be able to live in the same kind of wisdom that she does.

I won’t recommend this to everyone, because it is kind of dense, and it’s not just . . . summer beach reading. It’s not about the story as much as it’s about the characters and the language. If you’re in the mood for something with a little more substance, give this a try, especially if you are a language person.

There’s a little curvy road I turn on to enter the work parking lot the back way, and in one of the delightfully overgrown curves, there is a gnome with an orange/red hat that has been there for several months. Except. It’s not actually a gnome. It’s a traffic cone. I know that’s what it is, and yet, every day, I think, “Little gnome!” It looks like a little gnome with an orange/red hat hiding in the grass. Until I get closer and remember, “Oh, right, cone.” This is a huge letdown in my day. Why is there not actually a gnome hiding in the grass?

All of this was true until Monday. Monday I took the curve, actually anticipated the cone, and . . . nothing. No cone. No gnome. Just grass. I was gravely disappointed, because even if it wasn’t a gnome, Gilmore Girls has given me an unnatural affection for gnomes, and I enjoyed pretending the gnome was there. Even though he never was there. The point is that now he is definitely not there. Is it because, for the first time, I remembered that he wasn’t actually a gnome? Did my unbelief cause him to cease existing? Like Tinker Bell?

Except! Tuesday morning, the cone/gnome made a reappearance! He’s earlier on the road now, in the sun. I worry about this, because it’s summer. Isn’t it a little hot for him to be out in the sun? Maybe I should stop and move him back into the shade. Or give him a glass of water. Except he’s not a gnome. And if someone saw me giving a glass of water to a cone, they would probably be concerned about me. As well they should be.

I have been wondering what it says about me that I see pointy orange/red and think, “GNOME!” rather than the much more reasonable, “Cone.” Who does that?

Boy, can I relate.

That’s not a very interesting title. If you have a better suggestion, feel free to let me know what it is and I will use it next week.

Chapters 1-5: In which we meet Roland, Val, Blackadder, Fergus, and Maud; discover the connection between Christabel LaMotte and Randolph Henry Ash; and, of course, discover their letters. Wasn’t that a great place to end? Didn’t it leave you wanting more? I would like to take the credit for it, but . . . I picked it arbitrarily. Sorry. But, still, a great place to end. The beginning was a bit slower than I remembered, but I never remember this as a very fast book in the first place.

I linked to the poetry already, which took away some of the things I was going to put in today’s post. I haven’t read all of it, but I have been getting through it. The thing about poetry is that I always have to read it out loud. And Mike doesn’t want to listen to Victorian poetry, nor do I really want to read it out loud to myself in my car on my lunch break.

I was going to write out some questions, but since this is the beginning, the best place to start is probably with first impressions. I’ll go ahead and start with mine, and you can leave yours.

Later in the book, Roland is described as “meek,” and that’s as good a description as I can come up with. He’s too meek to get the kind of job he deserves, he’s too meek to do anything about his horrible apartment, too meek to do anything about his situation with Val. And yet, in an uncharacteristic moment, he steals the letters. In a parallel, it seems that even writing the letters was uncharacteristic for Ash himself.

Maud is, from the beginning, described in bright colors, as is her apartment. One of the things I was proud to have picked up on is that when Fergus says that she “thicks men’s blood with cold,” that’s a reference to “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold :
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.

That’s not the only poetry Fergus used to describe her, either:

Never shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.

Maud’s identity is very tied up in her hair, having cut it short to meet the expectations of those around her. At the beginning of our introduction to her, we see Christabel’s poem on Rapunzel, and the meaning is two-fold: Maud is in her ivory tower of academia, and Maud needs to literally let down her hair rather than keeping it under scarves. Her character is centered on poetry in other ways, too - Tennyson’s “Maud” requests that she, “Come into the garden, Maud.” Roland doesn’t approach the garden of his apartment, either, making the imagery of being closed off/needing to enter certain areas important for both of them. Which leads me to Christabel’s Tales for Innocents. The implication of “The Glass Coffin” is probably that the girl with golden hair needs to be saved from her cold, compartmentalized life. Is that what you got from the story, too? Anything I missed? Is it significant that Christabel is working on it at the time that she and Ash are corresponding? That story also touches a bit on Roland and Maud’s different class backgrounds. The movie, I think, explains their differences by making Roland an American, but I like it better in the original.

I suppose the next character to mention is Val. I find myself taking Roland’s side against her, because she is so blank. I don’t see her as a fully-formed person, more as a reflection of whoever she is with (in this case, Roland). She reminds me of people I know who have to see the negative side of everything. I probably dislike her so much because I recognize in myself that same tendency.

I have less to say about Blackadder and Fergus, who work with Roland. I see Blackadder sympathetically, but I couldn’t tell you exactly why (it may simply be in contrast with Cropper, who is fairly vile, but . . . we haven’t completely gotten to see that yet). Fergus, to me, is someone I feel that I shouldn’t like, and yet I find him charming. Which is, I think, a bit how Maud feels, too.

It’s harder for me to talk about what happened in these five chapters, because I know what is going to happen later on, and I don’t want to foreshadow that too much. Additionally, I think that I tend to be more focused on character than plot, and a lot of what happens in the first five chapters is basically setting up the rest of the book. But please feel free to talk about it. The most exciting thing that happens is, of course, the finding of the letters, and I love that the poetry was a clue. And the Baileys, with their house falling down around them. I also love the way that Roland pieces things together to discover the truth about the letter and the relationship.

So, here is a bit to get us started on the first five chapters. I certainly haven’t mentioned everything that happened, but I hope that you will point out things that stood out to you as you read. I will post next Monday about the next five. Happy discussing, happy reading.

The polar bears at the zoo were rescued from an awful circus traveling in Puerto Rico, and have never completely recovered. One of them, Masha, had to be put to sleep this week because infections left him unable to walk or stand.

The polar bears are my favorite zoo animal, so it’s not all that surprising that I teared up when I read the news yesterday. I told Mike last night that we needed to have a moment of silence for Masha, and as we were doing that I thought about the other polar bear, Wilhelm, the zookeepers who take such good care of the animals, the kids who are always so excited to see polar bears. Fare thee well, Masha. As part of God’s creation, you certainly deserved better treatment than you had for much of your life. Enjoy the great Arctic in the sky. We will miss you.

I’ve been getting all my information together for our big Possession read, and I came across some things that seemed kind of helpful. As I mentioned before, there are many many references that aren’t necessary to understanding Possession, but which do enhance the reading of it. Or so I hear. I didn’t actually know where to find those references . . . until today. So, for your reading pleasure, I have decided to link many of them. I hope you find them helpful. Also, this should make next Monday’s post much shorter. (It should, but maybe I’ll dig in to all the references and have entirely too much to say. It’s possible, knowing me.)

At the end of the reader’s guide (which contains spoilers), the publisher’s website lists the following poems as helpful to understanding Possession:

Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” (keep our Roland and his quest in mind as you read it), “My Last Duchess,” “Porphyria’s Lover,” “Caliban Upon Setebos,” “Bishop Blougram’s Apology,” “Mr. Sludge, the ‘Medium‘,” “Andrea del Sarto,” and “Fra Lippo Lippi“;

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Christabel“;

Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress,” “The Garden“;

Petrarch, Rime Sparse;

Christina Rossetti, Poetical Works;

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Merlin and Vivien” from Idylls of the King, In Memoriam, “Maud,” “Mariana,” “The Lady of Shallott“;

W.B. Yeats, The Rose

It may also be illuminating to keep in mind that Ash is loosely based on Browning and LaMotte is loosely based on Rossetti. Here are some other references to look at if you get a chance.

I’m going to go ahead and assume that you are laughing that someone who claims not to like poetry picked a big old book full of references to it to discuss. I must confess: I like a book that expects me to keep up, to do a little work. I like being able to dig into something like you can dig into this book. I think that literature classes should have been as fun as reading this book is. I’ll wait and actually talk more about the themes next week. I can hardly wait.

Next Monday, join us for our discussion of the first five chapters of A.S. Byatt’s Possession. In my copy, it’s about 100 pages, so there is plenty of time to read it before then!

After months and months of thinking about it, the invitation to my tenth high school reunion came on Friday. Mike taunted me by telling me that interesting things came in the mail that day, and, to his credit, I did have interesting things. But one fewer than he had declared, because the last interesting thing was simply an invitation to my high school reunion. Ten years, which is hard to believe. I looked at it and, after months of vacillating, quickly decided that I didn’t want to pay to spend money with people I wasn’t friends with the first time around. I spent a long time being bitter about that, but now I see that it’s okay that we weren’t friends. We shouldn’t have to pretend friendship just because we lived in the same town, went to the same high school. It reminds me of when I figured out that I didn’t have to be friends with someone just because he or she is a Christian. That doesn’t actually mean we have things in common, things on which to build a relationship. I didn’t get to know the things inside their hearts that make them who they are any more than they found out mine. Not to mention that I’m not the same person I was back then. I hope they aren’t, either.

The invitation was full of the sentiment and nostalgia you’d expect, and I’m sure the committee worked hard on it. But I think you have to be a different sort of person to look forward to your high school reunion. You have to be the sort of person who looks back at high school with some affection, who was positively affected by what went on there. And while I don’t claim to have hated every day of high school, I feel instinctively that the people who would attend our reunion probably aren’t the people I hung out with in the library during break. I worry about the things I would say to the people there, the grasping, needy parts of me that would come out in that situation.

There’s a part of me that would like to go and be successful and have a smart, good-looking husband, but those aren’t parts of myself that I like to encourage. If I’m going to go to a reunion in order to prove something, I’m going for the wrong reasons. Why should I feel the need to prove anything at all?

I have thought about this for a lot of years. The end of high school was much better than the rest of it, but the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I wondered if I needed to go, to wear a fantastic dress, to have some kind of redemption. I think, though, in the end, not needing to go is the redemption I wanted after all.

I was going to start this by saying, “Imagine that your mom died in an accident when you were 14, and then, just a month later, your dad died of complications from the same accident. Imagine that, just the week before the accident, you had wished that they were dead.” But then I looked on the publisher’s website and saw that was pretty much how they started their description. Dangit. Anyway, that is what happened to Erin Vincent - her parents died when she was 14. Grief Girl is the story of her life after her parents’ accident, the life she made with her older sister (and her sister’s boyfriend) and younger brother. It’s her story of coping over the next few years - teachers who helped and friends and family who abandoned them and the question of God’s role in the whole tragedy.

I couldn’t put this book down and read it straight through in a day - it was her personal story of loss, but the questions she asks are recognizable to anyone who has lost a family member. The way she talked reminded me a bit of myself over the past year - for months I tossed around the idea of a post giving “advice” to people who want to help the bereaved: chocolate chip cookies are the official cookie of bereavement, be sure to use disposable containers, don’t say anything about “a better place” or “the arms of Jesus.” Some of my advice was maybe just a teeny bit sarcastic, which is why I ended up not posting it. Vincent doesn’t get that specific, but it’s clear from her experience what helped her and her family as they were trying to carry on. (Hint: It didn’t help when a family friend promised to keep some furniture in safekeeping for them and then refused to give it back.)

The most poignant part of the story, to me, was her relationship with her sister. Her sister, who is described in the beginning as a pretty girl who likes dancing, is forced into the role of caregiver and their relationship suffers. More than one person implies that Erin is lucky - she doesn’t have to be the caregiver and she’s able to remember their parents, while her much younger brother won’t have those same memories. To me, that “advice” seemed really insensitive, though typical of the kinds of things people say when someone has died. Interestingly enough, though she and her sister do seem to work on their relationship, there are some indications at the end that they are still having trouble finding some common ground. Unless her sister goes by another name, I didn’t see her thanked in the acknowledgements, and there was a lawsuit against another family member that her sister chose not to be a part of. I secretly wish for stories to be wrapped up neatly, but I appreciate that family life can be messy and that reconciliation isn’t always possible.

When I was a teenager, I hadn’t lost anyone close to me, but I think I would have been able to appreciate what Erin goes through in Grief Girl. I’d recommend this book to teenage girls (or anyone who works with them), especially those who struggle with depression or have experienced loss.

And it’s a miracle
How one soul finds another
Just one miracle
Is all it took my brother
For I have seen them
As they walk this world together
And I believe, I believe

It’s a sad thing
When one must leave the other
And fly up where the voice rings
Out with all the multitudes that gather
But for a short while
Down here no song ever sounded sweeter
And we believed, we believed

For it’s a miracle
How one soul finds another
Just one miracle
Is all it took my brother
And I will see them
Someday they’ll walk again together
I believe, I believe
This I believe, I believe

(Thanks, Emmylou.)

Exercise, obviously. He hates it when people are healthy because he’s all disfigured and [SPOILER BOOK 6] his soul is in all those pieces. [END SPOILER SECTION]

So, this evening, I stuck it to the man by running to Harry and the Potters. Take that, Dark Lord!

Rather than posting again, I’m going to add this - MTV did a feature on Wizard Rock! Check it out! I bet Voldemort hates MTV now, too!

Mike has suggested that we designate a shelf for my “books to read” rather than having a pile beside the bed. I must admit, the pile beside the bed has gotten ridiculous lately. And that’s not counting the written list I have of books I would theoretically like to read (which I seem to add to more than I take away from). (That’s not to say I don’t make progress on it, because I do.)

For the most part, lately, our house has been clean and our yard has been looking much better. Usually those are signs that life is a bit out of control. But lately I have been wondering if my book pile is one of those signs that I’m trying to do too much. Or maybe that metaphor doesn’t work. Maybe I’m just trying to read too much.

I told a couple of people yesterday that I felt like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. Thank you, Bilbo, for that particular description. There’s no magical Ring making me feel that way, though. Just a general sense that I get from time to time that I can’t connect with everyone I’d like to connect with. I get jealous of Mike’s summers off, my friends who can take multiple weeks of vacation. A general sense of longing. This comes, I think, from thinking about THE FUTURE too much. That’s how I see it in my head: THE FUTURE. Big letters. Ominous. This has been a fun stage of our lives, with Mike in school, but Mike is going to graduate in less than a year, and what are we going to do after that? Where will he work? What will our lives look like?

It all makes me feel kind of listless, like I’m not accomplishing anything. My friendships seem to have lagged, my book pile grows. I stare at the ceiling fan at 3:00 in the morning. The past few weeks I have actually wondered if I will ever find a new book to enjoy (I have read a string of duds for sure).

I’m doing the things you do to fight off listlessness - making a playlist, eating ice cream, going running, reading an excellent novel. And I’ll keep trying to fight off Mike’s new love of Bjork. I really don’t want to turn into a Bjork fan. I still haven’t gotten over that swan dress.

It disappoints me to have to say that I didn’t care for this book. I know! I’m sorry! I wanted to like it!

The Last Summer (of You and Me) is the story of sisters Alice and Riley and their friend Paul who has a house next to theirs on Fire Island. Riley is a tomboy who embraces life, preferring the outdoors to “girly” things like dresses and lip gloss. Alice, on the other hand, is quiet, a reader. Paul has adopted their family somewhat – his father passed away when he was young, and his mother is busy spending all his father’s money. The three of them are inseparable, best friends. And yet, they are summer friends, the kind who know each other on vacations, year after year, and though Riley and Paul write, they don’t know each other’s lives outside of “summer time” all that well. Now, in their 20s, they have returned to Fire Island for the summer, which finally gives Paul and Alice’s growing attraction some space to grow. Just as you would expect, though, secrets become uncovered (and new ones develop) that threaten to pull Paul and Alice apart.

The problem for me with this book is that we’re told things like: Alice is a reader. But Alice, in the book, doesn’t read all that much that I remember. We are told by Paul and Alice: Riley is so great. But . . . the thing that keeps Alice and Paul apart is of Riley’s doing, deliberately. The book does a lot of telling the reader what the characters are like, but I didn’t always see the actions to back it up.

Additionally, as I consider myself a girly girl, I had a hard time connecting with Riley as a character. She didn’t seem critical, exactly, when Alice wanted to put on her good jeans and her lip gloss and go to the dance at the yacht club, but she certainly felt as if Alice was making the best choice. Dismissive is probably the best word to describe her. I felt defensive for Alice (and defensive of myself) when I was reading about Riley. To be honest, I felt like Riley was pretty selfish and inconsiderate the whole way through. As her story unfolds, it’s remarkable how inconsiderate she is of the feelings of the people around her. And I didn’t find that admirable. She’s one of those people who can’t accept opinions beyond her (narrow) scope, I think, and . . . I felt more sorry for Alice than sympathetic for Riley throughout the whole book.

Alice and Paul’s story was sweet and believable, the guilt they face at leaving Riley behind, the idea that two people who are starting to know each other as adults would have trouble telling each other about the things that matter. If you are a big Brashares fan, you could try this as a beach read. Otherwise, I’d pass.

(Spoilers through everything we know for sure at this point.)

We bought this one at our usual Barnes and Noble party. What’s especially significant is that Mike and Brian staked out a table early, so we had a great place in line and excellent seats all night. I was in charge of snacks. My cousin also came with us, and I had a great time watching him make a wand and have his fortune told and seeing all the people dressed up as characters from the series. This book came out not long after the flood/leak/whatever, and it was nice to have the story to take us out of that misery. We read it everywhere - in the living room, in the kitchen, on the back porch, on the front porch.

Order of the Phoenix was a grim book (as I was reading it, I kept saying that this was the last time I was ever going to read it, and in the future I would be skipping from Goblet of Fire straight on to Half-Blood Prince), but Half-Blood Prince, with its focus on relationships and romance, is a much happier story bookended by a grim beginning and ending. I laugh out loud with this one more than many of the others, getting involved in the silliness of Won-Won and the beast in Harry’s chest.

That’s not to say the book isn’t dark, because I am not sure what is more dark than splitting your soul as Voldemort has done. But so much of that is unanswered at this point. There’s so much we don’t know about horcruxes and about Harry’s future quest (and, of course, Snape). I am not sure that I know exactly what to say about it. I’m ready, though, for the next volume. I am ready to have some answers and to see the pieces come together.

Here are some things that stick out to me about Half-Blood Prince:

1. One of the best small victories in the series is in the beginning of this book, when Harry chooses to stay with Neville and Luna rather than hanging with the “cool kids.” I love that Harry has taken that step, that he is able to value the people who stand by him rather than being seduced by popularity. Yet another sign that he’s not truly a Slytherin. Additionally, I don’t know when I am more proud of him than when he invites Luna to Slughorn’s party. So different from the way he (and Ron) approached the Yule Ball – the prettiest girl who’d agree to go with him. This time he went with a friend, even if she’s a little strange. To say the least.

2. I think that this is, by far, the weakest A-plot of any of the books (I see the A-plot as “what this book is about” vs. the B-plot being the overall story arc of Harry vs. Voldemort). I mean, seriously. Snape is the Half-Blood Prince. That’s the big reveal. It’s . . . kind of hard to care. It pales in comparison to, say, a convicted murderer being after Harry, and, oh, by the way, he’s innocent, and, oh, by the way, he’s Harry’s godfather. The other big part of that story is that Harry believes Draco is a Death Eater. Well, so did I. And Harry and I were both right. So where’s the suspense? I mentioned this to Mike as I was reading, and he said that maybe what was important is that, for once, Harry was right the whole way through the book. I think that’s a good point. Hopefully it shows that Harry’s instincts are stronger than they used to be.

3. So, about that Half-Blood Prince. I’m still not sure how the plot of HBP could possibly have worked in CoS. How could Harry have been using the book if Snape was still his teacher? I think it worked out for the best for her to have pushed it back. I always forget that we’re supposed to make the connection between Lord Voldemort and the Half-Blood Prince as Harry does at the end of this book. I can’t figure out whether that’s pro-Snape-is-good (if this information could have been given as early as book 2, does that make it statistically insignificant) or pro-Snape-is-bad (Harry was right this whole book and he’s finally right about Snape, plus the big reveal is usually big information).

4. I love how the romantic entanglements unfold in this one – we never see Ron and Hermione having private moments, because we’re getting everything through the filter of Harry. I think that’s adorable. We see that Harry had suspected that they might date, but, unlike a girl, he hasn’t given it a whole lot of thought. Speaking of girls, and by girls I mean me, when we read this one out loud I IMMEDIATELY grasped that when Harry mentioned that the Amortentia potion smelled like “something he’d smelled at the Burrow,” he meant Ginny, though he didn’t know it himself. Mike, however, did not realize that until it came up again later. This is exactly what I mean when I talk about the difference between boys and girls. I am always on the lookout for romance.

5. I guess Harry and Ginny deserve their own bullet point. I must admit that, before HBP came out, this essay had almost convinced me that Harry and Hermione were destined to be together, but I have always been a proponent of the “one big happy Weasley family” theory (have I mentioned that I am a girl?), so I was happy at how it all worked out. Mike was reading the chapter where they finally kiss, and it was one of those moments where I had to stand up because I was too tense (both about Quidditch and about Harry and Ginny) to sit down.

6. Speaking of moments where I had to stand up, Mike was also reading the chapter in which Snape killed Dumbledore. We were reading on the front porch, and as soon as Snape came up those stairs, I had to go stand on the other side of the porch because I knew what was going to happen. I can never sit down for stuff like that. I do it when we watch TV, too.

7. Mike is a very tolerant person.

8. See also the fact that we went to see Harry and the Potters in Raleigh last night.

9. Anyway, before this gets too far off track, I must admit that I have given up trying to figure out Snape. But here is what I think - it’s going to be a pretty far stretch to convince me of any kind of redemption as far as he’s concerned. He’s been so vile and hateful to Harry when Harry had never done anything to him, when Snape is, in fact, the reason that Harry lost his parents. I don’t care if Snape had some unrequited love for Lily and that’s why he’s chosen to be on the good side, to redeem his actions . . . he’s the one who got her killed in the first place. Good luck convincing me that he deserves my compassion. And don’t get me started on his treatment of Neville or Hermione. I know the world, as someone (Sirius? Lupin?) said, isn’t divided into good people and Death Eaters, I know life’s not simple, but it’s going to take a lot for me to be able to appreciate Snape as a person.

10. Is that too mean? Snape brings out the worst in everyone, I fear.

11. I read an interesting theory yesterday that I’ll just go ahead and put here because, in case you haven’t noticed, I have completely run out of stuff to say. So, say Voldemort intended to use Harry’s murder to create the sixth horcrux. Lily’s sacrifice and her murder in some way caused the horcrux to be placed in Harry’s scar. This is why Harry could sense Voldemort so clearly in book 5. At the end of book 5, when Voldemort possesses Harry, it says that his scar “burst open.” Perhaps what was happening there was that the two pieces of soul joined back together, like drops of water would. This could also explain why Harry’s scar didn’t hurt at all in HBP.

12. I am, however, back in the camp that believes that Harry hasn’t ever been a horcrux . . . how could someone possessed by Voldemort’s soul act as Harry has acted over the series? Eschewing Slytherin, wanting to possess but not use the Sorcerer’s Stone, destroying the diary. All these things make me think that Harry is horcrux-free. But I guess we’ll see.

All right, I’m going to wrap this up now. I hope you are as thoroughly confused as I am. I would just like to say that I greatly admire J.K. Rowling’s skill as a storyteller, the way that she has managed to give us such ambiguous information. When Dumbledore says that Draco is at his mercy, is that because he knew that this was going to happen and that he was going to use Snape to keep Draco from having to be a murderer (and, by the way, I never thought I could possibly feel sympathy for Draco, so maybe there is hope for me and Snape), or is it because he was so deceived about Snape that he’s made a huge mistake? Everything she’s given us can be interpreted in multiple ways, and I love that (and hate it at the same time).

I have tried not to be overly sentimental here, but it has been such a pleasure to read these books with Mike, to share them and talk about them with my friends as we have waited for the next books. I am both dreading and anticipating the final installment. It’s been quite a ride, and I am not ready for it to be over just yet.

Through the gift of an elderly aunt, Jane is given a trip to Pembrook Park, where ladies can fulfill all their Regency desires by dressing, acting, and flirting just like a Regency woman. This is a perfect trip for Jane, who is maybe just a little bit obsessed with Mr. Darcy (and Colin Firth). She plans to use the trip to get back to reality, to see that even Mr. Darcy isn’t perfect.

Well, that sounds like a delightful idea for a book, doesn’t it? Especially for someone like me, a fan of Mr. Darcy (and Colin Firth). And yet, the book left me completely cold. Jane kept dithering about whether she wanted to be playacting or not, and I understood her discomfort with the idea of actors pretending to fall in love with her, but if Jane doesn’t know if she wants to be romantic or cynical, how am I, the reader, supposed to know how I feel about her and what she’s doing? (Actually, I do know - I think it was a bit creepy, actually. I wouldn’t be able to do something like that. Ever.) The whole book was like that, a back-and-forth between Jane having fun and Jane pondering the darker side of Pembrook Park. I think it would have been better to play it as a straight-up romance or to be a bit of a satire. Trying to do both didn’t work for me.

There were definitely some cute parts in the book, but overall, I’d say it’s not worth the effort. It didn’t live up to the dedication, which made me laugh out loud:

As the credits for Waitress were rolling, a woman on our row turned to her husband and said, “That was the weirdest movie I’ve ever seen.” She needs to get out more, because it’s not even the strangest movie I’ve seen this year.

On the row in front of us was a man from our church, and on the way out he said that he normally goes for movies with a little more realism.

I, on the other hand, cried my way through the last fifteen minutes, wishing I hadn’t left my Kleenex in the car to free up space in my purse for sneaking in our drinks. To me, Jenna’s relationship with Earl seemed all too real. I’ve seen friends lose themselves in relationships. I’ve seen friends become shadows of themselves as they succumb to their boyfriends’ constant criticisms. I’ve seen friends lose their spark as their husbands show no interest in anything that doesn’t specifically pertain to them. It was so easy to imagine how the same could have happened to Jenna. The story was a little fanciful, sure, but it completely sucked me in.

I don’t think it’s giving away anything to say that this movie deals with infidelity, since it’s in the previews. I normally have a hard time with that kind of movie (see: my discomfort with Lost in Translation), but I knew going in that that was what the movie was about, so I don’t think I can fault it for that. What I liked about the way that it was handled is that I didn’t feel like I had to get sucked in to that plot to be able to appreciate its effects on Jenna. I could disapprove of her actions while also seeing her grow into a person who believed she could be valued.

This paragraph has slight spoilers, so here’s where you should move on if you are wanting to see it. What I liked the most was that, in the end, the baby was enough to give her the strength to do what was right. She didn’t need money, she didn’t need a guy. She had grown enough to know what she needed to do. As a woman, I liked the ambivalence Jenna had about the baby, her questions about what she would be able to give a baby when she didn’t have all those things worked out for herself.

And as a North Carolinian, I, of course, loved Andy Griffith.

Maybe it was just the case of the right movie hitting me at the right time. Goodness knows I have cried enough this weekend - through the last few chapters of Half-Blood Prince, through the end of Waitress, upon getting some disappointing news. I can understand why some people wouldn’t like it - it wasn’t perfect by any means, and several times it seemed unsure of what kind of movie it wanted to be. I can’t help it. I just flat-out loved it in spite of all that.

And I now feel really compelled to learn how to make pie.

At least, not if you’re a librarian. Check out this Amazon review of Pride and Prejudice.