apologies for a long absence + NEW BLOG!

Hiya peeps,

Sorry I've been away so long.  It's been a summer of busy-busy-fun and I haven't had time to sit down and write about it.  (Excuse #1.)

Excuse #2 is that I was working on a new blog!  Because I read and write about the books I read, I decided to start a separate blog just to focus on those books (plus adding in a few weekly adventures.)  At the moment, that other blog is the child I love most, but I'll try not to neglect this one.  In the meantime, go check out my new blog at: Itty Books (http://ittybooks.wordpress.com/)

Hugs to you all!  Go read a book!

Jen

let the string of posts about summer fun begin!

After being a bit murky all winter about anything I was actually doing (besides school, and lots of reading during the holidays), I think it’s time to share the AWESOMENESS that is my life right now.

Summer is treating me well so far.  I’ve hiked the longest I’ve ever gone in my life (a 9-mi., 3500-ft. hike one day, followed by a 12-mi., 3000-ft. hike the next), I’ve biked the farthest I’ve ever been in my life (35 mi…. not all that impressive of a number, but still: 35 miles one day, transcontinental bike ride the next), and I feel like I could do anything this park throws at me.  (Apart from, you know, actual mountain climbing.  I’m still not that badass.) 

One damper on my spirits is I’d forgotten how furiously social everything in this park is.  The seasonals here roam around in packs, going into town to go dancing, going out drinking, going out hiking, and there are always fractured groups as volatile as in high school.  It’s like one big, grown-up summer camp, with horny 20-somethings all mashed together in cliques for one long, hot summer.  I’m glad to be back—I love deeply knowing the land and living in the mountains—but sometimes I dread being social at the end of the day.  After talking to people at the visitor center for 8 or 9 hours, the last thing I want to do is go home and talk more.  I find myself claiming to everybody that I’m a hermit—I’m antisocial—I hate going out—etc.  None of the above is true, but I value my time to be alone. 

That means that I’ve spent beaucoup de time this summer doing what I love: reading, writing, practicing the banjo, being alone in the woods, enjoying a good beer, cooking, having a good conversation over dinner, riding my bike longer and faster, hiking up to kick-ass places in the park, and doing a good job at work.  All that said, I’ve gotten to hang out with my favorite people plenty this summer, and I’m looking forward to the next few months as well.

Here’s a (rather poorly done) mosaic shot to keep you tantalized: this is the most gorgeous place in the park (but shh! it’s a secret… at least until I tell you more about it in a future post).

first books of the summer

It's summertime!  That means, among other things, that I get to read my little eyes out.  I have been going on many other adventuresome adventures, and soon pictures will be at hand, but for now, feast your eyes on these first seven books of the summer:

№1. Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · by John Daniel (6/11/2012)

I’m FREE!  I’ve finished my FIRST YEAR of grad school and I didn’t go mad with the stress of it all.  (At least, I hope I didn’t…*uncontrollable twitch*…)  After a whirlwind drive home, another long drive to a quick wedding where I said HI and BYE to a million people I haven’t seen for a million years, and suddenly finding lots of relatives were also getting home at the same time I was, all I’ve wanted to do is sleep, watch LOTR, practice the banjo, and sleep.  And read!  I haven’t read a book for fun since I got back from Singapore so many months ago, and I’m drooling over my TBR shelf.  Book #1 off said shelf: Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone by John Daniels.  The author came to Linfield several years ago and did a reading (as authors are wont to do) and I was suitably impressed—enough to go to Powell’s and buy a new copy of his book.  I read the first chapter or so and promptly forgot all about it.  Ever since then, I’ve carted the book all over the world (I think it went with me to Ecuador, Wyoming, Germany, Montana, Spain, and back to Oregon again) and it’s been staring at me balefully from the shelf.  I’d remembered the first couple chapters weren’t exciting enough to warrant a re-read, so I cracked it open to where I’d left my bookmark, and *YAWN*… I hadn’t thought it was that boring.  The premise of the book is that Daniels goes off to a cabin near the Rogue River for a winter to contemplate his life, his father, and nature (à la Thoreau), so he ends up just sitting in a cabin and talking about himself.  Which, I suppose is usually the point of a memoir—you talk about yourself, or, if you’re Frida, you paint yourself—but usually you have something Fascinating for the rest of us to Ooh over, instead of just talking about your rough relationship with your brooding father.  I’m assuming that John Daniels is a great writer and that I would have loved this memoir in a different time in my life, but right now, this book’s ponderousness is not my cup of tea.  All I’m up for is a beach read. ? out of 10.

®2. Name of the Rose · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · by Umberto Eco (6/16/2012)

This was another book that I started hace años, but I accidentally left it at a friend’s house for a couple of years.  Whoops!  As soon as I got it back, I re-read the first part and devoured the rest.  This book was published in 1980 in Italian and is seemingly experiencing a resurgence in English—I saw tablesfull of it at Costco—which is well-deserved, think I.  Name of the Rose is set in the 14^th Century in an Italian monastery, and there is a series of murders.  What ho!  Medieval Times! Italy! Murders! This must be good.  We follow the narrator (a bumbling novice monk) around the abbey, searching for clues and forming hypotheses.  The book was written by a professor of semiotics, and it shows.  The author spends pages making the narrator believable, as well as giving us readers the minute details of scholarly debates that were happening within the Catholic Church in Ye Olden Days.  All of this happens to be quite interesting, but, as I said in my review of the previous book, I’m more interested in the beach-read genre at the moment, so let’s ramp it up with the murder mystery!  Luckily, this book provides excitement in frequent supply.  Over the course of the story, seven monks die (I’m not giving anything away here, I swear; this is all on the back cover).  Grab hold of your habits, O Reader, and pick this book up along with your giganto packs of frozen coconut shrimp at Costco.  7 out of 10.

®3. Mañana, Mañana · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · by Peter Kerr (6/19/2012)

Having lived for a year (well, eight months, but who’s counting?) on Mallorca, I’m happy to read about my temporary home.  This book was written by a Scottish chap who, along with his wife and two teenage sons, bought a small finca (farm) on Mallorca with the intention of settling down.  He narrates charmingly the family’s first summer on Mallorca, although with the amount of anecdotes supplied in order to make this book readable, I’d imagine that a lot more summers’ adventures were condensed into this particular literary-worthy emblematic summer.  If you haven’t lived on Mallorca, then I’m not sure how you’ll react to this book (although reviewers apparently thought it was better than A Year in Provence, which similarly details an Englishman’s settling into southern France).  In Mañana, Mañana, I loved hearing about bits of the island that I’d learned to treasure.  Apart from the author’s rather terrible mallorquín, the book gave a loving and accurate portrayal of Mallorca about a decade ago.  6 out of 10.

®4. The Earth Speaks · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · by Steve Van Matre and Bill Weiler (6/30/2012)

O, Nature!  What are men compared to rocks and mountains?  What are mountains compared to the odes literary men have composed to them?  This beautiful book is bursting with quotes and poems encouraging us all to fall in love with our Mother Earth.  I have composed an entire ranger program around this book, and here’s one of the quotes that has so inspired me:

“This grand show is eternal.  It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.” —John Muir

®5. King Hereafter · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · by Dorothy Dunnett (7/12/2012)

I normally don’t write about re-reads here because, by the second time around, it’s too hard to capture the emotions of a first encounter with a book.  However, Dorothy Dunnett’s works are intricate enough to make each re-read surprising and enjoyable.  This is the second time I’ve read King Hereafter, a standalone book (as compared to her fabulous Lymond and Niccolò series), that combines all Dunnett’s gift for rich detail, plot twists, character development, and the re-creation of the historical worlds she has chosen.  In this particular book, our hero is Macbeth, fabled King of Scotland (whose story bears no resemblance to that of the sly and evil protagonist in The Scottish Play).  We travel to Scotland before it was known as Scotland, journeying through the Orkney Islands, Norway, Denmark, Germany, and Rome in the early years of the 1000s.  There are hints of a Norman future for England, but as of yet, the world of Northern Europe is full of Norsemen and Irishmen, of factions that have all but been erased throughout history, and of men who go a-viking in dragon-prowed longships.  As fascinated as I always am by Dunnett’s clever wordplay, I feel that her writing got too clever for me.  She wrote the Lymond Chronicles first, and they still stand as some of my all-time favorite books.  King Hereafter came next, followed by the Niccolò series, and Dunnett’s writing grew more and more opaque with each passing book.  King Hereafter paints a wonderfully rich picture of the turmoil in the northern part of the world at the turn of the last millennium, but it is a picture I feel I am looking in on from the outside, and I have to admire her glittering masterpiece from a distance.  For that, I have to knock a point off a Perfect 10, but this book truly is a magnum opus.  9 out of 10.

®6. The Passionate Fact: Storytelling in Natural History and Cultural Interpretation · · by Susan Strauss (7/15/2012)

At work, we have a wonderful library full of books to help inspire us to become better interpreters.  Several such books deal with storytelling, and since I’m trying to add a bigger element of storytelling in my ranger programs, I’ve started perusing these books.  The Passionate Fact has a rather unfortunate title (it hinges around the idea of basing a story off one fact that you care passionately about) but is a wonderful little book full of inspiration and insight.  7 out of 10.

®7. Here Be Dragons · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · by Sharon Penman (7/17/2012)

I have been on a historical-fiction kick lately.  After reading about Scotland in the 11^th Century (see King Hereafter, above), Wales in the 12^th Century seemed like a perfect sequel.  Plus, Sharon Penman is known for a series recreating the Napoleonic Wars … PLUS DRAGONS!  How awesome is that?  Who wouldn’t want to go fighting the French ON A FUCKING DRAGON?  However, Here Be Dragons is not said series, and has only symbolic dragons, and I was sorely disappointed.  Reading Sharon Penman after reading Dorothy Dunnett is like reading Christopher Paolini after J.R.R. Tolkein; it’s like trading an ocean for a sandbox.  The plot is ploddingly simple, but Penman tries to shake it up a bit by jumping from year to year, from narrator to narrator.  All of the narrators sound the same, however: naïve and petty, no matter if it’s the King of England or a 6-year-old.  Because each chapter takes place in a different year, we just have to assume each person gets older as the numbers turn, without seeing any evidence of character development in the writing.  And the writing!  Ye gods, the writing.  Hear me, O Aspiring Historical Fiction Author: Just because this is Ye Olden Times does not mean you should throw in “mahap”s and “wroth”s whenever you feel like it.  (They were speaking Middle English, Middle Welsh, and Old Norman, anyways, so your fancy words really are just stupidly extraneous.) Sentences such as the following will earn you a shunning: “I know not with whom my mother’ll be more wroth, me or my Uncle Gruffydd…” (p. 28).  Seriously, seriously, that sentence deserves a sharp kick in the nuts.  Here’s another passage that got my goat; in the following, one of the main characters is thinking of Eleanor of Aquitaine: “She knew she should only feel disapproval toward a wayward wife, a rebel Queen, but she was aware, instead, of a sharp, piercing regret, an ache for that wild spirit caged at last within Salisbury Tower” (p. 143).  Wild spirit, indeed.  And again, just because this is Ye Olden Times, you do not need to give narrators olden-ish Thoughts just to make sure we readers understand these characters Think Differently Because They Are Not Of This Millennium, and then suddenly undermine said Thoughts to make the narrator Relatable And Believable for us modern-day, easily gullible readers. 2 out of 10.

memory, memorial, memoriam

Memories:

I graduated from college two years ago today.  One year ago I was probably riding my bike down to a Mediterranean beach.  Today, I spent the entire afternoon formatting my resume. (Will this font size get me a job?  How about these bullet points?  What if I increase my margins by .1 inch?) This Memorial Day is not one to put down in the memory books.

In Memoriam:

My grandparents, who are dearly missed.

happy easter!

Hey, everybody!  Today's the first Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon (which is 14 days after the tabular lunation) after the vernal equinox.  You know what that means, right?  IT'S EASTER BUNNY TIME!


...or, you know, tell me to set my watch forward by a month.


It's actually Mother's Day today (happy day, Mommy!), and it's now actually five Sundays late, but I do want to share something with you vis-à-vis Easter.  (Sorry I didn't post this somewhere around the actual date of Easter - I've been busy counting ecclesiastical moons.) 


***
One of my lovely roommates had a lovely tradition with her mother: every Easter Sunday, instead of doing an Easter egg hunt, her mom set up an elaborate a scavenger hunt, at the end of which was hidden an overflowing Easter basket.  


So, that's what we decided to do as a house for Easter!  Everybody designed 1-4 clues that they hid in various places around the property, and people gave their first clue to the previous person on the list.  So, for example, I wrote two clues, the first of which I gave to Melissa.  Melissa hid that clue wherever she wanted.  When we eventually found that clue as a group, only I knew where that first clue led to (which was the place I'd hidden my second clue).


We all worked together, and apart from some bad sportsmanship (we should have said Googling answers was punishable by flogging), we all had a pretty good time.  When we finally found the Easter basket that Corrina put together, we had a fantastic picnic outside.


I thought I'd share some of the clues with you just to share the love: see how many you can figure out! (and NO Googling.)  (Some clearly are inside jokes, but most are universally answerable).  If you only decide to do a couple of them, take a gander at #3 & #5.  Enjoy!


Clue #1:

Clue #2:

*the asterisk in the first line should be a blank.
You're looking for the letters in the blanks (and  the accidental asterisk letter).

Clue #3:
Because we wrote the answers on this clue, here's the typed-out version.  This was the most fun clue to solve!


1_____ 2_____ 3_____ 4_____ 5_____ 6_____ 7_____ 8_____ 9_____ 10_____
It was a pleasure to burn. (last name) 1


I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. (title) 2


"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." (last name) 3


Call me Ishmael. (title, 2nd word) 4


riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. (title) 5


I am an invisible man. (last name) 6


Elmer Gantry was a drunk. (title) 7


It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. (last name) 8


He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. (first name) 9


He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. (first name) 10


Clue #4:

*this clearly is an insider's clue, so I'll just tell you where it led:
We have a fantastic board game called "Ticket to Ride" that we love to play as a group,
and one of the game's logos is this rainbow train.  So, we found the next clue in the board game box.

Clue #5:
Again, we wrote the answers on the clue, so here it is in its original state.  Can you guess who set up this one? :)  (Take the time to solve this - I swear linguistics is fun!)

utanira elmen amapp

This clue speaks Obblewobblemock, a language that you have to figure out.  Here’s an Obblewobblemock dictionary to help you out for the first two words.  The dictionary got a bit gobbledygooked for the end of the clue, though, so you’ll have to use your logic and your knowledge of the house’s layout to match the Obblewobblemock with the English:

#1:

ilinitaga           s/he asked me

imemtaga            s/he has asked him/her

inakutaga           s/he is asking you

itakuzapala         s/he will hide you

unamzapala          you are hiding him/her

tulikura            we found you

***

#2:

ejmen             under the shelf

ejdwikmen         under the little shelf

ele               in the book

disdwikme         on top of the little sink

disimizin         next to our sink

leniz             the chair

lenizdwike        in the little chair

lenizin           next to the chair

***

#3: (remember, the word on the left DOES NOT MATCH the word on the right.  You'll have to figure out the connections yourself!)

OBBLEWOBBLEMOCK                     ENGLISH

app                                 downstairs hallway

amapp                               upstairs hallway

emez                                downstairs bathroom

oz                                  downstairs kitchen

ez                                  downstairs closet/cupboard

amoz                                upstairs closet/cupboard

ipp                                 upstairs bathroom

*note: I am not counting the basement as a floor; “downstairs” refers to the main floor.

*note: the native speakers of Obblewobblemock do not distinguish between “cupboards” and “closets”

Clue #6:

Clue #7:

Clue #8:
We seem to have lost clue #8, which was too bad: Tony wrote a computer program for his router.  (Tony has built himself a CNC machine - a router attached to a computer - that now lives in the garage).  The program essentially gave a whole set of X, Y, & Z coordinates, and if you plotted out the points on graph paper, you ended up spelling the word UKE.  Meaning, the clue was in the ukelele (or, I should say, one of the ukeleles - we seem to have several around the house).


Clue #9:
I can't include clue #9 here, because it was a mix on a CD.  We had to figure out either the artist name or song title for each song as it played, which were the answers for the final clue.  


HAPPY EASTER!  Once you get the answers to all or some of the clues, email me, and I'll buy you chocolate.

i wish i were back on a plane, just so i could keep reading

I had been planning on finishing up a few more books to add to the list below, continuing from previous posts (I'm right in the middle of Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose and don't tell me you don't want to hear about it), but school is, as always, getting in the way.  This will probably be my last hurrah of reading for fun until June.  So, here's a wrap-up of the books I read while in Singapore and on the journey home.  I give you four beautiful books, a really-really-trying-to-be-beautiful book, and a dud:

®21. All the Pretty Horses · · · · by Cormac McCarthy (3/25/2012)

Ohmygoshyouguys.  Cormac McCarthy blew my mind and I haven’t found all the pieces yet.  Because I’m in a state of verbal inadequacy, I’m going to simply copy and paste this lovely review from Lara at goodreads: “McCarthy pares his descriptions down to the purest bones, and then, as if all that surrounded it was the shrapnel of a shattering revelation, lays down a jaw-droppingly astonishing sentence that sums up good, evil, man, God, love.  The best and worst in men are inseparable in McCarthy's worlds, which are so exactly imagined as to be indisputable.  John Grady Cole is one of the most memorable heros in contemporary literature.  This one makes me want to ride out across the dust.” 8 out of 10.

®22. Brave New World · · · · by Adolus Huxley (3/26/2012)

Another classic. *yawns, leans back in chaise lounge and tosses book gaily over shoulder.* Seriously, I feel like the only place to read this book would be reclining in the lounge in 1932.  This book must have been the shiz in the 30s, but now, it just seems flat.  There’s really no plot development, there are no non-stock characters, and the descriptions of the dystopian world become repetitive and boring after the first ten minutes of reading.  Although those first ten minutes really are a trip: in this world, the dictatorial government uses happy drugs and playful sex as world-domination tools, and grows people in labs in batches, and purposefully stunts the growth of people in lower social classes, and uses sleep hypnosis to convince people that they really are truly happy with their lives.  It’s a WEIRD, cool idea, but the idea can be summed up in one sentence, instead of dragging it out for an entire book.  5 out of 10.

®23. The Bean Trees · · · · by Barbara Kingsolver (3/27/2012)

This is a warm story about the beautiful absurdity of life, about mothers and daughters, and about the human condition.  This book reminded me of many magical realist short stories, and the sense of bemused amazement as we follow the characters through life’s unexpected twists and turns is infectious.  Mini-synopsis: The heroine begins with giving us readers a clear-eyed account of Kentucky and her desire to leave it.  She eventually does, driving West and searching for a new place to begin.  Somewhere in Oklahoma, somebody gives her a baby.  In a blurb like this, saying “somebody gives her a baby” just sounds trite and soap-opera-y.  Kingsolver, wordsmith extraordinaire, is anything but trite, and this baby turns out to be the most central, most joyous part of the whole book.  This new ersatz-mom stops driving in Tuscon due to other random circumstances, and there her new life (+ baby) begins, and she starts to learn about the mixed misery and joy that humans put each other through.  8 out of 10.

®24. The Color Purple · · · · by Alice Walker (4/1/2012? or perhaps 3/31/2012—I was crossing the date line)

Man, oh man.  (Or, as my roommate says, Woman, oh woman.)  This book is incredibly powerful, and narrates a journey so despairing and joyous that you’ll cry for America.  Walker explores themes of race, misogyny, poverty, incest, rape, motherhood, heteronormativity, religion, creativity, and love, just to name a few.  Here’s an interview with Walker on BBC that has some fascinating stories about how she went about writing the book, and the world’s reception to it. 9 out of 10.

®25. Enduring Love · · · · by Ian McEwan (4/1/2012? or perhaps 3/31/2012—I was crossing the date line)

You know how you read the best book by an author, and how after that every book from the same author pales in comparison?  Atonement was such a complex, multi-leveled book, with a riveting plot, that although Enduring Love was undoubtedly well written, I couldn’t shake the feeling of slight disappointment.  Come on—is two masterpieces too much to ask?  However, McEwan does craft a compelling narrative in Enduring Love, and his writing is as lyrical as ever.  Love, respect, obsession, and identity are all major themes of this book, which chronicles the changes a freak ballooning accident wreak on one man’s life and once-stable love.  7 out of 10.

®26. Lolita · · · · · · · · · · by Vladimir Nabokov (4/3/2012).

Reading Lolita on the bus gives you two reasons to be disturbed: 1) pedophiles, and 2) motion sickness.  (Another reason to be disturbed: People in Portland like to comment on what their bus neighbors are reading.  I know everyone sees me reading Lolita.  I know it’s a classic that everyone should read at some point in their lives.  That doesn’t stop me from wanting to hide it far, far away from my bus neighbors’ prying eyes—shoot, now I’m talking about it like it’s porn—it’s just that it’s narrated by a pedophile who has erotic plans for his stepdaughter, ok YUCK YUCK YUCK I’m stuffing it into my backpack.)  With all that aside, Lolita is a very good book.  It has many themes tucked between the covers, such as societal mores and social expectations, and is kind-of like The French Lieutenant’s Woman taken to an extreme. And the writing really, truly is excellent.  A lovely quote by Nabokov about the book: “…an American critic suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel.  The substitution ‘English language’ for ‘romantic novel’ would make this elegant formula more correct.” Various snippets of comments online: “a tour-de-force of style and narrative” and “wantonly gorgeous prose” (the amazon.com review is beautiful in its own right).  The writing is beautiful, the narrator is fantastically unreliable and could serve as a model for any creative writing class to strive for, and you are tugged along, unable to put the book down, even as the bus halts at your stop.  8 out of 10. 

books! books! books!

Hey there,

Along with frolicking and touristing and hiking and sweating and picture-taking and everything else I did over break, I read.  And I read and I read and I read.  You'd think grad school had starved me for the written word!

Here are my thoughts on some of the books I finished over Spring break, as well as some that I read over Thanksgiving break and didn't write about here.  (Numbering continues from the end of the list in this post.  I set a goal of reading 50 books outside of school work over the course of the academic year.  So far, I've only really read during the breaks, but I'm still chugging along, and am keeping track of my progress.)

      ®13. All My Friends Are Dead · · · · · · · · · · by Avery Monsen and Jory Jory (11/24/2011).

This book doesn’t even need any thoughts from me, and it may not even count as a book.  It’s about two pages long, and has pictures.  Go look up the title, and you’ll laugh until you cry as you flip through this wee devil of a book.  Luckily, all my friends are not dead, and we all read this out loud to each other on Thanksgiving Day.  It seemed to fit the holiday spirit.  ? out of 10.

®14. Blankets · · · · · · · · · · by Craig Thompson (11/25/2011).

Blankets is a beautiful autobiographical graphic novel that poignantly tells the story of growing up.  It includes breathtaking depictions of the author’s childhood and his wide-open imagination, which seems to burst out of the confinements of the small world of rural Wisconsin, hemmed in by the harsh winters and strict small-town life.  8 out of 10.

®15. Habibi · · · · · · · · · · by Craig Thompson (11/26/2011).

After being blown away by the gorgeous drawings in Blankets, I picked up Habibi, Thompson’s newest graphic novel.  While Blankets is much more personal (it’s a memoir), Habibi is an epic that spans centuries and explores themes of Islam and Christianity, the natural world, industrialism, love, and storytelling.  The drawings are, again, exquisite, and the panel of the story fit together like puzzle pieces. I am not a graphic novel connoisseur, but I thoroughly enjoyed the style of Habibi, and the conventions of a graphic novel.  For example, where a traditional novel needs a lot of excess words to create a frame story, Thompson can simply draw an intricate, geometrical frame around his Scheherazade-like stories-within-stories.  Both his dialogue and wordless images are moving, and tell a masterpiece.  8 out of 10.

®16. The Book Thief · · · · · · · · · · by Markus Zusak (1/14/2012).

Brilliant, sad, and wallopingly funny.  Go read it!  (Or maybe you did way back in ’06, when this was a bestseller.  If you missed that boat, hop on now).  The basic premise is that we (the readers) follow Liesel Meminger through Death’s eyes as she grows up in Nazi Germany.  Death is an oddly cool, detached narrator, and can’t help but observe Liesel as she boisterously goes about her life.  Death travels the world, collecting souls, and stops back every once in a while to check on Liesel.  He also slowly, stealthily, wraps his cold fingers around your (the reader’s) heart and just holds it, waiting, while you traipse through all the warm chapters of Liesel’s young adolescence.  And then he squeezes.  Eee-gadz, I think my heart leaked out of my eyes and is now in a puddle on the floor—I cried that much.  Am I spoiling anything?  It is a book narrated by Death, after all, so I don’t think I’ve given any spoilers by admitting that I cried.  (I cried at the end of When Harry Met Sally, too, so I don’t think that says much.)  There are hilarious bits as well – one of the characters makes a sketchbook by painting over pages of Mein Kampf and then drawing his own pictures (which are included for our enjoyment and are *cute*!) and there’s a sketch of a young Hitler in a Führer Shop, eyeing such items as mini-moustaches and hatred-in-a-bottle.  (!)  If you don’t ever want read another book about Nazi Germany again, this is one to make an exception for.  It isn’t really about Nazis at all, or death—it’s about living.  8 out of 10.

®17. The Shell Collector · · · · · · · · · · by Anthony Doerr (3/18/2012).

These short stories unwound in magical, breathless sequence, and held me in an in-between state so powerful that I didn’t notice or care that my plane was still sitting on the tarmac in Portland, and that I’d probably miss my connecting flight in Tokyo—I was being transported to Kenya, Montana, Chicago, and thousand other emotional places in Doerr’s stories.  I typically avoid short stories because of their tendency to attempt too many symbolic punches, but Doerr laid on the symbolism, plot, character development, and lyricism in exactly the right amount.  8 out of 10. 

®18. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn · · · · · · · · · · by Betty Smith (3/18/2012).

Well… it’s a classic, which is about all I can say for it.  In my quest to finally get through a stack of books someone should have made me read earlier in life, it finally fell time to tackle this one.  Anna Quindlen wrote a rather apt foreword for the book, making remarks like, “It is not a showy book from a literary point of view,” which I wholeheartedly agree with.  I also happen to think there’s not much showy about it at all.  If I hadn’t been in a metal/plastic tube hurtling through the air at 35,000 feet, trapped between the window and a talkative seatmate, I’d have chucked this book out and gone to watch Mad Men.  OK, sorry—I feel like I should at least say a few positive things about this book, since I made it through to the end, and it is a classic for a reason.  This book was revolutionary for its time.  Smith’s depiction of her childhood Brooklyn, full of poverty, misogyny, and corruption, is a powerful reminder that America’s favorite immigrant narrative (rags-to-riches, land of opportunity, yadda yadda) glosses over the fact that many 1^st- and 2^nd- generation immigrants were faced with brutal, short lives.  Institutional racism hasn’t gone anywhere, and if we keep telling ourselves that today’s immigrants should just buck up and work harder, then we are simply perpetuating the cycle of condemning generations of people to being second-class citizens.  5 out of 10.

®19. The Hunger Games · · · · · · · · · · by Suzanne Collins (3/20/2012).

I succumbed!  After thoroughly exhausting myself on my first day in Singapore, I came back to my cousin’s apartment and perused her bookshelf (hooray for expat packages! they even shipped her books from the US!).  She had a boxed set of The Hunger Games, and since, hey, who doesn’t like a bandwagon? I hopped on.  I kicked back, turned on the air-con, cracked open the first book, and WHA-BAM!  I was trapped.  I don’t even know if the writing was good or bad, but OH MY GOODNESS it was engrossing.  Go read this book if you need two hours of your life sucked away because you can’t un-pry your fingers from the book covers. 7 out of 10.

®20. Catching Fire · · · · · · · · · · by Suzanne Collins (3/20/2012).

After finishing the first book in the Hunger Games trilogy, my cousin and I went out for dinner, and since she had the Singapore Flu (a deathly cold brought on by repeatedly going from Siberian air-conditioned buildings to the street that has a heat index of 108^oF with 90% humidity), she went to bed early.  I devoured the second Hunger Games book as a bedtime snack.  7 out of 10.

®21. Mockingjay · · · · · · · · · · by Suzanne Collins (3/21/2012).

I promise I did a whole lot more in Singapore than just sit back and read young adult fiction, but really, I could only push myself so far each day before I melted in the heat.  After spending all day traipsing around the Singapore Botanic Gardens (a fantastic spot), I dragged myself, dripping, back to my cousin’s apartment, and finished the final book in The Hunger Games trilogy.  Sorry—I guess I haven’t said anything about the books themselves.  They are addictive, action-packed, full of (sometimes sappy) romance in full YA-angsty-style, and have powerful political sub-themes.  They are set in a post-apocalyptic North America, where The Capitol holds absolute power over the people of the 12 Districts, who live in isolated labor camps.  The 13^th District was obliterated because it tried to lead the other Districts in an insurrection against The Capitol.  Each year as a reminder that insurrection does not go unpunished, The Capitol holds The Hunger Games, where one boy and one girl are taken from each District and are forced to fight to the death for the “entertainment” of the nation.  A friend of mine, who has close ties to Libya, made the comment that the first book gave her nightmares because she could picture Qaddafi setting up this sort of thing with his dissenters.  It’s not that far-fetched—think of what’s happening in Syria, with the regime’s indiscriminate bombing of Homs.  Or let’s look at Israel and Palestine.  Israel is fencing in the Palestinians, cutting off access between villages, and has engaged in acts such as telling over 100 civilians to take shelter in a house and then shelling it  and  shooting 26 children who crossed the border from Gaza into Israel to collect gravel.  The world sits by and watches on TV—essentially, it’s all bread and circuses.  Book: 7 out of 10.  World peace: so far, 0 out of 10.

solo traveling: vignettes from singapore and borneo

I was craving alone time.  Before setting off for Southeast Asia, I was in a mad flurry of handing in final papers, trying to spend meaningful time with roommates, and preparing for my trip.  As I boarded the plane in Portland, I finally had time to write, time to read, time to think—so I pulled out the first book I had time to read for fun since Christmas break.

During the two weeks of Spring break I spent a lot of time reading and journaling, and spent the majority of every day alone.  Solo traveling for me is terribly, wrenchingly lonely, but comes with the rewards of talking with people I’d never have otherwise had the chance to meet.  For example, on that first flight out of Portland, I ended up sitting next to a woman who owned a Japanese restaurant in Corvallis and who was flying home to Japan for her mother’s funeral.  We talked on and off for most of the plane ride, and I felt like I learned a little bit from this exceptional woman about having an attitude of patience and diligence.

When I went to Borneo, I sat by another remarkable woman on the plane.  I was just settling into my book when the lady next to me said unexpectedly and without preamble, “Hi!”  I answered, “Hi?” a little surprised, not sure what she wanted.  It turned out she was just looking for conversation.  She was traveling home after a long stint of working in Singapore.  She was from the interior of Borneo from an ethnically Chinese community, and had studied Industrial Engineering at the University of Tennessee.   We chatted for the whole plane ride, and ended up sharing a taxi from the airport into town.

***

While staying in the town of Kuching, Malaysia, I was staying at a hostel that I’d found online.  I was lured by the promise of $6/night for a bed, air-con, and free breakfast.  The beds were nice enough for six bucks and the air-con indeed worked, but the breakfast turned out to be stale Wonder Bread and a can of peaches that looked like it’d been opened months ago.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because it forced me to get out of the hostel early—6am, when the roosters started crowing and the construction noise next door picked up—and I got to enjoy the city of Kuching during the coolest, calmest hours in search of breakfast.  I was told there was good Malay food across the river, so I hopped on a $.15 river taxi—a long, narrow wooden boat powered by an ageless boatman—and explored Kuching.

because I’m apparently forgetful, I didn’t take a single picture of Kuching, so here’s a picture from the internetz of the main road along the river where my hostel was.  Mostly, the areas along the riverfront were incredibly touristy, with shops boasting names like BORNEO ANTIQUES and THE BONG SHOP.

and here’s an incredibly stylized picture of a water taxi

Because my trip was last-minute and informed entirely by internet discussion boards, I ran into a lot of Western tourists who were doing similar circuits of SE Asia.  One Canadian told me dozens of crazy stories from her 6 months of travel in SE Asia (chasing a monkey that had gotten ahold of her backpack that had her camera, all her money, and her passport in it into the jungle in Thailand; watching a guy hamming it up with a water buffalo in Cambodia, before the buffalo stomped and gored him to death, etc.). She also told me that her brother lived in Singapore, so she made that home base and visited him every few months, but that she hated Singapore because the people were so rude. 

“In Canada, when you pass by people on the sidewalk, you smile and greet them.  If you’re about to go through a door at the same time as someone else, you hold the door open for them.  In Singapore, nobody smiles at anybody, and you have to push and shove to get through any doorway.”  Her observation seemed fairly accurate—I found myself using my elbows a lot, and getting elbowed a lot in return, especially when pushing my way through the rush-hour subway crowds—but I was still surprised at this girl’s judgement on Singaporean politeness.  Politeness strategies vary by culture. In the US, for example, there are elaborate rules for how we eat food (think of all your mother’s “table manners”) but we would never dream that showing the bottom of your feet to someone could be rude—which it is in many Middle Eastern countries.  Imagine how many Middle Eastern visitors we routinely offend by crossing our legs, kicking our feet, stretching (think of all those early-morning runners), and whatever else we do where we inadvertently show the soles of our feet to the world!

Singaporean “rudeness” is similar—it is simply unheard-of to hold doors open for people when air-conditioning is so precious, and if you smile at random people on the street, they’ll probably assume you’re a prostitute.  My own impressions were actually that Singaporeans can trip over themselves to be polite—when I was shopping (yes, I’ll admit to going shopping in Singapore.  When in Rome…) the salespeople would follow me around the shops, and if I help up a certain dress they would fetch ten more that they thought I’d like, and they’d tell me how great this one would look at a garden party, and how beautiful that one would be for an evening party… right, since I go to so many garden and evening parties?  Anyways.  This Canadian was obviously a seasoned traveler, but she seemed very quick to impose her home culture’s rules on others.

As a traveler, I probably unknowingly fall into the same traps, and there’s no way that I can say that a 5-day blitz through Borneo allowed me to come to any understanding of Bornean culture.  However, I hope I approach the endeavor with an open mind.  For me, the point of traveling is to further my neverending quest to be a better person.  I don’t think I can grow without being exposed to new people and new places, even if that exposure is superficial at best.  Through conversations, which are so easily sparked by being a solo traveler, I do feel like I can learn more about the world.

***

Here’s one last story about the world’s endless possibilities:

While at Bako National Park, I started talking to one of the guides who had studied zoology at Cornell, and then stayed on for a year in New York working as a tattoo artist.  He said that the first time he saw a tattoo parlor advertising “WE ARE EXPERTS IN TRADITIONAL BORNEO HEADHUNTERS’ TATTOOS” he got super excited, but when he went in to look at the designs, most were from Polynesia or were somebody’s creative imaginings, and weren’t even close to the tattoos he’d grown up seeing and giving.  One of his friends from New York happened to own a string of tattoo parlors, so this friend brought him on as a tattoo artist who could give people actual traditional Bornean tattoos. 

The story of how he met this tattoo-parlor friend was one to remember: before going to Cornell, this guide was at the local university in Kuching, and one night he had a dream where he met an American woman.  A few nights later, he had a dream where he also met her son.  A little while later, this guide was walking through the university, and he saw the American man—the woman’s son from his dream—walking towards him.  The American did a double take, and shouted, “This is fucking bullshit!” and almost started a fight, because he, too, had had a dream where he met the Malaysian man.  The two men finally calmed down enough to argue about who was more freaked out, and the Malaysian recounted how he had met the American's mother, and had been to his his house and met his dog.  The guide told me, “I’m a scientist—a zoologist—and I’m a Muslim.  I don’t believe in witch-doctors or magic, but I swear this dream was real.  It was like a path for me, for my life.”   This path led both men back to New York where they reconnected at Cornell and then worked in the tattoo business together.

The guide said that now, he sees a lot of white guys (and girls) who are covered in tattoos, and who have gauged ears (which was apparently a Bornean thing) and he said he though it was cool and respectful in a way for white people to embrace other cultures’ art forms.

What an interesting world!

getting a nature fix in borneo

I decided on Day 1 of this spring break adventure that I definitely couldn’t live in Singapore.  By Day 4, I wasn’t sure if I would even last two weeks in the city.  So, I trolled the interwebs, found promising info on adventures to be had, booked a cheap-ish flight, got malaria meds, and by Day 6 I was in Borneo.

Malaysian Borneo, to be specific, in the province of Sarawak:

Borneo is home to some of the world’s oldest rainforest, and it is going up in smoke due to deforestation on a massive scale.   Here’s a beautiful article from Nat Geo that underscores the importance of this particular island, and describes the political and cultural backgrounds of the three countries that share Borneo (Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei).  I wanted to see it before it was gone. 

It was marvelous!  One day, I went kayaking down a river surrounded by fantastic forest.  The river itself was about as flat as a puddle and just as deep, but it was still worth it to just be outside.    The kayaking company promised “GET FREE photo CD of your kayak adventure!” which was great because I don’t have a waterproof camera, but the guides then turned into paparazzi and took thousands of awkward photos of all of us:

Here are people sniffing oregano.

Here's a kid in a cave.

Here's a really nice Danish guy eating his lunch.

See what I mean?  And every picture seemed to have some person in a bright orange life vest in it, so eventually I asked if I could borrow one of the cameras so I could at least take a few scenery shots:

The river that we paddled down.

The waterfall that we frolicked in.

The guides did take some beautiful scenery photos as well:

And here are a few of the less-awkward paparazzi shots:

In the afternoon, it started raining as if someone had turned on a warm shower faucet, so we paddled about 6K in the fabulously drenching, refreshing rain.

Here's me, in the river as deep as a ditch!

***

The next day, I went to Bako National Park, about an hour bus ride + ½ hour boat ride outside of the city where I’d been staying.  Bako was where I truly got my nature fix.  It had everything I wanted to see:

Flora!

Fauna!

See the bearded pigs by the side of the trail?

Merryweather!

I always thought that "Fauna" got the short shrift in fairy names...

It was amazing to breathe clean air, listen to the incredible cacophony of bugs (there’s one that sounds exactly like a chain saw), and be by myself in the woods.  By myself, that is, until a troop of Boy Scouts came galloping past.  Boy Scouts.  Seriously—what kind of Boy Scouts go to Borneo?  I asked one of the kids where his troop was from, and his elucidating answer was, “America.” 

“Well, yeah,” I said, “But whereabouts?”

“All over.  Just America.  We’re the Boy Scouts of America,” this brilliant 10-year-old told me.

I gave up and talked to one of the troop leaders.  It turned out they were from the American School in Singapore, which made the choice of destinations a bit more sensible.

But anyways, you guys, back to Bako. It was amazing.  Day 1 involved hikes up, down, and all around, and frolicking with animals like the bearded pig

This is what a good picture of a pig looks like.

and the proboscis monkey

Gonzo!  These monkeys moseyed around the park HQ, eating leaves and minding their own business, but never pausing long enough for me to get a decent photo.

and the long-tailed macaques

These little buggers knew what time meals were served at the park's cafeteria, and they would come scampering out of the woods.  They perched on the railings before hopping up on the tables and grabbing food off your plate even as you were bringing a forkful to your mouth.  I watched several people get into tug-of-wars with the monkeys over dinner plates, and the monkeys usually won.

Day 2 was wonderful, and included getting up at 5:30 with the first light in the sky, hiking alone through the jungle (apart from the pigs, monkeys, and innumerable bugs and birds), picnic breakfasting on a deserted beach, and booking it back to the park HQ before catching a boat to town, and then a bus to the airport to head back to Singapore.

I feel happily satiated in greenery, at least for now.