Book Notes from a Reading Life

I've almost given up on the idea of posting a reading round-up that actually reflects what I've read so far this year. It works when I do it quarterly. When I get behind, and suddenly discover the year is half-over(!) then the backlog feels overwhelming.

And I don't want to feel overwhelmed about doing something I love to do: talk about books.

So I think I may just dive in with some book notes on my current reading and see where it takes me.

********

A couple of weeks ago I read Linda Sue Park's A Single Shard. Have you read anything by Linda Sue Park? If not, may I humbly suggest that you head to your library and find something by this marvelous author as soon as you can?

The first book I ever read by Park was Keeping Score. It's a mid-grade novel about a young girl growing up a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s. It had me from the cover blurb, mostly because I'm from a family of baseball fanatics, and my Dad loved that Dodger team (he was actually offered a try-out with the Brooklyn organization, but had to decline because of back problems...which led him to the hospital...which led him to meet a very lovely nurse...who became my Mom. But I digress.)

As much as I enjoyed Keeping Score, however, I was unprepared for just how much I was going to love A Single Shard. (My dear friend Tara has been telling me for months that I should read this book...oi, I should've listened sooner!) It's set in 12th century Korea and follows the life of Tree-Ear, a young boy who lives under a bridge with a lame and homeless man who goes by the moniker of Crane-Man. Tree-Ear and Crane-Man genuinely love each other. They're family. But Tree-Ear dreams of life beyond the bridge, particularly the life of an artist-potter. How he ends up apprenticed to Min, the best of the local potters, and what happens as a result, is a beautiful story.

And it's beautifully told. Once in a while, you read a book that you can't put down because it feels like a luminous pearl. You hold it in your hand and marvel over its perfection, turning it over and over in your fingers, amazed by the smoothness, the roundness, the evenness of the colors. A Single Shard was that kind of book for me. It had such clarity of vision, and Park never seemed to falter, from first page to last, in telling the story the way it just felt it should be told. I loved it. The link above is to my longer review on Epinions.

**********

A few days after reading the pearl, I turned to the dandelion. That is, Dandelion Fire, the second book in N.D. Wilson's 100 Cupboards trilogy. No link yet, because I'm still wrestling with the draft of my review. It's one of those books I find hard to write about, partly because I'm not sure of my own response to it.

If you're a 100 Cupboards fan, maybe you can explain the allure of the series. I find myself feeling grumpy because I think I'm supposed to like the books more than I do. This is, after all, intelligent, coherent, fantasy writing for the mid-grade/young adult crowd. It's written by someone who clearly loves fantasy of all sorts, and who lets fantasy writers like Lewis and Baum sneak all over his narrative and leave their giant footprints. He's also willing to take some pretty giant leaps across the fantasy landscape himself. And yet...

I struggled with the original 100 Cupboards partly because it felt like mostly set-up. I liked Henry York, the main character, and his quirky Aunt, Uncle and cousins who lived in Kansas. I liked the 100 Cupboards lurking in the wall of his attic bedroom, and was intrigued when Henry discovered they were portals to other worlds. Henry seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time in that book chipping at the cupboard walls and trying to find a way in. And I kept waiting for the story to really start. When it finally did, it exploded in a few scenes of intense action, set up a cliff-hanger, and poof! ended. Most of the book felt like set-up for what I was expecting would be big pay-off in book two.

And did it get paid off? Well yes, in a big way. In fact, in such a big way that I felt as thought I had whiplash. If the first book could be critiqued for slow pace and not enough action, this one makes up for it in spades. So much happens, and so quickly, that I had a hard time keeping up. Many new characters are introduced. We zoom in and out of worlds that I feel like I barely have time to glimpse. Although I continue to be impressed by Wilson's writing, there's also still something about it that keeps elbowing me in the ribs, like someone trying to push past me in a crowded room. Sometimes I find myself reading a sentence and then reading it again and then trying one more time, and I'm still not sure if I'm visualizing what he's describing.

Granted, I liked Dandelion Fire. I had a hard time putting it down, especially in its second half. I felt compelled to find out what happened to Henry...and also to Henrietta, his cousin...and to his Uncle Frank (my favorite character) and the rest of the family. They get split up early on, so you actually follow those three characters on different arcs/journeys. It's not an easy narrative to keep up with. I'm sure it was a challenge to write.

But it just felt a little ragged. I'm beginning to realize there are at least two kinds of writing styles/sensibilities when it comes to novelists/storytellers. There are the neat and tidy tellers, like Park, where every line feels purposeful, as though it's building toward a beautiful whole you can almost envision as you're seeing it and hearing it built, page by page. And there are the creative but ragged tellers, who seem to craft with great abandon and imagination, who sometimes follow rabbit trails (taking their readers with them) and who eventually get back on track and find themselves providing an ending. But it may not be the ending you expect. It may not be the ending they expect. It may not, in fact, entirely fit with the beginning and the middle, but they had a great time getting there. It's sort of the LOST style of writing, and it tends to leave me a bit breathless, if not fully satisfied.

For me, I think it's Austen vs. Bronte. Process affects and maybe reflects sensibility and style. Cultivated gardens, traditional country dances and two inches of ivory? Or ruined buildings in a pouring rain on a ghost-haunted moor? I love them both, but it's the carefully tended gardens and well-learned dance steps I go back to, the fine-brushed artistry on the tiny canvas that tends to make me gasp. And I suspect that this is the kind of artistry I've aspired to as a story-writer over the years, though I've never really managed it.

Of course (she says cheerfully) I could be all wrong about this. It's possible that someone like Park may have a much looser and intuitive way of composing than I imagine, or that Wilson plans out every single scene before he commits it to paper. I only know what resonates with me mostly deeply at heart levels when I read the results of all their labor.