Things Invisible To See	Nancy Willard	3.14.04		This was a delightful book about World War II and baseball, reminiscent of both Shoeless Joe and On The Beach. Small town is touched by something much larger, not quite real, and the cares of two people do in fact amount to a hill of beans. A sweet, magical little story.
Hocus Pocus	Kurt Vonnegut	10.27.03		I was assigned this book for my Satire class, English 203? 204?, my sophomore year in college. This ratty old paperback, which has a price tag on the back from the Virginia Tech bookstore, has therefore been with me for eleven years. I've moved it nine times, I think. And it contains at least fifty dogeared pages and at least thirty margin notes and a lot of blacklining. Because I did read it for a class, after all. But I just keep finding more, noting more, marking more. There are threads that run through this story, and they do all sort of come together, but you don't really know it until they do. Dubuque, Iowa, is one, and Microsecond Arbitrage, and you just wait, next to the stable, in the shadow of Musket Mountain when the sun goes down.
The Ersatz Elevator	Lemony Snicket	10.16.03		In a way I hate it when the Baudelaires meet someone nice and reasonable and relatively trustworthy and not completely fucking insane. Like in this book. Because it never helps. But in other ways I love it, because it means Mr. Snicket is messing with us again. The real triumph of these books is that he warns us, tells us over and over and over again to abandon all hope, ye who enter here, and we don't. We still think, maybe, maybe this time, maybe next time, that the orphans will catch a break (a phrase which here means "get someone taller than Violet to believe Count Olaf is Count Olaf"). And they never do. Snarf. (by which Sunny means "Bugger all.")
The Austere Academy	Lemony Snicket	10.9.03		Aha! Aha, I say! Finally we learn things about VFD, but not really. I love these books. I love them because they're beautiful, with their cut-edge pages and their hard covers and their drawings. I love the way they don't wimp out on things that are real in with all the pretend. For instance, grownups don't listen to children, grownups are unreasonable, and bad things do happen. Sometimes you can't make people believe you, and sometimes you're wrong. In so many kids' books, that's not true, but in the world it is. When media starts to propagate the untruth of grownups listening (the Snuffleupagus Effect), we all suffer.
Coraline	Neil Gaiman	10.6.03		Another one with unreasonable adults. This is scary, but not as scary as I'd been led to believe. It sort of reminds me of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in that she goes through a door and can't get back. The false mother is sort of like the Ice Queen, offering Edmund and Lucy Turkish Delight while not even trying to hide her intentions. Coraline had a marvelous secret, and I didn't know it (I thought I did, but I was wrong). Books that can surprise me have great value. Also, the varnish on the cover is wonderful. As good as Emily the Strange.
American Gods	Neil Gaiman	10.4.03		Just like Jitterbug Perfume, the book that made me fall in love with Pan, only more serious. I need to read this again now that I've read a little bit in Neil's blog about how difficult it was for the translators (because of the triple meaning of the word 'trunk' in English). That's quite a feat to do in any language, let alone moving it from one to another. Anyway, the point is, gods cease to exist when people stop believing in them. This is the Reverse Snuffleupagus Effect. I'm babbling, but it's a marvelous book.
Complete Stories	Dorothy Parker	9.10.03		Most of what I knew about Dorothy Parker before I read this book could have fit in a small stationery envelope. I learned a lot here, from specifics of her unpleasant life (the introduction is very scholarly, and should properly be read after the stories) to her very, very clear opinions on Prohibition. (To hear her tell it, no one actually stopped drinking. They just bitched a lot, then paid a little more for gin.) The Amazon review of this is relatively dead on. Though the stories are individually grand—venomous and clear—they are all together here, with no breaks between, and they do get a little repetitious. There is a gift for dialogue demonstrated on every page, and it's a joy to read. But by the sixth or seventh story (and especially by the character sketches at the end), I was trying to guess the sarcastic twists and judgments before they came. Because I always knew they were coming.
Sabine's Notebook	Nick Bantock	8.12.03		Again, gorgeous. The sequel to Griffin and Sabine is fuller of mystery and darker than the first one. It also brings up new mysteries, like why wasn't she there, which lead to more mysteries, like if they're not in the same world at the same time, why does the postal service work? The magic is there, but these are short books, and this one is a bridge. I resent it very slightly for being beautiful but still not bringing Griffin and Sabine together.
Griffin and Sabine	Nick Bantock	7.21.03		Beautiful beautiful beautiful. I can't believe how much I like this. If you've read these pages for a while, you remember what I said about Memoir from Antproof Case and, earlier, The Virgin Suicides. "Impossible intimacy" with the reader. The act of taking Griffin and Sabine's letters out of their envelopes was like peeking physically into someone else's dream somehow. It's almost hard to believe, with these two personalities so well defined, that they were created by one author. It's harder to believe that Griffin's and Sabine's artistic styles came from the same artist too. But—not meaning to give anything away—I suppose that's the whole point, isn't it?
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	J.K. Rowling	6.24.03		I can't believe the way this book got to me. I was pissed at the thing those of you who have read it will also be pissed about, but the more I think about it, the more okay I am with it. I started reading Book 5 the day it came via Fedex to my friend John's house. I got about a hundred pages in, then I came home at the end of the weekend, expecting to find mine on my doorstep. Of course, it wasn't there, and I spent Monday in a haze of uncertainty. Then I realized it had been ordered in January (the day Amazon started taking pre-orders, I think) and had been sent to the old apartment. So I tried to arrange with the leasing office to get ahold of it. Finally, Monday after work I just went over there. They'd opened it, but the person living there (new floors, by the way; I resisted telling her what had happened) handed me the book. I stayed up reading until 6:30 am that night. I am afraid of this book. I'm terrified. I want to re-read it very, very much, but I don't know if I can control myself. Harry was so real, so very fifteen, in this one. He wasn't simply "the boy who lived" anymore. He was real. I remember being fifteen. The world is black and white, good and evil, and no one understands you. Not even Dumbledore.
Bridget Jones's Diary	Helen Fielding	9.14.02		Star units: 4 (v.g.) Much funnier and smarter than had been expecting. Charmingly British in many ways, naughtily British in others. Thought was very amusing to have both Hugh Grant and Colin Firth referred to as real people in story, with their names on back cover as billed in movie. (Not sure if want to see movie.) No longer worried that I drink too much. Also very amusing to have standoffish misunderstood Mr. Right named Darcy. Not that have read Pride and Prejudice. Tried, though. That should count.
Something Fresh	P.G. Wodehouse	8.9.02		I've apparently gotten off to a slow start this year, as I've been reading this book since long before July 17th, and only just finished it today. Many distractions. In any case, I love Wodehouse for the language. Sometimes the sentences are so dense you have to read them three or four times, and it's just lovely. It's all proper and convoluted and sometimes I wish he'd just get on with it, but it's brilliant anyway. I need to figure out which is the second Blandings book, so I can find out why the chatelaine (what a great word) is someone called Ann in this book, but Connie for the others. His lordship has too many sisters.