May update—the Plath part

I finished The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. And it took for-fucking-EVER. On GoodReads I had a starting date of January 26th. I hope that marks the day I brought the book home and maybe read the back cover or some such, because four months? For one book? Really? Even if it's 720 pages long, that is a long-ass time to spend reading a single book.

I'd be ashamed, except that the book has very small print. And is non-fiction. And has lots of end notes. And is studded with appendices and I swear, I was dutifully reading my way through all of them ... until I got to Sylvia's working notes about St. Teresa of Avila. I decided that I'm not a Plath scholar and don't need to read every. single. word. I read The Bell Jar and her (then) two published collections of poetry in the 1970s, when I was a young woman with literary aspirations, because that's what you did. But I haven't read them since, because books about mental illness and confessional poetry are not really my thing.

I also finished Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath, by Anne Stevenson, which I picked up in April in a used book store in Washington, D.C. I needed some secondary source material to fill in the gaps in the journals, because the gaps are sizable. What Sylvia included: minute descriptions of why a boy she's dating is suitable or not suitable for a husband; self-castigation about procrastinating; discussions of writer's block. What she left out: her breakdown, suicide attempt, marriage to Ted Hughes, and Ted Hughes' affair. 

Unfortunately, Bitter Fame is a not-uncontroversial biography that apparently pissed off Plath's fans big time. This is actually OK with me. I'm not Team Sylvia, so I didn't mind that Sylvia came across as kind of difficult because I have been given to understand that that's one of the hallmarks of being mentally ill, which—newsflash—she was. However, in addition to being the opposite of a hagiography, I found the writing pretty ham-handed, and the discussions of Plath's writing were cursory at best.

I'm not Team Ted, though. No, not at all. In fact, I saw this poem when I did an image search for Sylvia Plath that cracked me up:

So hey—I finally finished one of the Big Leftover Rory books from 2015! Also a biography that I can count towards my Read Harder Challenge. Hooray!

In other news, I also read Little Dorrit, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Angela's Ashes, Let the Dead Lie, and The Winthrop Woman, for a total of seven books this month.

In case you haven't noticed, I'm a nerd

And sometimes I strap on my pocket protector and do things thoroughly.

So about this Rory Gilmore book challenge. When you go over and over something and keep seeing errors, they start to bug you. And there are some dumb errors in the Rory Gilmore list that have gotten on my last nerve. In the list as I found it, Bambi is listed as Walt Disney's Bambi and appears in the W part of the list. Way to alphabetize, dimwits.

And then there are situations where a short story is mentioned. Is it OK to read just "The Lottery," or do I need to read the entire collection of Shirley Jackson's short stories? And what if a book is mentioned because Rory's mocking it? As I've said, I'm a nerd who does things thoroughly, so I'd still read the book in question. But it would be nice to know that Rory Gilmore hated The Da Vinci Code, so I wouldn't feel pressured to like it. I don't want to waste time searching for literary qualities that don't exist. (I hated The Da Vinci Code. I expect you've already figured that out.)

Anyway, I decided to do a Gilmore Girls rewatch, noting what books were mentioned. Because it struck me that perhaps whoever put together the list needed an editor.

It turns out that while many authors are alluded to, and many works of literature are mentioned, but Rory does not spend seven seasons sitting around reading. In fact, I was wondering how she got the reputation for being such a bookworm.

Well, here I am at Season 1, Episode 9, "Rory's Dance," and I'm finally seeing Rory read. First, The Group, while Tristan is annoying her.

And then The Portable Dorothy Parker, which she carries in her evening bag the night of the school dance.

May Day, May Day

It's time for my May update! Yay! Only six books this month. Boo.

Titles from the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge list

R is for Ricochet, Sue Grafton
S is for Silence, Sue Grafton
The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse

Thank God Rory occasionally reads something a little frivolous and doesn't only read Russian novels, gender studies classics, and memoirs by Civil War generals.

Also reads

Mycroft Holmes, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, reviewd here
She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, Jennifer Finney Boylan (Read Harder Challenge, Task 12) reviewed here
Bad Country, C. B. McKenzie

Also reading

I'm about to finish Angela's Ashes, which I'm enjoying much more than I thought I would. I think I read an excerpt of it somewhere, and that, combined with the cover art, made me think the book was going to be depressing AF. But it's not.

I'm still working on The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (Rory) and even bought Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath because sometimes a solid secondary source fills in background information and adds a note of rationality and objectivity to the adolescent self-center.

I guess I could use that Sylvia Plath biography for my Read Harder Challenge "Read a Biography" task. Although I was planning to read a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt or Colette. But whatEVER, Sylvia, sheesh.

I'm also reading Ironweed (Rory) as well as rereading The Winthrop Woman because I've been asked to facilitate a book club meeting about it. (I suggested the book to the bookclub based on its having been the hot sexy book when I was in seventh grade. Since that was over 40 years ago, can I count this towards my 2016 titles? Does it count as reading when I'm rereading? I honestly remember very little about it. Except for the hot sexy bits, of course.)

Jennifer Kinney Boylan's She's Not There: an audible problem

As I'm still struggling with Sylvia, I decided to pick up another book to work on. I chose an audiobook to listen to while I'm driving, doing laundry, picking up the house, etc.

Sad to say, about two-thirds of the books I've "read" are books I've listened to. Not because don't enjoy sitting around for hours with my head in a book, but because my house will implode if I don't keep moving. Not to mention my frequent time behind the wheel of a car. What with errands, driving back and forth to Chicago, and folding laundry, I can listen to a ten hour-long audiobook start to finish in two days. Easily.

This time I branched out to the BookRiot's 2016 Read Harder Challenge part of my list. This task is "Read a book by or about a person that [sic] identifies as transgender." I picked She's Not There, by Jennifer Finney Boylan.

After listening to about half of the book, I've unfortunately realized that I'd like the book much more if I were reading it. It's a sad fact that most of the time, authors don't do particularly well by their own books. Jen Lancaster being a notable exception to the rule that Jennifer Kenney Boylan illustrates beautifully.

First of all, Boylan claims to have an androgynous-sounding voice, but it's more androgynous-lite. When I listen to the audiobook, I never think "I'm listening to a woman," and this undercuts some of the things she says. The power of her prose would be increased if I read all the way through the book, which starts when she's a five year old boy, and heard a woman's voice in my head. Or if she started narrating in a man's voice and then gradually became more feminine-sounding. (OK, it's a bit much to expect audiobooks to contain special effects. They're not movies.)

The thing is, in She's Not There, Boylan discusses her speaking voice and speech patterns. She worked with a vocal coach. She consciously tried to employ the rising inflection (referred to by linguists as "uptalk") that she claims many women adopt. She also mentions how ironic it is that the same rising inflection she criticized as a male English professor is now something she uses herself. In the book, she describes being nonplussed when she catches herself using uptalk. And she does it pretty frequently.

The thing is, when she reads her book aloud, you can't tell whether she realizes she's doing it. Is the uptalk deliberate, and employed for humorous effect, or is Boylan better than I am at sounding like a stereotypical young woman? I became so curious about it that I checked out the text over on Amazon. I couldn't see the whole book, but I caught a couple of examples where Boylan has added a question mark to her text to convey the use of uptalk. But when you hear it, you can't tell whether she knows she's doing it? And it bugs me?

I also find her sloppy S's off-putting.

But worst of all is her habit of separating nouns and verbs with a moment or two of silence, as though she were, adding a comma. That's what it sounds like when she, reads. And it's incredibly, annoying.

Review: Mycroft Holmes, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Mary Sue

In another attempt to avoid reading more serious books :cough: theendlessjournalsofSylviaPlath :cough: I decided to listen to the audiobook edition of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's expansion of the Sherlock Holmes universe, Mycroft Holmes.

I should begin by saying that although I have read all of the Conan Doyle stories and novels, watched all of the BBC television adaptations starring Jeremy Brett, and am currently keeping company with both Sherlock and Elementary, I am by no means a Holmes fanatic. I just like mysteries and Victorian literature, so it's kind of a natural direction for me to head in.

Because of this liking-but-not-LOVING point of view, I have no problem with updates to the canon. I thought it was brilliant in Sherlock when Benedict Cumberbatch texted, rather than spoke to people, or covered himself with nicotine patches instead of smoking a pipe. In Elementary, Jonny Lee Miller can be a recovering addict, and Lucy Liu can be a female Watson; it's all good.

Therefore I was delighted to try Mycroft Holmes. I mean, really. Talk about a built-in opportunity to broaden the readership's knowledge of a character. I felt the same way you'd feel if J. K. Rowling decided to write The Adventures of Dumbledore.

Parts of the book were quite good. I liked the interplay between Mycroft and Sherlock; I liked the hints of a juicy backstory for their mother. I liked that Mycroft's fiancée was pursuing higher education and social reform. I liked the sense of the massive bureaucracy needed to run the British Empire and the way Mycroft happily envisioned himself as a cog in that enormous machine. I liked the insights I got into the history and culture of Trinidad as well as the post-Civil War period in American and international history.

But Mycroft Holmes is, at heart, fan fiction. Fan fiction, in case you aren't aware of the phenomenon, is written by fans of popular novels, television shows, and movies. It started with Star Trek and was published in zines. Now it's happening with Star Wars, Harry Potter, My Little Pony, Naruto, Pokemon, Supernatural, and it's all over the internet. You may or may not be aware that the Fifty Shades trilogy, now threatening to continue into what—a sexology?—started as Twilight fan fiction.

So you see, fanfic has a lot to answer for. But it can also be considered a form of adaptation. We have expectations of film adaptations of our favorite novels; we expect them to be faithful to the originals. But at times, a filmmaker takes familiar characters and settings and runs amok. This is pretty much what happened with Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland. There's Alice, and a Mad Hatter, and a Red Queen, but the story itself is all but unrecognizable. In this sense, the movie is failed fanfic.

One way of reviewing Mycroft Holmes is to see how well it succeeds with already existing characters and situations. In this, I think Abdul-Jabbar did pretty well. The Mycroft in this book is only 23 years old, and Sherlock is only 17, so they are at an embryonic state, and Abdul-Jabbar handles this well. He doesn't do anything that conflicts with our already-established understanding of the characters.

My only problem, other than the somewhat pedestrian prose and flat dialogue, was in the character of Cyrus Douglas. He is a middle-aged Trinidadian who has moved to London to go into the tobacco business, and has become Mycroft's best friend. At many times during the novel, Cyrus, who seems destined to be the Watson to Mycroft's Holmes, takes over the narrative. Without including any spoilers, I'll just say that Cyrus is Practically Perfect in Every Way. Which makes sense, because Cyrus is a Mary Sue.

In case this isn't clear (I mean, not everyone spends their time reading 15-year-old Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic ... SPUFFY4EVA) a Mary Sue is basically the author of a fanfic, made pluperfect, and inserted into the narrative. She's the beautiful, talented, kind, understanding—basically perfect—girl who shows up at Hogwarts and Harry Potter (or Draco Malfoy) falls in love with her. 

In Mycroft Holmes, Cyrus is athletic, intelligent, enterprising, open-minded, and capable of teaching many things to his young friend Mycroft. He has a rich backstory and has suffered and endured things that Mycroft can not even imagine. This gives the author the opportunity to school his callow white English character on Imperialism, racism, social skills, martial arts, and how to be a good person. 

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy the book. It is more of an action story than a mystery, and the pace plods a bit at times, but parts of it are very good. I get a clear sense of place, whether we are in London, Trinidad, or on board a steam ship. And the end, in particular, kicks ass.  I hope that Abdul-Jabbar continues the series. I just hope that next time, he pays a bit more attention to his eponymous hero.

Slogging through Sylvia

Not me.

I picked up The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath at a second-hand store in Hyde Park back in January. In the past week, I've managed to read 100 pages of it. Needless to say, this hasn't been a particularly inviting read. Not only is it over 700 finely-printed pages long, it's Sylvia Plath. Which isn't easy for me to deal with. 

Here's the thing; I get incredible secondhand embarrassment from reading Sylvia Plath's letters and journals. It's almost like watching I Love Lucy. There are many reasons for this, the first of which is primary identification. Sylvia Plath grew up in a suburb of Boston, went to Smith College, majored in English literature, and wrote poetry (duh). So did I. So there are times when it's a cringing embarrassment to read her ... the self-centeredness, the judgmental attitudes, and most of all, the rhapsodies about the various boys she had crushes on. And I don't get the feeling that she was writing with an eye towards publication, so on top of everything else, I feel like a voyeur. I've also read the collection of letters she wrote home to her mother, so to read her journals and get an idea of what she really thought, as opposed to what she was telling Mom ... well, it fills me with literary insight and such, but it makes me feel uncomfortable. Then there's the fact that I know what happened to her.

What with one thing and another, it's almost as awful as reading Anne Frank.

And she's so focused on men. I want to tell her, "Jesus, Sylvia, calm down. You're a freshman in college. You don't have to find a husband right now." But then I realize that she was writing in the 1950s, at the height of the get-the-women-back-into-the-kitchen postwar period. As a rising sophomore, she was already worried that she wasn't going to be able to have a family and a career. 

I can't tell whether I was spoiled rotten. Perhaps I was. But as a student in the 1970s, it never occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to have a career as well as a husband. And I also realize how incredibly thoughtful she was. And already such a wordsmith. I mean, yeah, an annoyingly show-offy one, but holy hell. She was 18.

I remember being an 18-year old poetry-writing freshman English major at Smith College ... and I think I was putting about 10 percent of her energy, work ethic, and intelligence into thinking about my life, where I wanted to go, and what I wanted to do.

Then again ... I wasn't a genius.  I guess that helps.

Susan Silverman is Spenser's Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and other ruminations

OK, so for April I decided to give myself a bit of a break. I'd been reading some rather heavy books that were, frankly, unenjoyable in the extreme. And these were sandwiched between books that were amazingly dumb, like The Da Vinci Code. So I thought, "Hey, there are New York Times best selling mystery stories on the Rory list. They must be pretty good. I'll read some of them!"

Accordingly, I read

R is for Ricochet, Sue Grafton (Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge list)
S is for Silence, Sue Grafton (Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge list)

Eh. They were OK. I guess I like my private investigators funnier, more literary, and based in Boston. Basically, I want them to be Spenser. In fact, the last time I was in Boston, I took advantage of my Back Bay location to go running on the Esplanade. I may or may have not looked (in vain) for Spenser and Hawk.

Fixed that for you

However, if I take a minute or two to stop fangirling and force my thoughts along somewhat more intellectual lines, I find myself wanting to do a compare-and-contrast conference paper about female private investigators dreamed up by women, and women characters as dreamed up by men. Because I've always been uneasy about the tiny amount of food Robert Parker allowed Susan Silverman to eat. Susan will sit there and peel apart a club sandwich, nibble on a lettuce leaf, and maybe finish a quarter of a sandwich in half an hour. On the other hand, Grafton's character Kinsey Millhone has the appetite and eating habits of a teenaged boy.

That says something about the two characters and their authors; I just don't know what.