Monday, May 20, 2013


 

Blogger is at it again - terrorizing me with little surprises.  Today, the spellcheck icon has disappeared.  Prepare yourselves; I am a lousy proffreader.


I became interested in the genre called "Magical realism" after reading Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel.  The novel puzzled me a lot, and it wasn't until several years later when the book came up in conversation with a co-worker, a Spanish teacher.  Kay told me about the characerteristics of South American fiction, and schooled me on magical realism.  Reading the book the second time with that info in hand made all the difference. For months, I suffereded from MR OCD, reading everyhthing I could find, yet Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits always landed on the bottom of the pile, problably because of the political plot element.  Politics always complicats things for me.  For some reason, I grabbed it last weekend and was hooked in the first few pages.

In MR novels, the plot moves along normally and naturally, characters evolve believably, and conflicts ebb and flow as they do in our own lives.  But, tucked in the midst of all that normalcy, will be a character with an unnatural attribute - like outrageously long life, or the ability to see people and hear things that aren't there, or a knack for smelling the future.  Funny thing is, these odd traits are not treated oddly, they simply blen into to story line, and we, the readers are asked to accept them with the same ease as those interacting with the story character.  MR gets a  lot more complicated, but that is enough to jump start anyone's appreciation of the style.

 Kay also said there is a lot of over the top, drama queen-ish behavior but I guess I didn't notice that.  With so much time spent working on small thetre projexts, I guess I have trained myself to overlook the drama queens in my world.
Allende's book covers four generation.  A daughter in generation one has green hair. If there is an explanation, I missed it.    Genration one also has a child with a narrow ability to see the future.  At a young age, she knows that her green haired sister will die and she will marry the sister's betrothed years later.  Two of the women in separate generations become selectivly mute and manuever through years in a sort of Marcel Marceau fog.  Earlier, both had threatened to never speak again if certain actions were taken, and they stay true to their words.   

This all sounds a bit silly, but somehow, the magical elements intensfy the threads of pain running through this story.  It's as if those special gifts some how protect certain characters from the totality of the grief they would otherwise have felt.  In the final analysis, it's just magic, I guess.


*****My friend Lucy sent me this fun photo of 21- year old Kenneth Brannagh with Brian Blessed.  They were performing  Henry V at Stratford-Upon-Avon in 1984 and stopped to sign autographs.

Thanks Lucy!

*****I have never been too much of a Stephen King fan.  Nothing against him personally, I just don't like being frightened.   However, after his latest move, I have joined Team Stephen.  Becasue he loves traditional books, bookstores, and especially indie bookstores, his new novel, Joyland, will be published only in paper. 

 Thanks Stephen!

And thank you for stopping by.  I will have some exciting new to share in the coming weeks.

Monday, May 13, 2013

My Lucky Day?

Between Algoma and Kewaunee, on the lake side, I spotted two semi trailers parked perpendicular to each other.   The hand painted sign leaning against a weathered mailbox, matching the weathered farmhouse, says "Book Sale".  How could I resist?  After all, Saturday was my lucky day.   Earlier  I had stumbled across a vintage Underwood typewriter at an estate sale - the perfect Hemingway prop.  I can just picture him standing at my counter, click clacking away at a new, moody adventure of some sort.  You know he wrote standing up for many years, right?  

The first semi had shipping pallets and a series of wooden crates as stairs.  The bottom step was precarious enough, but the top one looked even  less  stable.  I knew that if I stepped on the already cracked crate and it broke, I'd fall into a maze of boards and muck beneath the makeshift stairs and never emerge due to embarrassment.  But there were used books inside, so I had to chance it.  The door was open just a crack, and pushing it further, I pinned the old guy running the place between the door and a massive stereo system.  He was OK with that.

Once he freed himself, the owner explained that he was just getting started, and then he gave me the grand tour of the semi.  The first eight feet or so are devoted to his office, filled with computer equipment, reference books, Chiquita Banana boxes and that six foot tall stereo system I mentioned earlier.  From there, you step down into the "showroom."  About half the space is  lined with brick and board bookshelves filled end to end with titles mostly recovered from Friends of the Library books sales.  All with Dewy Decimal numbers and protective,cellophane covers.   Running down the center of the semi are tables with boxes overflowing with books in no particular arrangement.  Beyond that point?  More Chiquita Banana boxes - hundreds in fact.  They appeared to be filled with mass market paperbacks. 

The owner, a spry 80-ish fellow, told me he has 70,000 titles, all catalogued.  The second semi is filled with more paperbacks, and children's books.  You have to climb a step ladder to get into that one.  At first, I thought I had made a wonderful discovery and planned to return when I had more time.  However, the situation kept getting creepier and creepier.  Each time I made a move to leave, he would come up with a new topic to discuss.  When I finally moved back toward the front door, he rushed to get there first, and closed it tightly.  He started telling me about his great stereo system and taking vinyl albums off a shelf one by one and talking me through the finer points of each artist and recording.  All with his back blocking to closed door. 

Then...he put on an Irish album and danced a jig.  A long jig.  And for some reason, I thought I was a goner.   What better place to off someone than in a semi, parked innocently next to a farmhouse?  Few people would miss me, and the  likelihood of being  found - close to zero.  The dancing man would get away with it.  Just imagine,  had my baseless fear been realized, my last stop would have been among books (and a few chickens).  I don't want to think about that now.  I heard there are books housed in several barns somewhere in central Wisconsin.  Gotta find that place and check it out.

What am I reading?  The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout,  author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Olive Kitteridge.  My book group read "Olive" a few years back.  Steph and I enjoyed the book, and found Olive's honesty and unpredictabilty enganing, realistic and entertaining.  We were in the minority.  In fact, Olive was nearly as despised by our group as The Shipping News. 

Thanks for stopping by.

Monday, May 6, 2013

The Patron Saint of Dogs


How can you not love this cover, right?  No one could hurt a determined little  face like that, so I knew I would be safe straying once again from my "Dog-On-Cover-No-Read" rule.  However, the opening pages were frightening -with a needle poised and ready to send Freida, the golden retriever on her way.  Luckily, the unlicensed vet caring for the dog was too nervous to do the assigned job, and Frieda was spared the trip. 

This is my book discussion group's read for Friday, and I'm only on page 50.  I sure hope Frieda makes it through the next couple chapters.  This gentle book is a lighter selection for us, but  most of us own dogs, or somehow have a dog in our lives so I'm sure there will be a lot of pet related story telling when we get together.   People who don't own pets just don't get it.  When you have a pet, you are guaranteed at least one good laugh a day; most days there will be many laughs.   Nick Trout has filled his book with stories proving that point many times over.   (Disclaimer:  I understand that snakes, rats, spiders and others of similar ilk are not a laugh a minute.  We're talkin' cats and dogs here, folks.)

In addition, I am loving the picture Trost paints of small town life and the characters who come into his vet office.   In fact, I think some of those same pet owners are my customers as well.  That's about all I can say from the first 50 pages, except that I am looking forward to Wednesday off to commit to finishing.

*********
Last week I had an experience to add to my "That's So Odd" file.'  For some reason, the name of a customer I hadn't seen in years popped into my head, well, a partial name, really.  I dug around in my data base to see if I could come up with his full name, hoping then to see if he still lived in the area.  Mark had been a regular for years, buying books, for himself and his wife, chattering over coffee, sharing his frustrations with his job and his thoughts of returning to school at his advanced age of 41.  Then he disappeared.  When that happens, I usually figure that the person has moved, or gotten a Kindle (GRRR!).  Then there is the possibility that we have disappointed the person in some way which I dwell on beyond belief. 

Seldom do I get an answer, but two days after my wondering about Mark he walked in the door.  After doing my usual invitation to holler if help is needed, I went back to work.  It wasn't until he come to the counter to order a book and told me his name that I understood why he looked vaguely familiar.  From there it was like old times.   We had a great talk.  He mentioned that he went to nursing school and eventually worked at a Green Bay hospital with a former employee of mine, another person I hadn't hear from in over 10 years.  Then, out of the blue, on Thursday, I was invited to friend that very person  on LinkedIn. 

Why those two things happened,  I'll never know.  I do know that it sure would be  great if we only had to think about people we miss to  have them reappear in our lives even if its only  for a few moments.

Thanks for stopping by.