HSU IT Department

Since I've been Old Unreliable lately as far as appearing online (because real life = new house + dog with pewmonia + hosting Thanksgiving + work craziness + friend worries), I'm taking the easy way out and posting reviews of three books I recently read. If anyone else has read these, I'd love to hear what you think. I also recently read JK Rowling's Cuckoo's Calling which I thoroughly enjoyed, but I haven't written a review of it yet. Maybe tomorrow?

The Night Sister by Jennifer McMahon: This book gave me horrific nightmares twice (twice!) the first night I started reading it. That hasn't happened in ages. The ending was surprisingly melancholy, and though not quite what I expected (I really thought ( spoiler )

) it was apt, and rather touching. The narrative conveniently skips over the question of why in god's name Rose's mother didn't follow up on Rose's stories about Sylvie, given that ( spoiler )

. The answer, of course, is because plot. Nevertheless, this was a fast diverting read, and good enough that I'll try another by her.

Disclaimer by Renée Knight: Intense, gripping, bewildering, startling; this book is like playing with one of those wooden puzzle cubes where it seems like a solid block until you get all the pieces in play in just the right way, and then the whole things falls apart and you see how it all fits together. As with any good suspense novel, the author hides some things from the reader, but she does it so cleverly that you don't notice; she quietly omits a few crucial points or phrases (in one case simply using a pronoun rather than a name), and the reader effortlessly makes certain assumptions without even noticing it and goes merrily on down the completely wrong path. Really beautifully crafted, with unexpected pokes and jabs around every corner that slowly grow into an almighty sucker punch that leaves your mouth hanging open.

Gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell: Typical gothic tales, with a lot of family mystery/drama. Some interesting plots, but many of the stories felt too drawn out -- "like butter that has been scraped over too much bread." Wordy isn't bad if the words enhance the story and/or the atmosphere, but overall these stories just felt labored. "Lois the Witch" was genuinely painful to read, since you know pretty much from the third paragraph where it's headed yet it takes something like fifty pages to get there.

...are up, so I can now cop to being the author of Untidy Beginnings! I was immensely pleased to get this prompt, partly because Minerva as headmistress is an area I like to see explored, and partly for the double challenge: how to make Dudley a sympathetic character without taking him completely out of character, and how to make Minerva, who obviously cared very much for Harry, feel any sort of warmth for one of the people who was cruelest to him?

I thoroughly enjoyed exploring this odd, rather fraught, relationship between Minerva and Dudley, and in working through it I discovered more than one point of connection.

This year's fest was an excellent one with many top-notch stories, and I'm proud to be in such fine company. Unfortunately I was insanely busy the past few weeks and have had almost no time to read the other Minerva Fest entries; I'll be on a train for a good chunk of next week and hope to catch up then.

Title: Untidy Beginnings (on LJ) (on AO3)
Original Prompt: #47. I would like to see how Headmistress McGonagall informs Dudley Dursley and his wife that their child has been accepted to Hogwarts, and what that means. How do each of the family members react? Do they have any contact with the Potters? Bonus if we see the shopping trip to Diagon Alley and the Sorting.
Rating: G
Characters and/or Pairings: Minerva, Dudley Dursley and family, cameos by Severus Snape and Hannah Abbot, two original characters
Description: When Minerva finds the name of Dursley written in the Book of Admittance, surprises ensue for everyone.

It started with Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. And now, my friends, we have this absolutely fabulous internet ad. (Where was this when I was thirteen??? But hey, at least it's here now!) I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard at an ad while at the same time being so utterly and completely delighted. (Here is the associated article from CNN.)


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(1) Senator Wendy Davis from Texas and the People's Filibuster

(2) Goodbye, DOMA!!!!

(3) The U.S. Army Quidditch team:

A woman hasn’t run a presidential debate in twenty years.

This boggles my mind. With all the women in business, journalism, politics, etc., NOT ONE has been named to moderate a presidential debate??? Other adjectives I can think of besides "surprising" include annoying, vexing, inappropriate, strange, or even (if I were of the paranoid persuasion) Highly Suspicious.

Well, three teenage girls from New Jersey apparently agree. Rather than spending their summer listening to Justin Bieber or hanging out at the pool, they amassed an astonishing 170,000 signatures on a petition to have one of the upcoming 2012 debates moderated by a woman. They then took their packet of signatures to the office of the Commission on Presidential Debates (the Commission will be selecting the moderators in the next couple of weeks)...

...and they were turned away, and told that they would not be permitted to leave the packages of signatures in case they contained dangerous substances.

WTF? Epic governmental fail.

Emma Axelrod, Sammi Siegel and Elena Tsemberis were interviewed about their experience on NPR today, where they spoke like mature, thoughtful, engaged young citizens about their disappointment with the way they were treated. (I applaud their self-control; I believe I might have thrown something large and heavy...)

Rather than give up, however, (quoting from themarysue.com): "[w]orking with Change.org, the girls have put together two petitions asking for female moderators–one targeted at the commission, and one targeting the Obama and Romney campaigns, who can also have a sizable influence over who is chosen to moderate the political showdowns. The former has 116,000 signatures, the latter 53,000."

These girls rock. If you agree, you can sign their petition and add your support. You go, girls!!!

The other day I ran across this interesting take on the Hunger Games phenomenon. The author presents her theory as somehow related to being a Christian, but I don't think that matters -- her points stands just fine without bringing religion into it.

[V]iolence in The Hunger Games...serves a purpose: It is not gratuitous. It is not voyeuristic. But...We the viewers are not witnessing a past event. We feel like we are seeing the Games in real time, that we are part of Panem and, by virtue of sitting in the audience, part of its dysfunction. That powerful revelation encourages us to contemplate the ways that we are complicit in violence in our own world and the ways in which we do not object...[I]ronically, The Hunger Games' greatest triumph would be an empty theater and streets full of people demanding the kinds of changes needed in Katniss’ world and in our own.

An interesting thought. What if they released Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty and no one bought it? What if not a single person paid to see Saw [insert any roman numeral]? What if the audiences for Maury Povich, Bridezilla and Hoarders dropped to zero? What if we simply stopped being complicit in the cheap nastiness and ugliness that's marketed to us in the guise of entertainment?

I'm not saying it has to all be fluffy bunnies and puppies, because yuk. But we don't have to mindlessly suck up the worst of what's on offer either. More thoughtful choices: Why am I watching this? Is it truly entertaining, or does it feed my own sense of superiority or my wish to mock others? Am I gaining my pleasure from someone else's pain/problems/weakness? When you put it in those terms, it doesn't sound nearly as harmless.

Columnist George Will wrote a great essay on this back in 2001, which I still have tacked up on my fridge. Among other things, he says this:

The historian Macaulay famously said that the Puritans opposed bearbaiting not because it gave pain to the bears but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. The Puritans were right: Some pleasures are contemptible because they are coarsening. They are not merely private vices, they have public consequences in driving the culture's downward spiral.

Full column is here. Something to think about.

So, National Women's Day. Following close upon months of battles over birth control, access to abortion and family planning, Virginia's sonogram law (which very nearly became medical rape but as signed is both ultimately pointless and laughably hypocritical), and Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Flukes a slut and a prostitute and demanding sex tapes of her. The New York Times ran a front-page story today on women in Texas losing health care options. The article makes no mention of National Women's Day but still, I hope they chose it on purpose to make a point.

On balance, I find that National Women's Day has depressed more than empowered me. I feel as though a horde of filthy rodents are nibbling away with their diseased grimy teeth at my right to self-determination. These rights that sensible and intelligent men and women of the past 200 years fought for and won -- I thought everyone today recognized them as simple justice and common sense. I didn't realize we were taking them for granted, I thought we'd just grown beyond that particular brand of idiocy.

Well, let's all remember this when we go to vote. Butt the fuck out, conservatives. Go focus on business and leave morality to the individual.

Shout-outs to: Olympe de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Sanger, Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Victoria Woodhull, and all fellow travelers. Your torches still burn.

As I said yesterday, I went back and forth on the second volume (Catching Fire) and ended up suspending judgment on it until I read the third one. Now that I've read the third one...wow. It isn't perfect -- the author's reliance on the main character losing consciousness at crucial moments and waking up rescued is a serious flaw -- but overall I found this a tremendously powerful and disturbing book.

Recently I read Ugly War, Pretty Package: How CNN and Fox News Made the Invasion of Iraq High Concept, an examination of how the media packaged and marketed the Iraq War as a media event. There were entirely too many parallels for my comfort here. From being marketed as a tribute in the first book, Kat goes on to be packaged and sold by Coin as The Mockingjay, only to be discarded when her usefulness is over. One reviewer here on GR complained that Kat's having a camera crew and a prep team constantly with her was distracting and stupid. But that's the point: Kat is never allowed to be a genuine heroine because that's too messy, too unattractive. Too real. She has to be "on" and "in character" (not to mention in costume) all the time, no matter what her personal feelings are.

If she'd chosen this part -- if she were by nature a leader, driven by a desire to inspire people, or a born martyr like Joan of Arc -- that would be one thing. But she's not, she's a seventeen-year-old girl whose had to slaughter people she's made friends with, whose entire village has been destroyed, whose family has been threatened, who's been forced by everyone around her to be something she's not. It's no wonder she doesn't deal with it well. The role of Mockingjay isn't what Kat wants, but it's the only path left to her. Her bargaining for the cat, for the captured tributes, for the right to go hunting with Gale all speak to the fact that this isn't a role she takes on willingly but rather one she demands payment for. Not because she's mercenary, but because she can sense the wrongness, the falseness in it, and wants to extract something from it that's meaningful to her.

In the first book, Peeta says that if he's going to die, he wants to die as himself. Kat's never given that option -- no matter what happens to her, someone else is pulling the strings. Someone else "owns" her. Like the Mockingjay, she can only echo the wishes of others. I ached for her, constantly being manipulated by the people who she's supposed to be able to trust.

Which brings me to the one thing that really broke my heart: ( major spoilers )

In the acknowledgements, Collins thanks her father (I think it was) for having taught her about war and peace. Certainly as a statement against the horrors of war, all three books work well and the last one best of all. There are no winners, only survivors.

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I love the way she wins while doing absolutely fuck-all. Tracks pretty much exactly with the books.

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Perhaps now is a good time to say that heroines that DO NOTHING annoy me. They annoy me worse than Mary Sues. OK, Mary Sues are unrealistic in every way and break the fourth wall, or whatever it's called in books, because they're basically the author guest-starring in her own fantasy (I say "her" fantasy because although men write Mary Sues, they get to call them superhero comic books and they sell like hotcakes; not at all the same thing).

But at least Mary Sues usually DO SOMETHING. They may have grown up as salt mine slaves in darkest BFE and yet are master fencers, ride like Diana, and can cook a rabbit that tastes better than your mother's brisket, all while defeating legendary dark sorcerors/generals/plot bunnies. No, it's not credible. But at least they're ACTIVE. You can't be a heroine if all you do is a) get watched while you sleep b) get protected c) get impregnated and d) get turned into a vampire (I hope the English majors in the audience noticed all that passive verbiage).

I'd argue that not only do you fail is a heroine, you can't legitimately even call yourself a protagonist, much less an antagonist. All that leaves you with is "agonist" which, yeah, given the agony I feel when I read about you is quite suitable.

Another post-apocalypse novel where women get the short end of the (burnt, radioactive, diseased, whatever) stick. Why is this so often the case?? I'm familiar with the theory that equal rights for women is a luxury of civilized society, possible only because we live in a nice safe world with laws and cops in which it doesn't matter that we're physically weaker. Conversely, therefore, in an uncivilized world where physical power matters, women would once again -- so the theory goes -- become second-class citizens.

There is a certain plausibility to this, in cases where society has in fact collapsed. In the world of Wither, however, society's still functioning pretty well despite the toxic stew which apparently covers most of it (hence the subtitle, "the chemical garden trilogy"). There are limousines, servants, parties, mansions, and research scientists. Heck, there are even dressmakers, architects, trampolines and soap operas.

The apocalypse in this case -- similar to The Testament Of Jessie Lamb -- is a virus that kills women promptly at age 20 and men at age 25, and this apparently is enough to change women's status completely. One would think that this would make women more valuable. One would be wrong. Roving gangs of Gatherers roam about kidnapping young women for wealthy young men so they can get married and have babies before they die, yes. But the kidnapped girls that aren't selected as brides are either sold into prostitution or simply murdered outright. Now that just flies in the face of logic.

In fact there are quite a few things in this book that fly in the face of logic, among them raging blizzards in Florida, some sort of war that blew all the other continents to bits (not countries, mind you, continents), and a disease that has a built-in timer (I kept thinking of that plastic popup thing you get in turkeys -- *ping* you're dead!). If I were grading solely on logic, alas, this would get zero stars. Character development is pretty thin too; it feels like a fairy tale. Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess named Rhine who was kidnapped and locked in a tower by the evil magician Housemaster Vaughn; the clueless prince Linden fell in love with her but the valiant servant boy (Gabriel) rescues her.

However, I have to admit that the events of the story are engrossing; it kept me up turning pages until 1am to see what happened, so that boosted it from 2 stars to 3. The trick is to treat it like riding a unicycle: keep moving fast enough that you don't fall over. Or in this case, fast enough that you don't notice the inconsistencies, the paper-thin world-building, and the one-dimensional characters.