Thanksgiving: "We will sell our bracelets by the roadside; you will play golf and enjoy hot hors d'oeuvres."

Thanksgiving. American Thanksgiving. Which, let's be honest, is the only real one, because I don't think any of you Canadians double-crossed Native Americans after they taught you how to plant corn. JOKE'S ON US ANYWAY, because then we grew TOO MUCH and made it into fake sugar and it's in everything and making us lardmonsters.

But Thanksgiving. 

I'm grateful for some book-related things. The fact that I had to explain my "Wilkie OMG" shirt to my roommate the other day, and that the explanation was "my book blogging friends" (which is obviously a thing) and I had the shirts made after we did a group readalong of a Wilkie Collins novel, and when you say it out loud GOOD LORD THAT IS THE NERDIEST THING IN THE HISTORY OF NERDDOM but there it is.

I'm grateful pretty much every damn week I'm in Chicago that libraries exist. The library is a giant free storehouse of information, entertainment, and, if you're lucky, escalators. I'm trying to think of a time before libraries, interlibrary loans and, of course, librarians, and that time terrifies me. Few things make me happier than plodding past a long series of shelves, clutching a piece of scratch paper with some call numbers written on it. Someone spent a mathematically significant portion of their life working on the thing you're about to retrieve. Thanks to the library, it's not only easy for you to access that thing - it also costs you nothing but time and energy. Time and energy you have deemed worthwhile to spend on it. Libraries are one of the greatest signifiers that we care about each individual, no matter what their social or economic status. May they reign forever and ever.

How can you NOT be grateful for this community? Looking at the things I read before I started blogging, it was pretty much an assortment of 19th century literature, Sarah Vowell books, and some scattered historical fiction/chick lit. I had no idea what new books were coming out, or what might be going under the bestseller radar but still a COMPLETELY WORTH IT book. I was never peer pressured into reading something (something which always turns out to be fantastic, by the way). I read so much more and such a varied group of things compared to before I started blogging. I never wanted to be part of a book club until we started readalongs here and the people offered such amazing insights that I became infinitely grateful to be sharing that experience with them.

Happy Thanksgiving. I heart all of you.

truth.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home: "I am average at English and I am average at math, but I was not going to be average at looking after Toby."

Occasionally in book blogging circles, so many people read/review a book well that you begrudgingly (if you're me) say "FINE. *FINE.* I will read this damn thing." And then you usually like it and are strangely irritated about liking it. "I GUESS you guys are awesome and have awesome opinions. I guess."

I will do this to your faces until we all feel awkward

Tell the Wolves I'm Home, for the two of you who haven't read it, is a first person narration about a girl in the 1980s whose uncle contracts AIDS and dies from it. The uncle (Finn) was her favorite person on earth, and she finds out after he dies that he'd been in a relationship for years with a man named Toby, who is now all alone. The majority of the book is about her friendship with Toby, and this all sounds like a huge bummer, BUT I REALLY LIKED IT AND IT'S REALLY GOOD AND YOU SHOULD READ IT.

You know all those times I'm like "ughhhh this is too sad I can't get into it"? Yeah. This bypasses that by being awesome AND not maudlin. The author handles the sadness deftly, so it's never like "Oh, this is an AIDS book" or "This is a mourning book" -- it's just a book about people and relationships. Meaning it's a novel.

A novel with feels.

The narrator, June, is 14, and does weird shit like dress in medieval-type clothes and go into the woods by herself. 

 "Going into the woods by yourself is the best way to pretend you're in another time." 

 "I can't even really sing, but the thing is, if you close your eyes when you sing in Latin, and if you stand right at the back so you can keep one hand against the cold stone wall of the church, you can pretend you're in the Middle Ages."

I wasn't a huge fan of the antisocial narrator of Fangirl, but with June I think I found more to relate to. Because I TOTALLY went into the woods by myself as a kid and pretended I was in another time. And by "into the woods" I mean into a scrubby bit of brush in my parents' backyard that was only concealed from sight when it was summer because leaves.

And June tries. She really, really tries. Her relationship with her older sister is strained, and she's not sure why. She wants to fix it, but her sister keeps shutting her out because June keeps somehow saying the wrong thing. When she finds out about Finn's partner Toby, she battles jealousy and selfishness with the knowledge that this person knew and loved the same person she did. 

Everything in the book revolves around Finn, who dies very early in the book. All the action and reactions take place because of him having existed on the planet, and even though some of it is bad, I found it to be a beautiful testament to life, and a way of honoring those who died of AIDS when the disease meant social ostracization.

I WILL HUG YOU ALL

Mainly Tell the Wolves I'm Home is yet another example of a book I wouldn't have picked up on my own, but thanks to the fantastic world of book bloggers and their community, I basically had to. And am really glad I did, because what a damn great story.

Real life once again intrudes on book world because some asshole tried to break into my apartment

You know when you wake up at 1:30 in the morning because you hear a noise, and you're usually like "Bah, whatever, house settling, etc"? But then sometimes you're like "Hmm. That was a very specific 'bang' sort of noise and my roommate isn't home"? Yeah, so that happened last night, and I went into the kitchen, where the lights were still blaring because I fell asleep with them on, and I heard another bang and must have decided 'fuck it' because I pulled up our shades and without being able to see anything, heard A PERSON DIRECTLY OUTSIDE MY WINDOW start to make what sounded like an apology, but in words I couldn't understand. I yelled "GET OUT" and immediately called the police. While I was on the phone with them, I saw his shadow hop the fence.

Which is how I had two members of the Chicago Police Department knocking on my door just before two in the morning last night. Two HANDSOME members of the Chicago Police Department, I'd like to add, who witnessed me in a tank top and flannel snowflake pants (you're welcome, officers). And they were lovely and polite and super-nice, and also had two guys checking out the back of the building, so the city of Chicago must have had zero else going on last night.

Then they left. And it was 2 AM. And there was no way I was going to be able to sleep.

For the past two months, I've been on-and-off dating an extremely wonderful person who lives in my building. Last weekend, she broke it off for good, and we hadn't spoken since. This sucked because I kept thinking of things I wanted to show her, then remembering 'Ah, right, we're not speaking.'

But last night she was online, so I texted her, telling her the situation, and she was awesome. She came down, hugged me, and asked if I wanted to watch X-Files in her apartment and yes. Yes, I did. And she proceeded to sit with me until NIGH ON 5 AM, while providing cats to snuggle, and not only let me watch X-Files, but also let me point out Mulder & Scully shippy bits that it's entirely likely she didn't care about.

I can't imagine another situation where that kind of reconciliation would occur between us. Meaning one that swift and total. Which. Y'know. Not to say that was God repairing a relationship, but fuck yeah that's what happened.

I don't know. Silver linings. Every situation has a sunny side. Etc. I'm really, really glad to have my friend back, and it was 100% worth some feelings of terror and a fairly sleepless night. And we're getting new barbed wire on the back fence, so that'll be cool. Small/large blessings, people. Today is great.

How okay is it not to like something because it's popular?

How okay is it not to like something because it's popular?

I might have some experience with this

Probably not okay at all if we get down to it. That's gonna be the real message here. But my 13-year-old "I will not be identified with the masses" asshole self starts champing at the bit when some new literary craze happens. "WELL. That's obviously dumb if soccer moms can get something out of it." You know what? Let's lay off soccer moms. Think of the book Main Street and then think of their lives. Let them have their moments of bookish inspiration. They don't have time to read all of Flaubert, but maybe they DO have time to get drunk with their book group and discuss the latest Rebecca Wells novel (who I am NOT making fun of; I love the shit out of those Ya-Ya books).

But there's definitely a natural instinct, for SOME reason, to not want to just be lumped in with a bunch of other people who like something. In this case, a book. I'm not gonna say that's what happened for me with Twilight, because Twilight is genuinely horrible and gives less intelligent teenage girls awful romantic expectations, but it's definitely made me look twice at a number of books. "Oh...Pedestrian Person I Know really liked it? Oh..."

I accept this award because I want it.

Which, first of all, what an asshole move calling someone 'pedestrian' in the first place. Good job, brain. Next, you don't know what they like about it. Just because someone else was able to enjoy a thing that your Ever So Advanced brain also enjoyed, it 1) doesn't mean you liked the same things about it, and 2) who gives a shit if you did? Good. GOOD if that happened. You can relate more to your fellow man. Stop being a dick.

People aren't going to judge you for liking something like Tuesdays with Morrie, and if they do, fuck 'em. You don't need that shit. Hang out with more supportive people.  

Why do we like reading?

Why the hell do we like reading.

I certainly can't figure out the answer for the rest of you, so I'm going to have to puzzle through my own reasons. Is it the craving for narrative? But film answers that so well, and it's so much more passive. Mmm, passivity.

Most people who classify themselves as 'readers' seem to have been that way since they were little inchworms. I have very few memories of early experiences with books and reading. One of the earliest I can remember was a stunning bluff I put to my brother as I arrogantly proclaimed "I can read that," regarding the cover of a National Geographic -- a bluff that was swiftly brought to its reckoning by my brother's clever "What does it say then?" riposte.

Other than that, my next memory is already being able to read, sitting in my parents' ridiculously big Whirlpool tub (I've always been a small person, and the jets used to be able to push me in a big circle around the tub, rendering it the funnest place on earth) and having my mother read to me from Meet Felicity, the very first in the American Girl series, back when it used to be about history. *grumbles*

Why don't people understand that history is just better?
Look at his hat.

My mother's devious plan was to read aloud to me and then leave off at an exciting part so I'd finish it on my own. Why she felt the need to con me into reading, I'm not sure. Maybe I was being stubborn about it at that point. But it worked. (and Felicity will forever be the best American Girl; I don't want to hear jack shit about Samantha)

When you're young, it has to be pretty solely about narrative, right? I loved dogs, so I read Shiloh and Daughter of the Mountains (THIS IS THE BEST BOOK) and Ribsy. Then I loved horses, so it was Black Beauty and the Thoroughbred series and The Forgotten Filly and ALL THE MARGUERITE HENRY BOOKS.

trufax.

You get older and you start reading about people. Usually people you can relate to. Then you get even older and you start realizing that books can be used to explore the mindsets of people you CAN'T relate to, and that if you don't encounter these people in your daily life, you can read the thoughts they put to paper and broaden your entire scope of life and how the world works. Without books, your life and its outlook can be dangerously limiting and narrow.

I read books for entertainment still, because why quit that, but I've also come to rely on them for help in understanding other people. One of the hardest trials of everyday life is the idea of "honoring everyone." Everyone? Really? Because some people really don't seem like they deserve to be honored. But the more you read and see lives of people other than your own and those whom it's easy to love, the easier it becomes to understand them. And then that person who seems so irredeemable can start to go from a two-dimensional bad guy to a complex individual with a long history of living and many good and bad decisions that have led them to their present point. And then maybe it's easier to cut them a little slack.

Let's end with the best quote from The Thirteenth Tale:

“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.” 

John Stuart Mill thinks Emerson is a man-baby

DID YOU ALL SEE HOW SASSY JOHN STUART MILL WAS ABOUT EMERSON?

First off, if you don't know, John Stuart Mill was an English philosopher/economist/hilarious person of the Victorian Age. We're pissed at him because he liked Utilitarianism, which was a dumb movement, but I don't even care anymore, because this article makes him the best.

As his obituary in The Times observed, Mill was a candid controversialist, but he was ‘too amiable to indulge in scorching sarcasm or inflict unnecessary pain’. In his spontaneous marginalia, however, Mill was free to indulge his private opinions without fear of causing offence.

AND WHAT PRIVATE OPINIONS THEY WERE.

"Sentimental Essays in the Art of Intimately blending Sense and Nonsense"
ZING, Mill

This is basically the equivalent of taking a book like The Secret and scrawling "The Secret (to Being Dumb)" on the title page.

This article contains gems like:

Mill took exception to Emerson’s poetry, which he often crossed out.

And later in the essay where Emerson wrote that ‘every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins’, Mill jotted: ‘Speak for yourself.’

 For one poem, "Mill reached for his pencil and wrote: ‘pretensious [sic] emptyness’." 

And my favorite:

The concluding paragraph aroused Mill’s scorn, for he scribbled ‘pooh’ twice in the margins.

I want Mill to write marginalia in all Victorian lit. Like there's some big tortured paragraph in Wuthering Heights (which could really be anywhere in that book) and next to it he just writes "pooh." YOU JUST GOT SERVED BY JOHN STUART MILL.

The essayists of the Victorian Age are a bit neglected nowadays. That's true of essayists from almost any period other than the current one, but THEY'RE the people talking about the ideas the authors would then take and run with. If we're being responsible Victorian lit readers, we should be reading Ruskin, Carlyle, Mill and...other people whose names I don't know. The only thing I remember about Ruskin from college is he said the Gothic was an excellent aesthetic because man shouldn't strive to be perfect because only God is perfect. Or something. So our architecture should reflect that. IT'S POSSIBLE I AM MISREMEMBERING I WAS 18 YEARS OLD.

More snarky commentary from Victorians, please. Especially about Transcendentalists, because they are nincompoops.

Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Who thought this was a good idea?

Late-night shower singing of Disney songs prompts some important questions, chief among them being: was Disney drunk when it decided to make Hunchback of Notre Dame?

Don't get me wrong — I love that movie (minus the gargoyles, aka the one weak attempt to make it seem like an actual children's movie). I will classify it as 'underappreciated,' along with Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Home on the Range. The score and setting are gorgeous, the story was written by Victor Hugo, and Tom Hulce, aka Mozart, does the voice of Quasimodo. WHAT MORE COULD YOU ASK FOR.

no...no, not that.

Disney seemed to be experimenting a bit in the '90s. It went from fairytales to The Lion King -- which is kind of based on Hamlet -- to a bastardization of the Pocahontas story, i.e. actual historical events, to...a 19th century French novel about a deformed man who lives in a belltower.

I just really really wish I could've heard the initial pitch.

"So, how about we do the Twelve Dancing Princesses next? That sounds good, right?"

"Here's the thing, Steve -- I was thinking about it, and I really think this 500 page Victor Hugo novel about a rapey clergyman's the way to go."

"....fuck off, Bob."

BUT THEN BOB SOMEHOW WON. They endeavored KIND of successfully to make Quasimodo adorable, but the fact remained they had a 19th century French story about medieval Paris, a deaf and malformed bell-ringer, and a sex-obsessed archdeacon. It's like they were TRYING to give themselves an impossible task, which was to make this appealing to children. And then they didn't even try that hard, because you have scenes like this:

THIS MOVIE IS SO SEXUALLY AGGRESSIVE

It basically goes from traumatic scene to traumatic scene, including:

- Frollo almost dropping a baby down a well after causing its mother's death.

- Quasimodo being angrily pelted with vegetables by a mob after being tied down in the square.

- Frollo setting a house on fire with a family in it.

- A song with these lyrics:
Like fire, hellfire
This fire in my skin
This burning desire
Is turning me to sin

- Quasimodo and Phoebus almost being hanged by the Court of Miracles

WHAT A WONDERFUL CHILDREN'S FILM

Go home, 1996 Disney. You're drunk.

Illinois: Passing Marriage Equality by Two Votes

So yesterday.

Yesterday, after much debate on the floor, the Illinois House passed SB10, the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act (we've learned what these things need to be called). The Senate quickly voted it through, and when our governor, Pat Quinn, signs it, people can start applying for marriage licenses in Illinois on June 1st, 2014.

Of course, it wasn't quick. Illinois will be the 15th state to pass marriage equality, which is far down the line, but not like Arkansas-far. Hawaii's looking like a probable 16th. Prior to last year, only six states had passed legislation supporting marriage equality, so it's jumped from six to fifteen in two years, and from opponents being able to say they've never lost a popular vote on the issue to having to resort to arguments like "But that bakery in Washington."

Not that I want this to be an antagonistic post. This was a very, very long time coming in Illinois and I'm still in shock over it having passed. Thank you, legislators. Thank you lobbyists and letter-writers and people who called their representatives and thank you, Pope Francis. Sincerely.

[Pope Francis's] comments sparked a wave of soul-searching by several Catholic lawmakers who had battled to reconcile their religious beliefs with their sworn duty to represent their constituents who were increasingly supportive of gay rights even as Cardinal Francis George remained opposed.

"As a Catholic follower of Jesus and the pope, Pope Francis, I am clear that our Catholic religious doctrine has at its core love, compassion and justice for all people," said Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia, a Democrat from Aurora who voted for the bill after spending much of the summer undecided.

Growing up in an upper middle class WASPish home as a straight-laced Christian girl who just wanted to get married to some man whose work she could support someday (seriously), I never ever thought I'd be sitting at a computer watching lawmakers argue over whether me getting married in a super-cute ceremony that later involved dancing to Andy Williams would "fundamentally change the structure of society." 

Damn you, Andy Williams and your
divisiveness

Because a lot of this is people being scared. They don't know what's going to happen. As far as the historical record's shown, we've never had widespread gay marriage in our world. I mean, what the results have shown so far has been this:

I don't need to deal with your perfect family, Neil Patrick Harris

But who knows what else could happen, right? So it's new and scary and eventually people will realize that NOTHING has happened and they'll all calm down like they did about interracial marriage and women wearing pants.

Thinking about the fact that as of next year, I can walk up and get a marriage license and just be "married" instead of "domestic partnered" or "civil unioned" is astounding to me. It seems almost unbelievable. When I first truly realized that dating girls was an actual option that life offered me, it felt unreal. "Wait, I can HAVE that? Really truly? But that makes everything so much better. I can really do it?"

Adding marriage to that possibility makes me ridiculously joyful and giggly. 

The vote ended with me weeping at my desk and my beloved friend Katie-Anne coming up to give me a hug because NO WEEPING IN RECEPTION. It's going to take a while to really sink in and realize that as of next June, if you're married in Illinois, you're just married. Like a normal marriage, with no qualifiers or emergency room confusion. Applying for a marriage license won't be an act of civil disobedience. You won't feel weird writing 'wedding' on an invitation. And you won't have to march around the Capitol Building chanting poorly-written but well-intentioned rhymes.

Briefly proud of you, Illinois. Immensely proud of your lawmakers. You're a good state.

Donna Tartt: Quotey and Less Intimidating Than Expected

Donna Tartt came to Chicago.

For those unaware, Donna Tartt wrote The Secret History and The Goldfinch (and also a third book that no one really talks about). She also has author pictures that cause hardened warriors to quake in their spike-tipped boots.

Better known amongst her kindred as "Soul Reaper."

I liked The Goldfinch. And I like author events. And Donna Tartt looked so impressively terrifying that I had a whole plan of going up to the author table and being AS CHEERFUL AS I COULD POSSIBLY BE to see what happened.

So I went to Northwestern's Thorne Auditorium and sat in a seat that yielded this blurry picture (Tartt is, of course, on the right):

The audience was mostly made up of gay men and older women. So I distrust my own reactions to the program, because maybe everyone aside from my friend Jeff and myself was fascinated by the talk and thought some very probing questions were put to Ms. Tartt. What seemed to happen, though, was the following:

Moderator: "You're so awesome at everything. How do you do that?"

Tartt: *talks for five minutes, pausing a lot. Nothing is really said*

Jeff captured this moment, unbeknownst to me, which sums things up pretty accurately:

Here's the thing — I don't expect all authors to be engaging and awesome in person. That's not their main thing. Their main thing is sitting alone in a room and writing shit down. Which people then read and get excited about, or hate, or go 'meh' over. To also have high expectations of their interpersonal skills seems to be asking a bit much. The main thing I was disappointed in, actually, was that Ms. Tartt seemed shy up there. Really? Shy? Do I have to show you another one of your author portraits?

Like we could do anything to you. Look how pointy your shoulders are.

What I remember about the talk, aside from the incessant fawning, was her quoting authors. Like a lot. To the point where I started writing them down. Woolf, Orwell, Nabokov, Flaubert and Yeats. At least. At some moment she mentioned Bret Easton Ellis, whom she is buds with (a fact which the internet has trained me to react to with '...ugh').

Question time prompted a fierce battle between myself and the man handing out the mic to people. For he was being directed by the girl across the aisle, and WOULD NOT JUST GIVE ME THE MIC until said girl saw my hand raised. People in a three row circumference were invested in the outcome of this conflict until persistence won and I stood up, mic in hand, apparently so I could be a shit to Donna Tartt.

I don't think she actually took it that way. I don't think. But I started by saying how fantastic Boris is as a character. And then — she had read aloud a quote from like 20 pages from the end of the book which talks about WHY The Goldfinch is an amazing painting — I said that THAT quote had made me go "Oh, I get it now" regarding a good deal of the preceding pages, and why did she put it at the end rather than earlier? Essentially I meant "You put this in the wrong place and this would have been a better book if you'd moved it."

She gave a very calm response, which pretty much boiled down to "I have thought this through and it's in the right place, thank you very much, did you work on a book for ten years no I didn't think so you sit yourself back down now."

Jeff and I then got in line for the signing. You might know that I ask authors to write a favorite word in the book I have them sign. Alison Bechdel wrote 'Ranunculus.' Emma Donoghue wrote "bejewelled." Donna Tartt, after seeming confused and not in the least bit amused, wrote the following:

I'M SO GLAD WORDS ARE YOUR MÉTIER

So the event was all a little anticlimactic. I mostly blame the moderator for her sycophancy (ALSO YOU, AUDIENCE), but I will say I don't expect any of this to make me enjoy Tartt's books any less — which is generally the fear with meeting an author whose work you like. I bought The Secret History from the sellers working the event, and I am muy excited to start it.

Afterwards, Jeff, my beyond-charming friend who works in publishing:

you should all meet Jeff

and I walked over by Water Tower, which if you live in Chicago you tend to avoid, as it's the site of Overpriced Everything. But there's also a Ghirardelli there and they had a milkshake called the Nob Hill Chill, and this needed to be ordered. So the evening ended with this and I now have nothing but good feelings for Donna Tartt:

Well done, milkshake.