WHAT have you finished reading recently? For “real” reading, I just finished Star Trek: The Higher Frontier, a TOS-MOVIE era novel. I also read three books in the Marvin Redpost series for Blast from the Past.
WHAT are you reading now? Halfway through Family Unfriendly, which examines different aspects of American life that are inimical to families (including social media abuse and suburban sprawl). Also finishing the Marvin Redpost books (they’re super easy, barely an inconvenience).
WHAT are you reading next? More Sachar — I appaarently didn’t spotlight Wayside School last year, so I’ll be re-reading a couple of its books. More seriously, there’s The Anxious Generation, which I need to commit to and finish.
Sorry, this isn’t Blast from the Past related, but Lower Decks is still two weeks away from airing and Strange New Worlds won’t return until 2025. Had to scratch my Trek itch. Got some Louis Sachar coming!
On Andor, the polar compound of the spiraling-to-extinction Aenar subspecies is attacked and its people savagely murdered, leaving only a few score of the Aenar remaining. The Enterprise is tasked with ensuring the remaining Aenars’ safety, as well as working with planetside authorities to determine who would perpetuate genocide against so peaceful a people. When the Enterprise itself is attacked by a small group of armored warriors, though, Kirk and Spock realize there’s more here than meets the eye: this is no disgruntled Andorian xenophobes trying to eliminate a sub-species they regard as inferior and undesirable, but an unknown party apparently targeting people who are “espers”, or who have some psychic abilities. The Higher Frontier is an early movie-era book, building off of events from The Motion Picture, but before more characters began leaving the Enterprise: Kirk still commands the Big E, Spock is still his right hand, Chekov is still holding down security and hasn’t yet shipped out to The Reliant. Bennett brings back Dr. Miranda Jones, featured in “Is There in Truth No Beauty“, one of the many TOS episodes I had completely forgotten about. Here, she’s a powerful psychic human bound to another intelligence, and she’s not alone in her gifts. Since the V’GR incident, humans who identified as espers are not only growing in number, but they claim their gifts are growing in prowess as well, so much so that they begin to identify as New Humans. There’s a lot in here to make lorists happy, as Bennett includes characters like Commander Thalin, who was the first officer of the Enterprise in that Animated Series alternate-universe story, as well as Xon, who would have been the Spock of Star Trek: Phase II had it ever reached filming. (And Saavik!) The plot also does a fair bit of cleaning and scene-staging to make parts of the red-sweater movies make sense, like why there are manual torpedos on the E and why Kirk is an admiral but apparently has The Enterprise attached to Starfleet Academy. (The two are related: the Academy wants officers trained in manual systems as backups.) Bennett is one of modern Trek’s strongest authors, especially on the science front, so I enjoyed this for the most part, especially the way Bennett deals with the TOS espers who have no presence in later shows, but thought the ending dragged out a bit.
Highlights:
Despite what has been rumored about me among Vulcans, I have not renounced logic or discipline. I have merely come to recognize that emotion is an integral part of the cognitive process, and it is thus logical to accept its presence and employ it—to integrate it with one’s reason rather than existing at odds with a part of one’s own being.”
Spock took a step closer to T’Nalae. “You say that you boarded the Enterprise to learn from me, Specialist. What I have to teach you may not be what you expected to hear … but that is the nature of true learning. I request that you ponder on that until we speak again.”
McCoy shook his head. “Unbelievable. An emotional Vulcan who’s having problems with telepathic humans. Did we cross over into an alternate universe again?
Spock tilted his head skeptically. “In my case, V’Ger provided only a negative example. It revealed to me that an existence of pure logic without emotion was sterile and purposeless. I came to understand that it was better to seek a synthesis of the two.” “And you seem to have succeeded.” “It is still a work in progress,” Spock demurred. “But so is life,” Kirk ventured to add.
Kirk wondered why Starfleet’s quartermaster corps could never seem to stick with a uniform design for longer than a single five-year duty tour. He kept coming back home to find himself behind the fashion curve.
“Sir!” Chekov called as a detection alarm sounded. “That dimensional rift you wanted? It’s opening nearly on top of us!” Why do I never get service that fast when it’s something good? Terrell wondered.
The auditory ambience of the Enterprise’s bridge had evolved over the decades that Spock had served within its various iterations, as equipment function had advanced and aesthetic tastes in auditory status indicators had evolved. However, one component of that ambience that had remained irritatingly consistent over the majority of the past fourteen years had been the grumblings of Doctor Leonard McCoy. The doctor rarely entered the bridge without promptly making his presence known through distracting and generally uninformative banter.
Today’s TTT is “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles”, which — no pun intended — is definitely in my wheelhouse. As longtime readers here know, transportation is a frequent nonfiction visit of mine, possibly because I come from a family of truckers and military flyboys. Here are some of my favorite transport reads!
But first, a tease!
Spock took a step closer to T’Nalae. “You say that you boarded the Enterprise to learn from me, Specialist. What I have to teach you may not be what you expected to hear … but that is the nature of true learning. I request that you ponder on that until we speak again.”
McCoy shook his head. “Unbelievable. An emotional Vulcan who’s having problems with telepathic humans. Did we cross over into an alternate universe again?
(Star Trek: The Higher Frontier, Christopher L Bennett)
Straphanger: Saving Ourselves and our Cities from the Automobile, Taras Grescoe. A study of the transit systems of thirteen cities, some traditionally urban and some auto-oriented, to find out what works and what doesn’t, and to see how technology is making systems run more seamlessly — like using the same card to get train access and rent bicycles at the train station!
The Box, Marc Levinson. A history of the standarized shipping container and its massive effect on cities and the global economy. Interestingly, the container was designed by a trucker.
Completely unrelated but it’s nostalgic music from the same period
Don’t wake me up Don’t wake me up if I’m dreamin’ California dreams Just let me lay in here in the Sun Until my dream is done…
Years ago when the world was new and dinosaurs walked upon the face of the Earth, I saw a novel with an interesting cover and took a look. It proved to be a fictional diary, printed in a font that resembled handwriting — and it was part of a series including different characters who all had their own fonts! I was immediately fascinated, and as I progressed throughout the series over the years I loved the way Martin incorporated her characters’ creative sides into the journals, like Maggie’s song lyrics and Amalia’s drawing. The series as a whole takes us through a year in the life of five teenagers: four teenage girls (Dawn, Sunny, Maggie, and Amalia) as well as one slightly older teenage boy, “Ducky”. Each novel covers about a month in the next year of their lives. Each character has their own private struggles, as well as drama they experience together as they begin facing the challenge of growing up. I did an overview of the characters in a post a few years ago, when I was planning a re-read. Because the series consists of three rounds of journals in the same year, I’m going to re-read and review them one round at a time. Be forewarned: I read this series multiple times in high school, and am attached enough to the characters that I made versions of them in The Sims, so I’m not exactly going to be Mr. Critical Crankypants. This is more like “Family Photo Album” time, with the most serious criticism being “Oh, god, what is she wearing? They thought that was COOL?!”
Dawn introduces the series with Dawn Schaefer (yes, the Babysitters Club Dawn Schaefer), who is from a broken home and is struggling with getting used to her new stepmother, Carol. Dawn and her friends’ middle school building is so overcrowded that her grade is being shifted into the high school building. Suddenly, the eighth-grade “Rulers” of the school are the new kids on the block. As exciting as this is for some, some of Dawn’s friends are intimidated by it — and the high schoolers definitely don’t like a bunch of little brats suddenly wandering around their school. This leads to a substantial hazing incident that Dawn and her friends are rescued from by a tenth-grader named Ducky, leading to their becoming unexpected friends. This incident sets the stage for the series, introducing Amalia Vargas and Ducky to the established friendship of Dawn, Sunny, and Maggie. Dawn is the most grounded character in this series, her only rival for introspection being Ducky. She’s most cognizant of the changes the girls are going through — not just growing up, but of what’s happening to them in life. This is especially obvious with her BFF Sunny, who is not coping well with having a mother with cancer. Dawn is attached to Sunny’s mom, so she has her own sorrow to deal with as well as the uncertainly of how to deal with an increasingly unstable Sunny. Does she take Sunny’s weird behavior in stride out of love, or push back — out of love? That’s not to say Dawn doesn’t have her problems, especially coming to terms with her stepmother Carol who she regards as immature and meddlesome — not to mention pregnant, which is extra weird because it means she has a half-sibling on the way. And oh, Carol won’t tell her dad about it for some reason. Grown-ups, so weird, am I right?
Quotes:
I know why the teachers make us keep these journals, apart from the fact that this activity is a healthy habit, a creative outlet, good writing practice, and all that. The teachers never say so, but (since they were all kids themselves once) I bet they remember what it’s like to be consumed by feelings and to need an outlet for them. Or maybe that’s not a kid thing. Maybe it’s just a human thing.
We drove out to Jill’s house with Jeff making annoying duck noises the entire way. He was sitting in the front seat wearing a Donald Duck mask. (I WAS WRONG ABOUT THE ABSENCE OF DUCKS!)
Sunny is Dawn’s best friend, but she increasingly doesn’t live up to her name. For good reason, too: her mother is dying of lung cancer, and Sunny is struggling to deal with that. At the same time, her dad is attempting to renovate and run his bookstore, and she’s expected to pull more than her weight at home. The Sunny who appears in Dawn’s story is different than the Sunny we see in her own diary, because Sunny is performing. Sunny in Dawn’s story is outgoing, spunky, rebellious. Sunny herself is….anxious, depressed, angry. Despairing, and in denial about it. She wants to be the good daughter, but it’s all so emotionally overwhelming — she’s torn between her love for mom and her desire to escape those feelings so there won’t be so much pain, not to mention the grown-up responsibilities she’s saddled with while her mom is in the hospital and her dad is distracted by both the stricken spouse and his bookstore renovations. In this book, she finds escape by cutting classes to go to Venice Beach, where she falls in love with an older teenager who has dropped out and run away from his own home. Fortunately, things don’t go as badly as they could have gone, but it’s obvious to the reader that Sunny is NOT ok.
Quotes:
I just read what I wrote yesterday. I’m glad I’m not my friend. I would drive me crazy.(Maggie & Dawn: Oh, Sunshine, you have no idea.)
I’m sweating like a pig, bouncing down the street on a public roller coaster as I sit behind a fat man in a Hawaiian shirt eating a tuna salad sandwich. A lot of it is actually on the shirt, blending in nicely with the design. (This is one of those lines that’s lived rent-free in my head for 25 years and I have no idea why.)
This is not a public affair. Honestly, I am so sick of all this. I AM SICK OF… Hospital visits. Hair in the sink. Medicines all over the house. Know-it-all doctors who are always wrong. Running out to the drugstore all the time. Not being able to leave home on weekends because Mom can’t travel. Visitors who act as if they’re paying last respects and cry as they drive away in the car. I DO NOT NEED THIS. If I keep my chin up and act happy, I feel guilty. If I worry too much, I lose sleep. I need to get away.
Today, for instance. 90 percent of the guys showed up in T-shirts with flannel shirts over them. It’s like, the uniform. Ducky? A bowling shirt, cool sneakers, and green overdyed jeans. (I absolutely remember this uniform and will confess to wishing I could wear it.)
Palo what? Sunny who? For today, that world and that person don’t exist. I am free.
Optimism is such a strange thing. It’s like a beautiful ice sculpture on a clear, sunny day. Everything seems perfect, but no matter what you do, the sculpture starts to melt.
“Sunny…why?” It was a simple question. But just thinking about an answer was like preparing for a major war. I didn’t have the energy to do it
Maggie Blue is the daughter of a movie producer (Dad) and a drunk (Mummy dearest). At her softest, she writes song lyrics and dreams of being a veterination, but when she’s being hard on herself — most of the time — she’s a perfectionist, and overperformer, and (as we learn through the series) a budding anorexic. To be honest, Maggie is the character I bonded with least in the series, despite loving how Martin incorporated her song-writing into the body of the diary. Maggie’s first book is largely about finding a spark of rebellion and doing something off-script — joining a rock band and participating in the Battle of the Bands, skipping her big-shot father’s premiere in the process — with aide from Ducky, who I realized largely exists in the girls’ journals to taxi them around. Nevermind his private heartbreak over a best friend who’s depressed and heading for suicide.
“Sorry,” he said. “Not in the orchestra either. But we do have a spot for a sousaphone player.” That sounded cool. I asked what that looked like. He pointed to a tuba. Thanks but no thanks. (Know that feeling. There’s a reason I switched from Band to Computers between seventh and eighth grade.)
“Look, if I didn’t worry, my grades wouldn’t be so good,” I explained. Sunny groaned. “Yeah, your average might drop to a 97.”
I know that voice. It’s there when I take my exams. When I turn in a paper. When I play a piano piece. When I dress myself in the morning. Always. It’s me. The voice of Maggie.
It was dawning on me how strong that voice is. No, not just strong. More than that. It runs my life.
But at that moment, it wasn’t. Because another voice was telling me something else. That the mistakes didn’t matter. That winning the contest would be nice but who cared? That I’d done something worth doing. Something that I wanted to do. Not for grades. Not for my permanent record. Not for Dad or the five-year plan. For me.
Amalia Vargas is new to Palo City, and to Vista. She didn’t grow up with the other Vista girls, but transferred into its class. She’s part of the reason why they were forced to move into the high school building, actually: Vista is such a good school that it attracted too many kids! Amalia has a sister, St. Isabel, who works for a women’s shelter; Amalia also manages a garage band named VANISH, and is maybe in a relationship with one of its principals, James. She’s not really sure about the status of the relationship: James is certainly acting like they’re an item in terms of jealousy, but they’ve never talked about their feelings for one another. Amalia and Maggie’s journals are both unique in that they incorporate other media into themselves: in Maggie’s case, hand-written song lyrics; in Amalia’s, drawings. Witness:
(Her way of mentioning she saw Ducky and Sunny in line.)
On Christmas Day, Amalia accompanies St. Isabel to the women’s shelter and becomes attached to one of the women’s kids, Mikey, which…will lead to plot-happenings, including pain and growth and all that. As a plus, working with battered women will come in handy when Amalia realizes oh, her boyfriend is an abusive, manipulative, jealous ass who will one day probably be responsible for creating future clients of women’s shelters. Amalia’s journal is one of the more serious of the lot, dealing with abuse and abduction, and when I was reading this at age…12, 13? That was all new to me. This was not a world I knew anything about. Amalia was an eye-opener for me, as was Sunny.
Quotes:
As I’m taking my books out of my locker, Maggie is singing a new lyric she wrote for Vanish. It’s absolutely beautiful. Something about a sad, lonely girl who spends her life only doing what everyone else wants her to do. As I’m listening, my heart is breaking.
Maggie’s songs are so personal. she’s struggling, Nbook. She’s really learning to break away from her Daddy’s-good-little-girl image. I wish her parents were more like Mami and Papi, who don’t put too much pressure on us. Maggie may have all that money, but what’s the point if she’s not allowed to be herself, right?
“Yo,” James calls out, gesturing to me with his head. As I walk toward James, I hear Ducky mutter, “I should try that sometime. So much more efficient than ‘would you come here, please?’” “What was that?” James snaps. (Boy, James should try a little tenderness. And yes, Ducky is named after the Pretty in Pink character….)
I am a total space cadet in class, Nbook. I can’t concentrate. I’m worrying about everything. Whether it’s really okay to cut math. Why James is so moody. What’s happening with Mikey. My school notebooks are filling up with doodles instead of classwork. On top of that, I can’t get Maggie’s lyric out of my mind. I think of the sad girl in the song, the girl based on Maggie.
But it’s not Maggie I’m picturing. I’m seeing someone else. Another girl who does things for others. Who thinks of herself second or third or fourth, but never first. Someone with the initials A.V.
No, Nbook. He didn’t hit me. But he almost did.
…I love this series. There’s a reason it’s survived in my stacks when Boxcar Children, Animorphs, etc did not.
We end round one with Ducky, Oh, Ducky, Ducky, Ducky. Ducky was my invitation into the California Diaries series. Would I have met these girls, considered their stories, had I not encountered them first through Ducky? I don’t think so, to be honest. Sure, when I was book-starved I had no compunction against reading my sisters’ Sweet Valley High books, but buying girls’ books? With an allowance that could easily go to WW2 memoirs, donuts, and Archie Comics double digests? Ducky is the outlier in CD, being both The Resident Dude and being older than the girls. He is….a character. Ducky is his own man, he follows his own script. He’s creative, compassionate, whimsical. He’s like the character who inspired him but without being love-struck for Molly Ringwald. Although Ducky will spend a lot of the series helping the girls through their problems by being Ducky McRae, Omnipresent Uber Driver, he has own problems as well. His parents are off in Italy, scouring Pompeii. He and his brother are living alone, but his brother is a college boy and does not give a rip about anything other than chasing skirts and chasin’ shots. Ducky’s two best friends, Jay and Alex, are…..um, kind of sucking at being friends. Jay has decided to become an uber-jock and sell his brain and soul and identity toward being a stereotype, and Alex has decided to drink himself to death. Ducky is heartbroken over both, and he’ll spend a lot of this book realizing that Jay is a doofus who just needs to be ignored until he grows up, while Alex is the one who really needs Ducky’s attention — not that said attention will help, because Alex is the one who has to decide to fight for himself. Ducky can’t make him want to live. As a dude who…also did not fit in, either in the 1990s or now, I resonated with Ducky immediately, and re-reading him after all these years I love him more as a character than ever. Despite how lovely Ducky is as a person, and a character, some pretty awful things happen in this book — most prominently, one of his friends attempting suicide.
Quotes:
A year ago, McCrae, the Cro Mag comments would have killed you. A year ago, you worried about their opinions. You wanted them to be your friends. HOW many years did it take to realize THEY WERE GOING TO MAKE FUN OF YOU NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRIED TO BE LIKE THEM? As if you ever could. So…if you can’t join them, do exactly what they hate. Like dance past them, singing “all you need is love,” and toss them a flower—then watch the look on Marco Bardwell’s face the moment after he catches it and realizes his apelike friends are NEVER going to let him live it down. Ducky, you may be strange but you are a genius.
At least Sunny KNOWS who she is. You can tell by looking at her—the weird hair, the funky layered outfits, the body piercings or magnetic studs or whatever those things are. Even her opinions—loud and clear even when they’re wrong—all of it says THIS IS ME, SUNNY WINSLOW, TOO BAD IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT. Dawn’s like that too. She can obsess a little about the environment and global warming and health foods and yada yada, but you always know where she stands. And Maggie. Serious, intense, attitude-of-the-month Maggie. Committed punk rebel for awhile, preppy good girl until that wore off, star rock singer after that. Always changing but STRONG, never really DRIFTING. Amalia Vargas is another one. Sharp, full of opinions, and so COMMITTED to her artwork. They don’t seem three years younger. They’re such personalities. Definite, clear personalities. I wish I felt like that. I never know how to be. I know how NOT to be. NOT prep. NOT grunge. NOT jock. NOT hightech nerd. Step right up, folks—meet Ducky McCrae, Palo City’s number one NOT! Make your own guess about what he is. EVERYBODY else has an opinion. (Um…thanks, Ducky. I hadn’t read any of the other books so it was nice to get the other characters all precis’d for me like that.)
What HAS Alex become? When I gave him that flower this morning—nothing. No laugh, No wisecrack, no response at all. As if this kind of scene happened every day and he was bored with it. Alex the morph. This is NOT the Alex I grew up with. It’s as if some alien ship came down and sucked out his soul. I stared at him today at lunch, while he wasn’t looking. The same way I used to when we were kids and I’d try to send an ESP message, and most of the time he’d notice I was staring and sometimes he’d even GET the message. And we were convinced we could read each other’s minds, because we always finished each other’s sentences and we liked the same movies and books and CDs and TV shows, and we could look at each other—just look— and both burst out laughing. No one knew why, but WE did, because we’d both be thinking of EXACTLY THE SAME THING. And sometimes at home I’d reach for the phone to call him, and the phone would immediately ring, and it would be him. And we’d talk and talk until Mom would get angry and I’d look at the clock and see that TWO HOURS had gone by and it felt like two minutes. And that person is gone gone gone, lost somewhere between 9th and 10th grade, replaced by a total stranger who doesn’t know I’m alive.
I SHOULD know. It is TOTALLY WEIRD to be 16 and never kissed like that. It is TOTALLY WEIRD to hang out with 13-year-olds. It is TOTALLY WEIRD to live alone in a big house with your brother and your combined filth. Isn’t it? Maybe THAT’S the answer to “WHAT AM I?” TOTALLY WEIRD.
Sunny says, call Jay. I say she’s nuts. He should call ME! Sunny says I’m a guy. He’s a guy. Guys TALK TO EACH OTHER after they fight. They argue and explode and say things girls would never think of saying to each other, and then it all blows over and they play basketball. I tell her I hate basketball. She doesn’t find that funny.
Just got back from the hospital. The smell of the place made you nauseated. Not to mention all the WHITE—white uniforms, white walls, white sheets. It all gave you a headache. But when Sunny Winslow says, “Are you coming to the hospital with me after school or what?” you go with her. Somehow, when SHE demands a ride, you don’t feel like you’re being taken for granted. Unlike some other friends who will remain nameless (his initials are Jay Adams). Plus, you know she’s feeling nervous and upset about her mom, who has lung cancer. As you walked through the hospital corridors, she took your arm and muttered, “I hate this.”
You didn’t know what you were supposed to see. But you knew Sunny needed a lot of yeses and that’s-okays, so you gave them to her. Finally, when you were outside, you put your arm around her and she started laughing. When you asked what was so funny, she just said, “I never cry,” and then burst into tears. You hugged her. You and she rocked back and forth in the parking lot, cars whizzing around you. You realized something then. Something you should have known awhile ago. Why worry about Alex and Jay? You have other friends who need you.
Idea Over Breakfast Here’s a thought: Alex is quiet and miserable. Sunny is loud and miserable. They might actually get along. Maybe they should meet. Upon Further Reflection Over Lunch What are you, nuts? (Sunny and Alex do meet and do get along, if I remember. XD)
The Secret to Contentment, According to Jay Adams: Meet a Girl. The Secret to Contentment, According to Ducky McCrae: worry about how you look in the morning, because even though you can’t bring yourself to wear boring conservative clothes, you don’t want to risk setting off the Cro Mags. And make sure you don’t bounce too much as you’re walking into school, because Marco the Cro Mag king will say you’re flitting, which makes everyone laugh. If you survive THAT, you’re off to a good start, and IF YOU’RE LUCKY you’ll have a few laughs with your 13-year-old friends, the only ones who seem to appreciate you, and when you go home, you’ll find that your brother has not left the milk out of the fridge all day and has actually bought a few groceries and maybe run a load of laundry with some of your stuff in it. THAT’S contentment. And that’s pathetic.
Sunny listened. She did not hang up on you or scream bloody murder. Instead, she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was calling to say thanks.” A joke, you assumed. But no. She was moved. By the GESTURE. She said that friends don’t always think of perfect solutions, but they try, and that’s what counts. She said her mom has a support group—and what were YOU doing but trying to find her a supportive friend? For a 13-year-old, Sunny is pretty amazing (I think this is what makes this series so great, because we’re not only seeing Sunny-as-she-is in the raw, we’re seeing how she presents herself to different friends, and realizing the truth of CS Lewis’ essay on Friendship, that different people bring out different parts of ourselves who would have never otherwise be seen. Ducky’s Sunny is not someone we can met in full in Sunny’s diary, or Dawn’s diary. Ducky’s Sunny is Ducky’s Sunny, just as D’s Stephen is different than R’s Stephen, or Stephen’s R is different than C’s R.)
The Cro Mags think I’m a sissy bookworm. My teachers think I’m a slacker. My 8th-grade friends look up to me and I let them down. My 10thgrade friends feel betrayed. I’M TRYING TO DO THE BEST I CAN, and my life gets worse every day. I CAN’T TAKE THIS. I need advice. I need to talk to someone. But who? Not Jay. He’ll just tell me I need a girlfriend. Not Ted. He doesn’t have time for me. He’s too busy figuring out creative ways to destroy the house. Mom and Dad are on the other side of the world. And Alex is halfway to Mars. Maybe Dr. Welsch has an opening. Ha Ha. Anyway, enough of this. I have to study Julius [Caesar]. “To be or not to be…” Or is that another play? Whatever.
So you joked with her and reassured her and told her she was great, but your heart wasn’t in it, because all you could think about were Alex’s problems and the Cro Mags and Jay and math class and Julius Caesar and Ghana and YOUR OWN DEPRESSING LIFE, but you told yourself not to be selfish, and you listened to Sunny go on and on, being sarcastic and complaining about her poor, sick mom, and even though you didn’t mean to be rude, you said, “At least YOUR mom is around.” Major, major mistake. Right away you wished you could take that back. You wished you could catch the words in midair, the way a frog uses its tongue to catch a fly. And Sunny was staring at you, her mouth open, and you knew you had just blown it. Your best friendship in the world, flushed down the toilet.
You look forward to coming back to a HOME. A HOME doesn’t stink. SUNNY has a home. You have a HOLE. She has a FAMILY. You have a What? What do you have?
Ted is flabbergasted. You know this because he came into your room this morning and woke you up, saying, “Ducky, I am flabbergasted.” You told him you’d be full of flabbergast too if your little brother had totally cleaned the house out of the goodness of his heart, without asking for so much as a dime.
You could get used to this. Today, friend of the Cro Mags. Tomorrow, who knows? Cigarettes, flannel shirts, and muttering with lots of one-syllable words. Ha. Ducky, you are SUCH a snob.
You have had some weird nights in your life. Driving the girls home when the upperclassmen trashed Ms. Krueger’s house and framed the 8thgraders. Tracking down Sunny on Venice Beach the night she ran away from home. This is weirder somehow. You don’t know why, it just is. So you sit and write. And here you are, still at it. Scared and exhausted. Worried. Why did he DO that?
Think, McCrae. Do what you have to do. DO THE RIGHT THING What seems like a lifetime later Did you? Did you do the right thing? Who knows?
I’m sitting here at 4:30 in the morning, so awake I could run a marathon, writing my brains out because I can’t talk to anybody—considering I’ve already broken a vow of silence, and Ted would be useless about stuff like this even if I COULD tell him, and Mom and Dad don’t like me to call Ghana —so all I CAN do is write, and that should be helping me, because PUTTING IT ON PAPER always makes thoughts clearer, and I’ve filled up a whole journal, wearing out my fingers, examining EVERY POSSIBILITY, dissecting, reasoning, spilling. And after all that, I should have an idea, I should know what path to take, I should have an UNDERSTANDING at least, and maybe a strategy. I’m not a stupid guy. I should have all of that. But I don’t. I really don’t know what to do. Except worry. And hope.
Ah, lord. I love Ducky. I love this series! It’s so good. The way Martin introduces us to these five different people and their emotional issues, and then bounces them off each other and makes us realize that perfectly good people can be awful to one another because they’re just so consumed with themselves they can’t think of anything else….it’s so realistic, so close to home. It brings St. Augustine to mind, his comment that we arecurved in on ourselves and cannot see any others. It’s a universal frailty. Saint or sinner, religious or otherwise — this is a pit we are all subject to fall into, and kudos to Martin for throwing a light onto it that we can appreciate in any context. Although I’m not a parent and can’t really appreciate the stuff contemporary kids are going through, in my naiviete all I can say is that I think this series holds up. Yes, today’s kids are going through different things. But human nature doesn’t change, even if society does, and a lot of the principal issues — kids trying to create their own identities, struggling with death and depression and things in life that suck — are still in effect. There are parts of this series that would be different if they were written today (lots of “SUNNY WHY ARE YOU SNAPCHATTING FROM VENICE WHEN YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE IN ENGLISH!!!!!!), I think the emotional core, the substance, is still true, still valid. Really glad I’m re-reading this series. It’s truly like revisiting old, cherished friends.
I have a persistent fantasy of living in a little off-grid cabin on the edge of the woods, a fantasy I suspect owes entirely to reading this as a child. It’s a memoir-in-novel form of the author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, growing up in the 1870s frontier — specifically, the edge of Wisconsin, in an area far from roads and houses and people. Although there is a store within a day’s walk, the Ingalls are by and large on their own, surrounded by a deep wilderness filled with bears, wolves, and game — with only their own skills, intelligence, creativity, and a single-shot rifle standing between them and death. Reading this as a kid, I think I was fascinated by how Laura’s entire life was made by hand, from scratch — everything from the starch for laundry to Pa’s bullets. This is described in full detail by Wilder here — tanning hides, smoking meat, butchering a pig, etc. Similarly impressive is the ‘poverty’ in which the Ingalls lived: little Laura’s sister had a baby doll to hold, but Laura had to make do with a corn cob wrapped in a blanket and her own imagination. Receiving her own doll — and an orange! — at Christmas is regarded as a wonderful boon. Of course, though they were money-poor by our standards, the Ingalls had a rich life: their animals, garden, and the bounty of the woods insured full larders, and her family life was cozy and supportive, if strict. Other aspects of frontier culture incorporated are traditional American songs, sung by Pa and his fiddle, and stories of the olden days. This was one of the most educational books I read as a kid: I remember being fascinated by learning about maple syrup tapping, and having to look in my dictionary for what “vension” was. Re-reading this was a pleasure, and I was amused at little memories that floated up, like Pa calling Laura his “little half-pint of cider half-drunk up”.
Last year I closed out July with a special week of themed reading called “Blast from the Past”, in which I visited 1990s kidlit — or, in the case of the Henry & Beezus books, books I happened to read in the 1990s. It was mostly prompted by my desire to re-read the Matthew Martin books, but I enjoyed the week enough that I’m revisiting it. Consider this the totally tubular sequel — and a friend of the blog lent me a box of her childhood books, so I’m going to be reading some of what she read. In the spirit of sequels, I’m going to quote myself from last year, as I used up my ability to recall ’90s slang:
If you didn’t have the good fortune to be a kid in the nineties, this week’s postings may be wack or even lame but for readers my age, or for those who were otherwise exposed to these series (or shared them with your own mini-me’s), hopefully this will be a fun ‘blast to the past’. So…stick a straw in your CapriSun, grab your Fruit by the Foot, take off your sticky candy ring, and settle in for some reading that’s all that and a bag of chips. Feel free to share your own fun kid reads, especially those that were da bomb dot com.
(As far as I know, there are no ducks in the books I’m reading. The title references one of my very favorite movies growing up, D2: The Mighty Ducks. There’s a great sequence where the Ducks realize they’re in a sequel and have to get the band back together…)
Yesterday I finished Damned Un-English, a novel about a fellow who joined the submarine service in the early 1910s and…er, just spends the novel talking to people about the big European war that’s looming. Interesting technical details, but the plot and characters were marginal.
WHAT are you reading now?
Fires of Vesuvius, Mary Beard. An examination (archaeological, historical, geological) of the Vesuvius eruption that destroyed Pompeii and other areas. I had no idea Pompeii had been hit by an earthquake a decade or so before, with much of its damage still lingering when the volcano began raining pumice.
WHAT are you reading next?
Oh, lord, who can say? I meant to kickstart Blast from the Past II, but keep dithering. Here’s the ol’ Kindle bookshelf at the moment:
Most probably, I’ll finally tackle-finish that volcanos book (Mountains of Fire) I’ve been pecking at for a few months.
“War, Gilbert? Are we going to have one? Shooting a few fuzzy-wuzzies out on the Frontier again?” “In Europe, Sidney. You know, that place the other side of the Channel?” “What do we want to get involved with them for, old chap? Full of Frogs and Proossians, ain’t it?”
Gilbert Maltravers, of His Majesty’s Ship Hindustan, has just been promoted to full lieutenant and has decided to jump ship. The Hindustan, anyway, not the Navy, though he has his doubts about his future there unless there’s a war. Gilbert has his eye on the growing submarine fleet, which appears to him to be where the action will be in the next war, not on Victorian relics. Speaking of, there are a great many Victorian relics in the Admiralty, who (in Wareham’s rendition) are utterly oblivious to the facts of modern navies: they expect the submarine crew to be armed with cutlasses for taking prizes, despite the fact that the submarines barely have room for their crews and basic equipment. Damned Un-English is set in the years leading up to the Great War, and as such contains almost no action beyond practice exercises: the book consists entirely of Gilbert learning about the service, being lectured to or lecturing others, and occasionally having stilted Regency-style conversations with his family and finance Miriam about his wicked brother or the future. Gilbert appears to be possessed by a specter from the future who not only knows that war is coming, but knows in great detail how it will play out — including the collapse of Russia and that it will be not only a general European war, but one with global scope despite a humble beginning in the Balkans. (Quote one character: “Do you think this war, if it eventuates, will be so great?”) Maltravers is generally anachronistic, and the characters he antagonizes are thoroughly caricatures. For the reader who is interested in the surfacing submarine service, there’s a wonderful amount of detail here on technical aspects, command structure, etc. As a story, though, it’s a dead loss, just lots of self-satisfied people talking to one another. I suspect if Wareham continues in the series then combat scenes will counter-balance the talking, as it did in the author’s Falling into Battle.
Today’s theme is interesting: our favorite books from ten different series. Have I read ten different series? But first, a tease!
“A thousand years! The Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets will last forever, Gilbert!” “It will need a better government than this current lot if that is to be so, sir.” (Damned Unenglish, Andrew Wareham)
(2) The Lords of the North, Bernard Cornwell. Third in the Saxon Chronicles series, this is the only Uhtred book I’ve both read and listened to an audiobook of. In it, Uhtred is betrayed and enslaved, but befriends an Irish prisoner and makes his escape: I remember lots of twists and an incredibly satisfying finish.
(3) California Diaries #2: Sunny. Ann M. Martin. Number 5, Ducky, was my first book in the California Diaries series, and originally I was going to highlight it here, but then I realized how important Sunny was to my really falling for this series. Sunny’s depressive angst over her mother’s cancer, her somewhat destructive attempts at escaping her life by running away to Venice with a copy of On the Road — this is the book that made me look for Palo City on a map of California. Nothing in my life looked like Sunny’s, and yet she nearly overshadows Ducky in my memory.
(4) Sharpe’s Prey, Bernard Cornwell. Sharpe and company do some sneaking-about and burn an entire fleet of Danish ships so Bonaparte can’t get them.
(5) The Jeeves and Wooster stories, P.G. Wodehouse. Dash it, Jeeves, you can’t expect me to pick a favorite. Might as well ask Aunt Agatha to stop foisting fiances on me!
(6) Roma sub Rosa / Gordianus the Finder, Steven Saylor. One of the earlier series I featured on the blog, this is late-Republic detective work!
(7) The Chronicles of Narnia. My favorite would be The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, of course, but I must mention The Silver Chair, if only for precious Puddleglum. Silver Chair has two of my favorite Narnia quotes:
“We’ve got to start by finding a ruined city of giants,” said Jill. “Aslan said so.” “Got to start by finding it, have we?” answered Puddleglum. “Not allowed to start by looking for it, I suppose?”
“I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. ”
(8) Tales of the Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov. Every month six men of varying professions gather in a small room to enjoy one another’s company over dinner and to confront a mystery presented to them by their guest. It always hinges on some bit of scientific, literary, historical, or geographical trivia, so readers can suss out the truth along with the Widowers.
(9) Bernard Cornwell’s King Arthur series, especially Enemy of God.
Everett Dick’s The Dixie Frontier offers a fascinating glimpse into the early days of the American Southwest, providing a colorful and informative account of life on the frontier. Following the end of the Revolutionary War, Americans poured westward, venturing all the way to the mighty Mississippi River. The Dixie Frontier is a highly enjoyable social history of that period (1780s – 1830s), as trappers were succeeded by aspiring settlers — some operating within the bounds of the law, sometimes out of it. Everett Dick focuses on the “old Southwest”, places later known as Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and explores different areas of life thereof, from the staking out of claims to the creation of law and order. The chapters are organized by subject, with different elements of frontier life considered in turn, as well as spotlights on certain kinds of settlers, including women and slaves. Although plantation money would find the Old Southwest eventually (after the Creek War made it safe), this is largely a book about smaller freeholders and other pioneers, and the life they were making for themselves.
Dick covers agriculture, food, home-building, and other material aspects as well as the growth of religion and frontier justice. A fundamental aspect of this book which underpins everything else is the sheer primitiveness. There was very little gold or silver in the frontier, so economic changes were barter-based, and were not limited to agricultural products: firearms and land were also used. Because of the general want of social infrastructure, events and buildings often serve multiple uses. Church, for instance, was not merely an opportunity for worship, or fellowship, but would become something of a market as farmers commenced to horse-trading or matchmaking. The chapter on justice was particularly fun given that lack of jails or basic legal infrastructure: one young couple was forced to travel for weeks looking for someone qualified to legally marry them, and one man who escaped a death verdict because of a badly written legal order was greeted outside the tavern where court had been held wih the announcement that while he had been “released by Judge Smith, he had not yet been tried by Judge Lynch!”. (The man was stuffed in a barrel and then thrown in the river, letting the currents and God decide his fate. Sending people down the river in a dugout or something similar was an amusingly frequent ‘corrections’ measure.) Dick also remarks that in a murder trial, jurists’ judgment of guilt owed more to whether the murdered man was a better citizen/neighbor than the accused. Similarly amusing is the chapter on social life, as people created game after game with the sole purpose of having an excuse to kiss each other. Kissing was also used as a reward for farm labor: at communal corn-shuckings, the man who could boast the largest pile could smooch the girl of his choosing. One wonders if the smoochee had any say in the matter! Although I think the book suffered a bit from the lack of a chapter to establish the political context, it was both enjoyable and informative. I’m glad Brutal Reckoning prompted me to finally take a look at it, as it’s been on my wanna-read list at the library for the longest. Dick has another book called The Sod House Frontier, on the western experience, which I’ll be looking for.
