A Girl Named Zippy

If you're looking for a quick, fun, slyly funny and downright witty read--that is, incidentally, also true--look no further than Haven Kimmel's A Girl Named Zippy. This book is about as anecdotal as memoirs can get, and each chapter could stand on its own as an individual story. It's not truly tied together chronologically, but it's fragmented in that way most childhoods are: our most concrete memories are tied together with the loosest of threads, not cemented together to form a coherent narrative.

This memoir of a mostly happy childhood in a small town features a plethora of characters: an atheistic camping father, a churchgoing mother who loves to read, an older sister who tells "Zippy" (thus nicknamed by her father after a cartoon bunny that's over the place because she, too, seem to zip from one place to another in the blink of an eye) that she's adopted (a hysterical anecdote, because their mother just rolls with it, telling Zippy that she was originally from a gypsy family and they had to surgically remove her tail...later her dad more or less retaliates by telling her that her sister isn't really his son--and it's not until one of the local business owners observes Zippy looks just like her dad that she realizes both parents had been inventing). Also, an older brother that Zippy doesn't quite know what to do with, an older neighbor woman Zippy's convinced is murderous, and a best friend that Zippy feels obliged to speak for--since Julie is quiet and doesn't speak up for herself.

Even if you weren't Zippy as a child, she's the type of child you remember well: outspoken, energetic, and always managing to get in trouble--even when she doesn't mean to. An animal lover who falls in love with chickens as well as dogs, and who feels a little sorry for those who don't understand Chicken Love as they do other animal love. She's an accident-prone story lover and storyteller.

It's a relatively quick read, and it's something that's easily read one chapter at a time without feeling as though you're losing the thread of anything. Also, be forewarned: it's the type of thing just funny enough that you might giggle at in public.

Rereading Harry Potter: The Chamber of Secrets

Please don't judge how these posts are going to be spaced out. Mostly because I've been rereading the books at night, before I go to bed. I do this for a couple of reasons: first, once I start rereading these books, I still get resentful when things that aren't necessary (y'know, like work and such) interrupt my reading. Secondly, if I fall asleep in the middle of a chapter, I can wake up and resume my reading if I so desire without being lost. At all. Hey now, I said not to judge.

Anyway, I don't know how, but I'd forgotten how utterly awkward Ginny Weasley is when we first encounter her at any length. I'd also forgotten how completely delightful-in-his-idiocy Gilderoy Lockhart is, and how completely comic it is to watch Hermione experience a crushin'-on-the-dumb-teacher situation...

This time around, the plot devices seem much more obvious to me: hey look! Harry's gonna have to visit Dumbledore, which means he's gonna seen Fawkes the phoenix, which clearly isn't a setup for anything (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)! And he's going to see the Sorting Hat again, too. That will never factor in later. To her credit, though, Rowling kept a lot of these devices in her back pocket for later use. How handy to pull the sword out of the sorting hat! How nice to have a phoenix around! And while, yes, the brushwork in her devices in THIS book seem shoddy, it's rather impressive that I know they'll show up in later books when I'm not expecting them at all.

And early on, Rowling shows she's willing to not pull punches with these main characters--Hermione doesn't die, sure--but she still gets frozen in stone. And she still manages to contribute, what with that clenched note in her fist and all!

Some of these things, even in the second one, are striking me as unnecessary: does Gryffindor really need to keep winning the House Cup? Do we really need creepy little Colin Creevey reminding us of Harry's fame?

But then, some of these things are patently necessary: Harry creeping everyone out by speaking to snakes. The window-to-the-past with Tom Riddle. Although I must admit that it struck me this time around--if we're to buy that Tom was always so genius (and yes, he turned evil, but still--genius)--why doesn't he stop the phoenix from crying on Harry? And all of the similarities to Voldemort are much more pronounced and much more interesting: some of them are directly linked to that fateful night, but not to what happened to Harry when he got invested with a li'l bit of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

This time around, I find that my only annoyance is the inevitable exposition at the beginning of the book. In case you didn't know, Harry's a wizard orphan who lives with dreadful Muggles during the summers and then travels to this magical Hogwarts school. Quidditch, even in this book, is re-explained for the benefit of young Muggle first-years. We must travel through those delightful distinctions between Muggles and full-blooded wizards. (Although pedigree gets tricky here, doesn't it? Technically, Harry's mother is Muggle-turned-witch, while Harry's father is supposedly pure-blood. But if they both went to Hogwarts and were both wizards, Harry somehow ends up being pure-blooded?)

The exposition, in my opinion, is more than a little pointless: why are you going to read Chamber of Secrets if you didn't first pick up Sorcerer's Stone? Readers know these things! Still, a repeat experience: I got to those last few chapters and I found myself unwilling to stop. Oh no! Ginny's in the chamber! I can't go to bed yet! Harry has to save her first! I have super high rereading expectations of the third. It's always been a favorite.

Ender's Game

It has been a while since I posted a review ... having a baby will do that to you! This is a book that my husband owned, and I've read several times since we've been married. The book first came out in the early eighties, before I was even born, and is still being read by many today. My summary of this book in one sentence would be Lord of the Flies meets battle school.

Earth has survived two invasions by aliens they call Buggers, and are preparing children to fight in the Third Invasion. Children who show promise are sent to Battle School to learn and practice fighting. Ender Wiggin is one such child, is really the child that they are looking for to fight the aliens. He is the third child (it is against society to have more than two children - any more and they're not really supported - public education, etc) in a family of geniuses with an older brother Peter who is cold hearted, and an older sister Valentine who is gentle and thoughtful. Ender is the combination of the two. He is sent to Battle School at the age of six, where he is singled out by a leader which causes everyone to hate him.

Ender learns quickly by observing, and quickly outshines the older students. The students are organized into armies and they fight each other in zero gravity battle rooms. Ender has a genius mind, and starts playing the game as it has never been played before. To challenge him the leaders change the rules, assign him multiple battles in a day, give him an army of misfits, and still he shines. He graduates Battle School at the early age of twelve and ends up at Commander School. The end of the book is the Third Invasion, and I'll leave you to find out what happens.

This book is intriguing, and one that is hard to put down. In some ways it is hard to imagine a six year old saying and doing some of the things that Ender does, but that is what he was made for - to fight off the buggers. There is humor - Ender writing on the desks claiming they come from "God", and there are disturbing moments where Ender hurts and kills people. You sympathize with him as he is growing up in an environment where he has no real friends, and doesn't get an opportunity to be a child. I really enjoy reading this book and recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction.

The Swan Thieves

In an earnest effort to read books that have been on my shelves for months upon months now (I blame my master's degree--it forced me to acquire books I didn't really have time to read until I finished school), I have been working my way starting from the bottom shelf and working backward. Sort of. Okay, that's a lie. There really isn't much method to my madness, except the method of choosing books I've not yet read.

If I were to summarize Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves in four words (three? not sure if I should count the hyphenation as one or two): lovely but long-winded. And, in its own way, I'd have to say it strikes me as a bit of painterly/psychological-mystery knock-off of A.S. Byatt's Possession. (If I had to choose between the two, I'd frankly take Byatt in a heartbeat.)

Andrew Marlow is a psychiatrist/painter whose friend refers him the case of Robert Oliver, a painter who has been institutionalized for attempting to attack a painting. The friend, who is a bit mystified, thinks of Marlow. Paintings, you know. And what follows is an investigation of Robert Oliver's life, as well as parallel story lines that feature a female Impressionist painter named Beatrice de Clerval.

Interjecting their own bits of the story are Oliver's ex-wife and his mistress, helping Marlow to construct Oliver's life as he refuses to talk. Instead, some letters in Oliver's possession lead Marlow to Beatrice (who, incidentally, Robert Oliver manically paints over and over), and a great academic painterly psychological investigation follows. If you've read Possession, you know why this seems like a painting-based knockoff.

Nevertheless, Kostova has a lovely grip on language and she knows how to describe colors and scenes in the manner of someone who loves to study such. That's where the "but long-winded" part of "lovely but long-winded" comes in: sometimes the descriptions-from-artistic-perspective run long. And dry. And I end up less visualizing a picture and more thinking: Could you move on with the STORY already?

Still trying to decide how much of a payoff I felt at the end of the novel, as well. As much as I like art mixing with life, and books about art and life, and books about artistic relationships and relationship between art and life--I can't decide if, in the end, there was much of a point. But at least it was pretty.