Between the Lines: or, Stick to Your Genre, Kids

Oh, Jodi Picoult. There's a reason most authors of adult fiction don't switch to writing novels for children or young adults, and vice versa.

There's also a reason teenagers aren't usually published authors.

Jodi Picoult was once one of my favorite authors, starting roughly around the time My Sister's Keeper became popular. Her books were always well-written, if not a bit formulaic (the standard hundred-page courtroom battle three-quarters of the way through), and well-researched (though her tackling of a Big Issue each time around became, for me, rather tiresome). I'd heard about this book when it came out, and it sounded fun from the synopsis, especially because Picoult had co-written it with her (teenaged) daughter. I didn't expect to flat-out hate it. However, only a few pages in, my skin startled to prickle and crawl. Trying to suppress the feeling, I put the book aside until the next morning. Yet still, the more I read, the more my skin crawled – crawled until it roiled with loathing.

Here's the summary I snagged off Barnes & Noble:

What happens when happily ever after…isn’t? 

Delilah is a bit of a loner who prefers spending her time in the school library with her head in a book—one book in particular. Between the Lines may be a fairy tale, but it feels real. Prince Oliver is brave, adventurous, and loving. He really speaks to Delilah. 

And then one day Oliver actually speaks to her. Turns out, Oliver is more than a one-dimensional storybook prince. He’s a restless teen who feels trapped by his literary existence and hates that his entire life is predetermined. He’s sure there’s more for him out there in the real world, and Delilah might just be his key to freedom. 

Delilah and Oliver work together to attempt to get Oliver out of his book, a challenging task that forces them to examine their perceptions of fate, the world, and their places in it. And as their attraction to each other grows along the way, a romance blossoms that is anything but a fairy tale.

I'm going to try not being scathing. We'll see how that goes. Spoilers ahead. 

In Defense of Audiobooks

[Levi] flopped down at the head of her bed. “Normally, I listen to the audiobook.” 

“That counts as reading,” Cath said, sitting at her desk. 

“It does?” 

“Of course.” 

He kicked one of the legs of her chair playfully, then rested his feet there, on the rail. “Well, then, never mind. I guess I have read lots of books....”

- Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, page 170

I am, shall we say, a little bit fond of audiobooks. A not insignificant portion of the books I read each year are in that format, or at least partially in that format. The numbers get tricky – seventeen percent this year so far, thirty-four percent last year – because sometimes I switch between formats. Sometimes, I love a book so much I have to be reading it constantly, even when I need my hands free, so I switch back and forth between tangible and intangible copies; sometimes, I'm too impatient to go at the pace of the reader, and transfer my attentions to print; and sometimes, the only thing that will drag my sorry carcass through a book is having someone read it to me.

I could say many things in defense of audiobooks, as they seem to always need defending. I constantly hear people invalidating them as a form, claiming that "they don't count as reading." I ask you, though, what more is reading than the digestion of established stories? When I listened to the audiobooks for the Harry Potter series a couple of years ago, were they not the same books that I read and loved as a child, that shaped me through my adolescence and beyond, that I clutched to my chest in white-knuckled fear or sadness, whose pages I stroked and inevitably smudged and creased after the seventh pass-through?

I have a whole spiel. 

I could talk about my love of multitasking, and dislike for pure idleness, how it's wonderful to read while you're folding laundry, or knitting the long cabled socks that will become your mother's Christmas present. I could talk about the bus rides to and from high school, then to and from my college campus multiple times per day, and how I get motion sick when I try to read even so much as a map.

I could talk about how I've listened to The Host by Stephenie Meyer nine times since 2008, when it's a twenty-three-hour audiobook, because I've come to associate it with escapism and calming. How I used to come home from my senior year in high school, sinking down into my bed in my darkened room, and listen with my eyes closed, because I was too exhausted and stressed and miserable to do anything else. How, in college, I started listening to it once per quarter when things got bad, writing in November of 2011, "This book is my de-stressor. When I start to get overwhelmed each quarter, I pull out The Host. My fingers start to twitch and I long for it. I won’t feel okay until I hear the opening music."

But I think I'd like to be a little bit less dramatic.

Falling a Little Too Slowly (Oops)

In the interests of honesty and the ruination of profundity, I must confess: I have only just now finished reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Oops. 

Back in February, I concluded a post about the book by positing two paths for my reading to take: that I would either toss the book aside entirely, or swallow it whole in the next few days. The path I did not mention, however, was the one I knew was most likely to come to pass: that by posting about my enjoyment of a book one-eighth of the way through it, I would be cursing myself into toiling through it for an extended period of time out of some sort of demented hyper-self-fulfilling prophecy. 

It's funny, because I almost didn't publish that post, for that very reason. I thought that perhaps I should wait, save it for later. But hubris reared its ugly head; I was proud of my little post, of the use of language, of the earnestness; and so I tamped down the prickling sensation in the back of my mind and clicked.

Naturally, in response, the universe chuckled. You want to fall slowly? it asked. Well then. So you shall.

I've been falling through molasses ever since.

Not that Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is in any way a bad book. On the contrary, it's quite engaging across all the necessary planes of plot, characterizations, prose, and use of magic. Certainly, the voice is a little dry, as it stylistically mimics nineteenth-century texts, and I for some reason no longer have much of a tolerance for anything much older than a half-century. And certainly, the footnotes and their teeny font wreaked havoc on my eyes and my attention span, causing disruption where there would ordinarily have built up a consistent pace and flow. And yes, the book is very, very long.

Long, but good.

Which is why, after renewing it and renewing it from the library, and setting it aside for other, shinier books in the meantime, and then, upon picking at it a bit more, finally realizing the damned thing was too heavy to be read in a comfortable position anyway, I hiked back down to return it. Then I tracked it down on ebook, so I could continue reading on my Nook. 

I read approximately a hundred pages more before, yet again, setting it aside for other books. 

Yet I did not despair. I was determined; and so I put the audiobook onto my iPod, to which I could listen for the four to six hours a week I was going hiking.

Coincidentally, did you know that the hills where I live are very beautiful and verdant after the early spring rains, and demand to be enjoyed in the relative silence of birdsong after the distant gusts of traffic melt further and further away with each bend in the path? (Whew.) I did not.

It was around this point where I guiltily remembered that dreaded post I had made. Returning to it, I sighed, and removed the cover image I had included, as if that could detract all the attentions of my imaginary readership away from my bold declarations. As if that could somehow diminish my own sense of failure.

For a while, I didn't read much of anything at all, and hiked in natural ambiance. 

And then, slowly, slowly, I fell again.

And kept going.

And between the past two days, while I spent roughly eight hours preparing freezer meals, gardening, and cleaning, I fell, and I listened, and my waning attention waxed until I realized just what it was that I had been missing. 

It is a great pity that I could not have read the whole thing all at once, because those four hour chunks had me the most engaged I had been since the first one hundred printed pages. But then again, I suppose I should not have gotten quite so attached had finishing Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell not become such a thing of accomplishment.

And Then the Winchesters Shot Them

 In a comment on a Tumblr post, audreyii-fic posits, "This brings back my thesis that every fanfic — every fanfic on every subject in every fandom — can be improved by adding 'And then the Winchesters shot them' to the last line."

The Winchesters being the protagonists of the longstanding show Supernatural. As the title suggests, the two brothers, Sam and Dean, hunt supernatural creatures, asking questions only until they know who to shoot. Or set on fire. Or stab with a customized pointy object. Whatever. Basically, everyone and everything they touch dies. But that's not important. What's important is that audreyii-fic's thesis works just as well on books as it does on fanfiction, though first-person is a little tricky.

Earlier this morning, I spent about ten minutes perusing my bookshelves and giggling to myself as the Winchesters summarily massacred the Potter-Weasley clan, the Gamgees, the Darcy-Gardiner party, and most importantly, Bella Swan. (Or her legs. The grammar is a bit dodgy.)

In the pursuit of forcing others to suffer the same unbecoming snorts of laughter that I have been at the glorious visuals alone, I've compiled a list of improved quotes below. They are relatively spoiler-free, but I've put the book title before the quote so you can skip the ones you haven't read before.

Here, Kitty Kitty

I recently discovered this unfinished post from September. I am going to attempt to salvage it, because I Photoshopped a graphic and everything. I am regretting the title immensely, by the way, but it's already in the url.

Over the summer, I suddenly found myself wanting to post about a mini list of books with magical cats in them. I am sure there are many more books concerning magical cats (The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman suddenly leaps to mind), but these were the three that surfaced in recent memory.

Why magical cats in the first place? Some part of it I'm sure has to do with me being an introvert and a cat person, but part of it has also goes back to the idea of the classic feline familiar. Cats and magic just seem to coexist well together, whatever world they're in. If you find yourself to be a person of similar thinking, try these, if you haven't already.


1. Sabriel by Garth Nix. Arguably the most important (and intriguing!) character in this trilogy is a little white cat called Mogget. He's a snarky brat, as any talking cat should be, who helps our heroine along her journey. And of course, he's much more than he seems.

"I have a variety of names," replied the cat. It had a strange voice, half-mew, half-purr, with hissing on the vowels. "You may call me Mogget. As to what I am, I was once many things, but now I am only several. Primarily, I am a servant of Abhorsen. Unless you would be kind enough to remove my collar?" (77).

2. Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones. This is the second book in a loose trilogy, so you should certainly read Howl's Moving Castle first. Unfortunately, the cats are really only in this middle book, and well, all right. They're also more than they seem. Let's just assume that all magical cats are more than they appear to be.

The cat, Abdullah noticed, had all this while been peacefully licking at her kitten in the hat. She did not seem to know the genie was there. But she knew about the salmon all right. As soon as it started cooking, she left her kitten and wound herself around the soldier, thin and urgent and meowing. "Soon, soon, my black darling!" the soldier said.

Abdullah could only suppose that the cat's magic and the genie's were so different that they were unable to perceive each other (138).

3. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. This book isn't quite the classic high fantasy like the others, and the cats don't play as key a role as the aforementioned ones do. But there is something very enchanting about them, no pun intended, just as there is about the way Neil Gaiman says "kitten" in the audiobook version. (I think it's a British enunciation thing, that crisp division between syllables that Americans tend to slur.)

I looked down: the furry tendril by my feet was perfectly black. I bent, grasped it at the base, firmly, with my left hand, and I pulled.

Something came up from the earth, and swung around angrily. My hand felt like a dozen tiny needles had been sunk into it. I brushed the earth from it, and apologised, and it stared at me, more with surprise and puzzlement than with anger. It jumped from my hand to my shirt, I stroked it: a kitten, black and sleek, with a pointed, inquisitive face, a white spot over one ear, and eyes of a peculiarly vivid blue-green (44).

Let's talk about Ron and Hermione

Oh, Ronald. If only there was someone out there who loved you.

Okay. This has been done to death. The internet has screamed its rage, and the dust has settled. Nevertheless, I have Things To Say.

A couple weeks ago, a teaser article was published, in which J.K. Rowling apparently told Emma Watson that Ron and Hermione getting married was a mistake, and that Hermione should have ended up with Harry, instead. This news spread like wildfire. Cue the screaming. I was always more invested in Harry and Ginny, myself, so I never realized how much of a Ron/Hermione fan I was until this teaser article; I did, however, know how much I hated the idea of Harry/Hermione, which has always felt like incest to me. 

I am not going to rehash everyone's arguments about how unclassy it is to renounce major plot threads in your books, because one, that has been done to death, two, I respect Rowling rather more than that, and three, I have since read the full interview. Here is the most relevant passage from the interview:

Rowling: What I will say is that I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione with Ron.

Watson: Ah.

Rowling: I know, I’m sorry, I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I’m absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people’s hearts by saying this? I hope not.

Watson: I don’t know. I think there are fans out there who know that too and who wonder whether Ron would have really been able to make her happy.

Rowling: Yes exactly.

Watson: And vice versa.

Rowling: It was a young relationship. I think the attraction itself is plausible but the combative side of it… I’m not sure you could have got over that in an adult relationship, there was too much fundamental incompatibility. I can’t believe we are saying all of this – this is Potter heresy!

In some ways Hermione and Harry are a better fit, and I’ll tell you something very strange. When I wrote Hallows, I felt this quite strongly when I had Hermione and Harry together in the tent!

Rowling  later goes on to say:

All this says something very powerful about the character of Hermione as well. Hermione was the one that stuck with Harry all the way through that last installment, that very last part of the adventure. It wasn’t Ron, which also says something very powerful about Ron. He was injured in a way, in his self-esteem, from the start of the series. He always knew he came second to fourth best, and then he had to make friends with the hero of it all and that’s a hell of a position to be in, eternally overshadowed. So Ron had to act out in that way at some point.

But Hermione’s always there for Harry. I remember you sent me a note after you read Hallows and before you starting shooting, and said something about that, because it was Hermione’s journey as much as Harry’s at the end.

And then finally, and less damningly:

Oh, maybe she and Ron will be alright with a bit of counseling, you know. I wonder what happens at wizard marriage counseling? They’ll probably be fine. He needs to work on his self-esteem issues and she needs to work on being a little less critical.

What I get from the article is this: Rowling identified a lot with Hermione, so Hermione ended up with Ron, a "funny man." Rowling says, "Just like her creator, [Hermione] has a real weakness for a funny man. These uptight girls, they do like them funny." That's what Rowling means by "wish fulfillment." I... can't argue with that. Us uptight girls, we do like them funny. I just don't think that's a bad thing, nor do I find it impossible that Ron could make Hermione happy – "and vice versa."

So what I don't get from the article: Ron and Hermione's marriage would inevitably end up in a horrible, vicious divorce. Harry and Hermione would indubitably be better. Rowling concedes, though I'm sure at least a little laughingly, that Ron and Hermione would probably work things out with marriage counseling. As for Harry and Hermione, Rowling says only that "in some ways [they] are a better fit." In some ways. There's nothing definite in that phrasing.

(I'm putting the rest under a cut, because it got longer than I'd like, and I guess because there are spoilers if you've been living under a rock.)

Falling Slowly

The most curious books to me are the ones which demand to be read slowly. 

I am the sort of person who reads a lot, and what some would call quickly. Each year, I keep a spreadsheet of the books I've read, and from 2008 to 2013, I have devoured, on average, seventy-one books annually. Since I started keeping track in 2008 (The Jane Austen Year), I vowed to read no fewer than fifty books, and have thus far succeeded, while reaching no higher than one hundred books in 2011 (or, The Year I Got a Nook). The fact that I have kept my vow might indicate that not only am I a voracious reader, but a fast one.

This is untrue. I am, rather, a devoted reader. I can, and will, sit immobile for hours, with only the swish and flick of my wrist, the rise and fall of my chest, to indicate that I am even still alive. The reason I finished that book you loaned me in one day is not because I was able to read it in two hours, at that superhuman speed of terrified college students right before an exam; nor is it because I skipped and skimmed, which I abhor. It is simply because I curled up somewhere, all day, and read the damn thing, plodding along at the comfortable pace of Bilbo Baggins, pre-Adventure.

From this habit, I have developed a preference for books which can actually be read in one sitting. Of course, I can't and don't always read books in one sitting. But I seem to be most comfortable picking up ones with no more than around three hundred and fifty pages. For instance, I've recently been tearing through Mercedes Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms series. While I think I've only read one of them in one day, I am reassured by the fact that I could do so, if I felt like it. For some reason, this satisfies my shortening attention span, and I carry on.

However, when I pick up a big, fat book – let's say a book of six hundred and one pages, like Steinbeck's East of Eden – I suddenly feel not only daunted, but alarmed. My attention span revolts. I am like a toddler in a high chair, my bib strapped on, my legs secured, watching with my mouth stubbornly pursed as my mother zooms a spoonful of food toward it. Maybe that spoonful of food will be delicious. Maybe it's not pureed peas after all. Maybe it's pudding. Pudding! Glorious pudding! (What do I know about the colors of foods? I'm a baby.) Even if it were my own hand doing the feeding, I don't want to be strapped down here for the lengthy time it's going to take to eat the whole jar of peas-or-pudding. I'd rather grab a cookie so that I can waddle around in my diaper and have done with it. (I'm going to abandon this metaphor now; I could feel it crumbling as it began.)

East of Eden is a beautiful book, much more beautiful than I ever expected, having read other Steinbeck classics in school in a manner much more suited to my baby food metaphor above. But I still freaked out when I brought it home from the library, because I knew I couldn't read it one one day. That meant I had to set page goals, like I did with Victor Hugo's Les Misérables: one hundred pages per day. At least. And then I would be free to do whatever else I liked. Which, for Les Mis, was probably schoolwork. 

I am done with school now, and am unemployed, which means I don't have a whole lot else to do but read. I read East of Eden in three days. Not necessarily because the entire thing is a page-turner – it's not, not entirely. I read it in three days because it was the only way to quell the hounds of my impatience and unease. I had to force myself to read a book that I loved. 

Obviously, that's somewhat problematic. It's problematic that I feel the need to stuff my face to the point of pain, instead of enjoying a normal, comfortable pace of reading. It's problematic that I can't, in almost every case.

Sometimes, with shorter, possibly-read-it-in-a-day books, I try to go slow. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, for instance, was recommended as a book to be savored. The online recommendation that I read told me explicitly not to read it in one sitting. I probably tried to follow that advice, or if not with that book particularly, then any other book like it. The trouble with really good, possibly-read-it-in-a-day books, is that I can't stop myself from finishing them. The pressure of more than a day's commitment gone, the disappointment of discovering nothing more than pulp fiction eviscerated, how can I not carry on into the wee dark hours of the morning, into that exhausting, confusing time when the early birds really do come out early – out of time, just like me? There is something to be said, after all, of finishing a book at three in the morning, and then sinking away almost the very moment you turn the light out.

And so when I say that the books I find most curious are the ones that demand to be read slowly, I think you will understand that this phenomenon is not merely a curiosity, but an epiphany. It is the rarest creature that I ever stumble upon, because each time I do, I have forgotten that such a creature exists outside of mythology. I cannot, in fact, name another book of this species, except for the one that I am reading, on and off, right now: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

Perhaps it is too soon to be making this post. I am, after all, only exactly one hundred pages in (a chapter break that pleased me greatly), with almost seven hundred left to go. The day I started it, though, I found myself compelled to prop it somewhere comfortably on my bed, and read aloud from it for several pages, in a terrible, off-puttingly inaccurate English accent. I have been switching off between reading it quickly in my head, and stumbling over the words out loud (I am a terrible speaker), slowing down the process even more than the extensive footnotes do. For the first time that I can remember, I am enjoying the process. I don't mind setting it aside to do other things, read other things. I've preemptively renewed the book from my library, so I have a full month left in which to peruse it. Not only do I feel unstressed about the extended deadline, but in a way, I want to feel every day of it. I want, inexplicably, to take the next thirty-two days to feel this novel patience and indulgence.

I may find out soon that I despise this book, and throw it aside in disgust or boredom. I may indeed discover that it is a page-turner in disguise, and finish it after only a few days of dedicated reading, whenever they may occur. But for right now, as I simultaneously fly through several possibly-read-it-in-a-day books, I am operating under the illusion that Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell will allow me to fall slowly, and breathe in the magic.