Menage à Trois Bingo

Having posted yesterday about a new book I just read, today I'll tell you about an old book I've read a dozen times and am currently listening to on Audible during my daily commute.

There's a short list of books I have been in the habit of rereading every year or 18 months for the last twenty years or so. This is one of them. I'm trying to figure out what these books have in common, and I'm not sure what it is. One element, particularly strong here and in Kay's Fionavar Tapestry (also on my short list--and I have just convinced my daughter to read it for the first time herself), is something I tend to call "glory", which is not the prideful accumulation of adulation that is often meant by the word. I think I am coming at it from the other side, not of receiving acclamation but of *wanting to acclaim* the person. It's admiration of a selfless and/or sacrificial act, of truly acting for the greater good without heed to one's own losses.

Another aspect is that Kay's writing just seems to get me right in the heart. It's particularly affecting in the audiobook; the narrator (Simon Vance) is fantastic. Obviously, I know what happens in the end; when a doomed character first appears I often cry for their ultimate fate. But this time, every single scene (I exaggerate only slightly) is making me weep. Makes driving interesting, I must say. But there's something I find valuable and life-affirming and positive in the tears. Calling it catharsis doesn't feel exactly right, but it's somewhere in the neighborhood.

Oh, right, you want to know what it's about? It's about names, the power of names, about dreadful loss that cannot be shared with anyone who didn't experience that loss themselves, and about the struggle to drive out evil tyranny and bring a beautiful thing back into the world. All of the above is exactly literal, not just thematic. The evil tyrant isn't a Sauron, doing evil just because he's evil: he's a bereaved father who took a horrible vengeance. The good guys are flawed in interesting ways as well, and sometimes suborn themselves unintentionally.

mousefeathers gave me this last month, as we are soon to be the parents of a teenager. She stipulated that she had bought it years ago and wasn’t even sure she ever read it. I read it a week or so ago. I started this post the next day but have not had time to work on it until now.

I am not impressed. Dr. Rosemond calls himself a psychologist heretic, and has little good to say about his fellow professionals. Nor does he have anything good to say about parents who disagree with his premises or conclusions. He repeatedly insults parents whose values for their children differ from his, calling them foolish or deluded or simply “bad parents”.

The book, while not presented as “Christian parenting,” is nonetheless full of Bible references and Christian assumptions and expects that readers will subscribe to them. He spends a lot of time going off on divorce: “Today the once-sacred sacrament of marriage is nothing more than a flimsy contract that any partner can walk away from at the slightest whim.” He insists that unhappy couples should just suck it up and stay married. “...agree between you that you’re going to hang in there no matter what...Staying married is the toughest thing you will ever do, which is precisely why it is the most rewarding thing you will ever do.” His opinion of feminism is even worse: the only mention of the word comes in the phrase “the feminist sport of having children out of wedlock”!!!. Even political correctness comes in for a casual slam: “...nothing the child in question can do but say ‘Uncle!’ (or to be politically correct about it, “Sibling of a parent!’)” What was that for?

He sums up his overall method of parenting with the old saw “Give them enough rope to hang themselves,” meaning allow teenagers a great deal of freedom and independence (which I tend to agree with in general) but he then seems to take a great deal of pleasure in coming up with the “hangings” when the teens overstep the freedoms allowed. The punishments or consequences need not have anything to do with the error, nor even be associated in time; indeed he makes a point of how he thinks it’s better if they are not, claiming that “eight out of ten times a child misbehaves, effective consequences are not immediately available.” Where this 80% number comes from is never stated, so I can only assume it comes out of his ass. In narrating a conversation about this idea with a parent (client) he analogizes to a workplace situation where someone “misbehaves on the job” (his words) and four months later finds out during the annual performance review that the “misbehavior” has caused the loss of a raise. Personally I would think that is bad management as well—why would you let someone go on for months thinking they were doing fine if they’re not?

An example: he tells a story about asking his daughter to wash dishes and clean house while he and his wife were out, in preparation for a dinner party that night. She refused, so he said, “If it’s not done when we get home we’ll do it.” It wasn’t, and they did. No consequences for the daughter, who continued in her original plans for the evening...until the following Friday when she wanted to go out with her friends and he announced (in front of her friend for maximum humiliation), “Oh, I forgot. Since you didn’t wash dishes last week you can’t go out now.”

He only once mentions gay teens, tossing out this remark on the very last page, in reference to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which he disparaged for a page and a half: “Here’s another absolutely astonishing finding:[...] Teens who have repeated a grade in school or are attracted to members of the same gender are more likely to have problems than heterosexual teens who have done reasonably well in school. As today’s teenager might say, ‘Well, duh!!!’” Due to the complete lack of any other comments on gay teens it rather looks like he’s saying it’s their own fault for having problems. (Interestingly this page appears to be missing from Google Books. All the other quotes show up on the appropriate page, but searching by several words on page 265 does not find anything.)

After writing all this, I looked at the reviews from Google Books, which are invariably positive. I would probably have not been so irritated by this book if it did not have the preachy condescension and insults or the anti-divorce, anti-feminism slams.

I have read thousands of books in my life; I think this might be the most unusual, unexpected book I've ever read. If I had to throw a genre name at it, it might be necropunk. You know how steampunk is nifty technology based on steam engines? The world of Bone Song is full of technology based on dead people. Much of the remaining tech is enslaved wraiths performing tasks.

You see, your bones retain the memories formed in life. Trained individuals can hear the memories and emotions from the bones--that's how they do autopsies--and the memories and emotions can be harnessed magically to make energy.

And along of all that there are also (and I quote) "non-humans, in-humans, and ex-humans". The aforementioned wraiths, zombies--which are not brainless brain-eating monsters but rather people who have died and been technologically brought back to life.

It was creepy, as you might have guessed, but the milieu was fabulous and imagination-inducing.

I've talked about the setting. So now to the plot. It's a police procedural/detective story: police lieutenant attempts to prevent a murder, fails, and then joins a special team which is pursuing the cabal who organized the murder.

A few weeks ago, I borrowed an audiobook from the library. As I didn't get around to listening to it in time, and had already renewed it once, I ripped it to mp3's and returned it. Today, I finished listening to it.

Shortest review: Highly recommended.

Short review: A very intimate memoir of her time as an NPR correspondent in Baghdad during the run-up to war, covering the period of October 2002 to May 2003, Naked in Baghdad is by turns poignant, hilarious, endearing, and raw. Her daily experiences lead as well to reminiscences about her previous experiences in places like the Soviet Union. Interspersed with her diary entries are delightful emails from her husband to friends back home describing his view of her experiences.

Five years of hindsight add another layer of meaning to her reports...even before the war the Iraqi citizens she interviewed feared the aftermath of Saddam's ouster. How clearly they saw.

I had already appreciated Anne Garrels' reporting; now I feel like I'd enjoy knowing her as a person. reannon, I think this is a journalist you could approve of.

I think this book was very well suited to the audio format, being read by Garrels-the-radio-reporter herself.

Oh, and the title? Very literal. During Saddam's regime, foreign journalists were tightly controlled, and they were required to keep their satellite phones at the Information Ministry. She had managed to sneak hers into her hotel room, but there were constant rumors of security sweeps. Her brilliant plan: to broadcast naked, and if a midnight knock came, to plead "just woke up" and beg a moment to dress, during which she'd be able to hide the satphone.

Last library visit, I checked out an audio book of Wicked. I've listened to it on my daily commute for two weeks now, all seventeen discs of it (no exaggeration here, although seventeen is one of my favorite "undefined large number" substitutions) and finished it this morning.

I can't honestly say I liked it. I'm not sure I can say I disliked it, either, in the overall. But I just couldn't seem to buy into it, for a number of reasons. Kept listening mostly because the alternative was Pledge Week on NPR.

• ( The purple prose )
• ( The redefinition of Oz )
• ( Character non-development )

I know a lot of people who loved the musical. I'm wondering whether any or all of my objections are alleviated by the different format. Anyone out there both seen the musical and read the book who'd like to weigh in?