Premature Review: Duck and Cover!

True Confession: I’ve had Brenda Peterson’s book Duck and Cover! on my Kindle for months–actually, I had the book before I had the Kindle. She gave me a Kindle copy as a “thank you” for tweaking her book cover a bit. So I had the book and for some reason I just never got it opened. Well, I finally did this afternoon as I was waiting for The Boy to drag himself out of the weight room after his “Burst and Explode” or some such thing training–it’s supposed to keep him toned and ready for football practice this summer, which will keep him toned and ready for the football season, which is a mere–what?–ten months away? ish? Around here we take our football very, very seriously, even though we win surprisingly seldom for all the work we put into it.

Anyhow, there I am outside the weight room with only my Kindle for company, and I’m housecleaning on it, taking off the read books, and the moron tests The Boy loaded on and insisted I take (I failed both of them), and wondering what I should read next when there, buried behind the second moron test, was Duck and Cover!

It seemed appropriate after the weekend we just had–snow and freezing rain enough to shut down school for two days–so I opened it up and by the bottom of the first page I was remembering why I loved I Want To Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here On Earth, the first book of Peterson’s that I read. It’s her voice. Her writer’s voice, I mean.

She writes lovely, tight, evocative prose full of hidden shadows and deft humor that grows not out of facile word plays but out of idea plays. And she can capture a character in dialog like nobody’s business. Take, for example, her comment that the Virgin Mary was merely “God’s vehicle” to get Jesus into the world. The speaker then goes on to note that she considers her own red Dart God’s vehicle as well, but she certainly doesn’t get all offended if someone speaks of it in disrespectful terms.

There’s more. There’s much, much more, and I’m only into the third chapter. If you love good writing, read Brenda Peterson. Start with Duck and Cover! You can get it here. I’ll do a full review later, but you should go grab a copy of your own. You really, really should.

Down on the Farm

I’ve been noodling around about what I’d like to publish next. I’ve got a bazillion books (approximate figure only) partway done, but none of them is exactly jumping up and down and screaming, “Pick me, pick me,” at the moment. What to do…what do do…

I thought it might be helpful to get some outside viewpoints. Namely, yours, gentle readers. So here are my choices, along with the pros and cons of each. Weigh in, won’t you, and let me know which you think is my next best book?

1. Down on the Farm: A collection of short stories about women on farms. We have Maggie, a young mother who lives on a dairy farm until one day, when it all goes horribly wrong. We have some the story of Casanova, my sister, and me. We have the story of the birds in the strawstack, and what happened to them. We have the story of the Water Witch. We have the story of baling in the early morning. These are stories and mood pieces which capture a bit of the flavor of ranch life through the eyes of women.

2. Seeing Daddy Out: A memoir of a year in my life, when I had to face the reality of my dad’s death when I had yet to come to terms with his life. It’s a book about loving, and losing, and betrayal, learning to be on my own, and ultimately, finding my way back to loving. A lot happened that year.

3. The Rosemont Car: My grandfather’s life, as I knew it through the lens of his stories–and through his love and acceptance. So far this is written like a play to be read, but it could be converted.

4. A sequel to Good On Paper: This centers on a new character, who buys the family farm and sort of inherits DJ, now that Jennifer’s in the pokey.

5. A gigantic, amorphous, untitled work that can’t decide if it wants to be horror, fantasy, steampunk, erotica, or what. What I’d need to do with this is pick one thread and develop it–I’ve got some nice kid stuff in there.

6. A middle reader fantasy about a girl (Jane Gray) who is so far a fun read–her family is far from ideal, but she just takes it in stride and fights back.

Throughout the next couple weeks, I’ll post up snippets of each, so you can judge fairly.

Video Review: Going Postal

If I hadn’t read Terry Pratchett’s book Going Postal way back when it was first published in 2005 I would have sworn the DVD I watched tonight was satirizing the actions of Big Business over the last few years. The DVD was also called Going Postal, which might have counted as copyright infringement had it not been based on Mr. Pratchett’s fine book, introduced by Mr. Pratchett himself, and–a special treat for all us groupies–graced with a lovely little cameo appearance by the author.

I’ve been reading the Disc World books since The Boy was The Baby, and I was pushing him down the street in Eagle Point, Oregon, to borrow Pratchett books from the tiny library. The first one I read was Hogfather, and from the moment Mr. Teatime (pronounced Tay-a-tim-ay) lisps his first sinister lines I was hooked.

By the time Going Postal came out I had graduated to buying the Pratchett books, in hard cover, because I knew then, and I know now, that these are books I will keep until I die, and then I want them buried with me. So–long-time fan of the books here, but the movies are a comparatively new guilty pleasure.

Chaulk it up to us not having cable until we moved to Milton-Freewater, but somehow the fact that Mr. Pratchett’s books were migrating to the small screen had escaped me. When I discovered Hogfather for sale on Amazon (and surely that was Kismet at work, that my first Pratchett DVD would also have been my first Pratchett book) I nearly swooned. And then I found The Color of Magic. And this afternoon the nice Fed Ex lady knocked on my door I answered it she placed the precious package in my hands–my very own DVD of Going Postal: The Movie.

When we popped it into the PS3 (and how cool is that, that we no longer have to have two machines in order to both play games and watch movies?) The Boy and I planned for a long, lazy evening in Ankh Morpork. And that’s exactly what we got. One of the things I love about the Pratchett movies is that they look exactly the way they should. Part of this might be that Pratchett is involved in the production. Part of this surely is that since some of the novels have been made into graphic novels the set designers and wardrobe people have resources from which to draw.

But this movie has Something More, and it gets it from the context in which it will inevitably be watched. As I said, I read the book back in 2005, and enjoyed it. But as I watched the movie tonight I was struck by the eerie parallels with our time. Mr. Pratchett is not only a damned fine writer–he is apparently a prophet as well.

I won’t spoil the movie for you because you truly need to get it and watch it for yourself, but I will say that in writing this book Mr. Pratchett juggles things like bankrupt post offices, robber barons who operate within the letter of the law while systematically robbing the people they profess to serve, the role of marketing in shaping public opinion, and a multitude of other issues that apparently plague Ankh-Morpork as well as us–and he never once drops the ball.

I know I just make this sound like a “thinky” movie, the kind of thing you want to be seen renting, but fails to grip once you’ve gotten your bathrobe on and the popcorn popped, but Pratchett’s genius lies in being able to take an idea that seems bizarre on the face of it and make it seem not only logical but inevitable–and to do in in the midst of a teeming, roiling, bawdy city that’s like no city anywhere on earth–or The Disc, for that matter.

I love Going Postal for the same reason that I love Terry Pratchett’s books–because first of all they’re such fun (how can you not like a book that contains a mystery meat pie man named “Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler,” and a bum named “Foul Ol’ Ron,” and a thriving community of dwarves–dwarf women are also bearded, and gender is a carefully guarded secret  until Just The Right Moment). Now take all those characters, place them into a situation that seems all too familiar, add a little magic, a terrifyingly pragmatic ruler (and a former Assassin, from the Assassin’s Guild), a policewoman who is a werewolf,  a magical college (Unseen University) whose stated function is to keep people from doing magic, a–I could go on–shake them until they’re all thoroughly irritated, and then pour them out onto a plate that rests on the back of four elephants who are in turn standing on the back of a giant turtle who is swimming through space, and you have a simulacrum of the world in which Pratchett’s books live and move. And in which the movies are apparently shot.

So–get the books. Get them all. Get all the movies, too. Order a case of M&M’s and another of barbecue potato chips. Stock up on the beverage of your choice. Then close the curtains, bar the door, call in sick for a month and just read, read, read. Then watch movies. And when you emerge, pale, shaky, pink-eyed, and myopic, you will only regret that, for the moment, there are no more Pratchett books to buy. But take heart–Terry Pratchett appears hale and hearty, and doesn’t look to be running out of material any time soon. There will be more.

Now go. Buy. Watch. Be happy.

Road Trip!

I know, I know, planning a road trip in January is just nuts. At least, it would be most years. This year, though, the weather is balmy. The honeysuckly on my porch hasn’t even frozen yet. The bugs are still happy. The sun is shining. And I find myself thinking wistfully of a particular stretch of road. It’s the bit of road just to the west of Pendleton, at the intersection where you can either go up the hill to the swimming pool (fun), or down the road a stretch to the house were my mom’s best friend lived at the time (a marvelous place with sheds, dogs, a creek, a huge yard, a swingset, and a big boy who could sometimes be inveigled into playing with us), or straight out of town and down the road to the river, and ultimately to the Emerald City–Portland.

The whole world began at that little intersection where three roads met, and at the heart of the intersection, defined by the three roads, lay a miniature valley. Willow trees shaded it, and under the trees grasses grew tall and green in the spring, and then turned to deep gold just about the time swimming lessons were over. I used to beg my mother to stop the car, just for a minute, and let me go sit in the grass under the trees. She refused–too much traffic, she said.

And she was probably right, but that didn’t stop me from dreaming of that valley. Sometimes I thought I might build a tiny house under the willows and live there, moated safely in by blacktop patrolled by speeding cars. Sometimes I thought I might fill it with water and swim under the trees. Sometimes I just looked at the tiny pocket of unspoiled country, trapped in the intersection, and dreamed of the wagons that had passed that spot, of my my grandfather, driving truck past it, of how it held magic in its heart precisely because it was at once so very public and so very private.

That little valley has always meant the eternity of summer for me, largely because the only times we really saw it were on summer trips–on the way to mom’s friend’s house to can corn, on the way to the swimming pool, on the way to Portland, on the way… on the way…

And that’s the magic of the well-planned road trip–it’s the “on the way-ness” of it. It’s the magic of the fleeting moment, of the dreams that flash past at sixty miles an hour. It’s the freedom of the wind blowing through the car while the radio plays too loudly and we sing off key. It’s putting our bare feet out the window and wiggling our toes. It’s stuffy rest area bathrooms with scratched metal for mirrors, no paper towels, and no soap. It’s the gritty feel of dusty, sunbaked skin, and wonderful coolness of hotel pools as the sun goes down. It’s watching cartoons in the hotel while we wait for the pizza to arrive. It’s going to the movies in a an old theater where there are water stains on the ceiling, a popcorn cart in the lobby, and a movie that’s been around for years, simply because that’s all there is to do in town.

On road trips we step out of time and into a single moment that stretches as long as the car is rolling, as long as the wind is blowing our hair, as long as we can’t see home, and the money holds out, and there is still another road to take. That intersection, where the world started for me is like that–when I drive by it I still dream of the house I might build there, or the pond I might make, or the picnic I might eat under its willows. When I drive that stretch of road I am, for a few seconds, a child again, looking at that little valley that has, against all odds, survived, a trapped moment, a bubble of eternity, a place where time has stopped and held, for a second, forever, summer.