My vacation reading started with a bang, but technically it wasn't reading at all. First, I was just about ready to start Middlesex as we were leaving, but L's sister and her SO kindly gave me a wonderful gift with orders to open it just before we left. It turned out to be Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell—on cd! So we started listening to that almost as soon as we hit the road and the magical intrigues of Susanna Clarke's excellent first novel kept us pretty well riveted all the way to Michigan. The book is not small, so the cd version occupies a full 26 discs. Counting both directions of our drive, we got nearly halfway—to the middle of disc 11. It took nearly that long for the two magicians to meet, so now I'm dying to learn what becomes of them in the rest of the book. I'm still trying to figure out how (and when) to listen to the rest of it, but what I've heard so far is plenty to allow me to recommend it. (Thanks, M & P!) The book struck both me and L. as very much trying to evoke the style of a 19th century British novel (i.e. Jane Eyre), but its narrator has a much more contemporary sensibility, and its supernatural subject matter creates an interesting contrast with the 19th century style. The characters are painstakingly drawn (almost too painstakingly, at times), and the matter-of-fact treatment of magic keeps things interesting. The book's vision of magic (along with its liberal use of footnotes which enhance the impression that every bit of it is serious and true) is both dark and whimsical, and therefore believable. This is serious stuff these characters are playing with, and that seriousness adds a nice edge that makes you always want to know what happens next. Also, even halfway through the book I can't really figure out who I'm supposed to be rooting for, or who I'm even supposed to like. It takes skill to do that, and Clarke has done it well here. Once we were out of the car, I turned to books I'd read instead of listen to. My sister has been enjoying the Lemony Snicket books, so she kindly brought the first five or so and allowed me to read the first three in about as many days. I was pleasantly surprised to find them to be very fun mind-candy. Because they're kid's books they read quickly, and it's fun to imagine what it must be like to read them as a younger person. The Unfortunate Events books actually contain some great insights, I found. For example, the first book, The Bad Beginning, takes some nice digs at the law. This excerpt displays one of them, but it also shows Snicket's distinctive tone:

There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many, many, types of people, and everybody wants to read something different. For instance, people who hate stories in which terrible things happen to small children should put this book down immediately. But one type of book that practically no one likes to read is a book about the law. Books about the law are notorious for being very long, very dull, and very difficult to read. This is one reason many lawyers make heaps of money. The money is an incentive—the word “incentive” here means “an offered reward to persuade you to do something you don't want to do”—to read long, dull, and difficult books. (83-4)

How true! The tone and the little stylistic traits of a) warning the reader repeatedly that this is a horrible story in which terrible things happen to small children, and b) defining a word Snicket thinks his young readers may not recognize, are endearing trademarks of the whole series. But while I found most of the three books I read to be very well-written, I had to quibble with the the resolution of the first one. --- Caution: Spoiler ahead! --- If you haven't read this book and would like to, please skip the next three paragraphs! Also, if you haven't seen the movie and plan to, I'm guessing the following might give something away about that, too. The resolution of The Bad Beginning's central dilemma turns on what Klaus learns from reading these awful law books because it allows him and the other Baudelaire children to convince Justice Strauss to annul Violet's wedding to Count Olaf. By the judge's reasoning, the law requires a party to a wedding to sign a wedding document “in her own hand,” but since Violet is right-handed and she signed the document with her left, then she didn't sign in “her own hand,” and therefore the wedding is invalid. Obviously, this is a fairly weak and unsatisfying resolution to the problem, and Snicket seemed to feel that way, too, because he tries to explain it away:

Unless you are a lawyer, it will probably strike you as odd that Count Olaf's plan was defeated by Violet signing with her left hand instead of her right. But the law is an odd thing. For instance, one country in Europe has a law that requires all its bakers to sell bread at the exact same price. A certain island has a law that forbids anyone from removing its fruit. And a town not too far from where you live has a law that bars me from coming within five miles of its borders. Had Violet signed the marriage contract with her right hand, the law would have made her a miserable contessa, but because she signed it with her left, she remained, to her relief, a miserable orphan.

Um, really? I mean, sure, many things in the law turn on technicalities, but would the law really say that a person's “own hand” is only the dominant hand with which he/she generally signs his/her name? Maybe, but it still seemed weak to me. Maybe I've just spent too long in law school, or maybe not long enough. --- End Spoiler --- But even if the Lemony Snicket books may only get law mostly right (and who am I to say?), they still might teach young readers a good deal, especially in the way they attempt to expand their readers' vocabulary by defining words like “incentive” and putting them into context. One word I learned from the second book is “brummagem,” which “is such a rare word for 'fake' that even Klaus didn't know what it meant” (91). Did you? After three volumes of the Unfortunate Events in a row, I decided to take a little breather from the series. After all, the movie is only supposed to cover the first three books, so now if I end up seeing it, the books won't be spoiled for me. L. kindly gave me Into the Forest for Christmas, so I read that next, and as promised, it was a quick read with a somewhat Atwoodian feel. It's like The Handmaid's Tale in that it envisions a near-future where human folly has nearly made life as we know it impossible, but it's unlike that book in its lack of real concern for or attention to the larger causes of the future changes it predicts. Hegland's book feels less political, and more personal. But, like Handmaid it's centrally concerned with the relationships of women with women, women with men, and how culture can damage those relationships. I'd say it takes an idea of female solidarity and independence perhaps a little farther than Atwood does in Handmaid, and for that reason it's perhaps even darker than Handmaid, at least in a way. I'll say no more, but if you liked The Handmaid's Tale, I do think you'd like Into the Forest, plus it's a much faster read. Finally, I ended the break where I intended to begin—with Middlesex. There's enough to say about this book that I'm not sure where to begin, but first, thank you to everyone who recommended it so highly—it really was all that and a bag of chips. I mean, this is one great novel. It's a historical novel, it's a political novel, it's a domestic novel, it's a gender and sexuality novel. It's a little-bit-of-everything novel and that's why it's so good. I particularly liked the playful narrator, a sort of omniscient first person voice who explains his omniscience through the clever device of genetics and the idea that we're all omniscient before we're born. I liked the historical details about Smyrna and the Turks and the Greeks and Detroit and Henry Ford and the riots in the 60s and the sad decay of the “motor city.” I liked the careful and well-developed characters and the way they spanned generations, retaining a delightful family consistency and plausibility over the years. And, of course, I loved the way the gender and sexuality issues are woven throughout, and finally more or less resolved. In fact, maybe the only thing I didn't like so much was that I got the feeling at times that the author, Eugenides, knew exactly how good his book was, and was sort of showing off a little. I felt this most when our gene-crossed narrator admits that he once aspired to be a great novelist, but had resigned himself only to telling his story as plainly and completely as possible once he'd realized he simply had no talent for writing. Yeah, right, buddy. And yeah, I know the narrator is not the author, but still, to have your narrator say such a thing in the middle of a novel that's clearly going to be a big literary statement, it just seemed a teensy bit over the top. But only a teensy bit, because if there's any gloat in that moment on Eugenides' part, it's well-deserved, as far as I'm concerned. In short, this is just a great book. Again, I don't want to say anything that might reduce your pleasure in reading it by spoiling anything (although, while this book is about a big secret, it's an open secret from about page one, so I'm not sure what I could spoil), but suffice to say I'd recommend moving it to the top of your list.