"In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,' he told me, 'Just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'"

F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Great Gatsby"

I think I'm going to get that tatooed on my arm so I can do a better job of remembering it. On the other hand, that's an awful lot of words and I bet it would hurt. So maybe I'll just settle for "Shut Up" as a reminder to myself.

"If you want to write well and live well at the same time, you better arrange to inherit money."
~ Flannery O'Connor, quoted in "Conversations with Flannery O' Connor," a publication of the University Press of Mississipi.

It's one of my life-long quests to get everyone I know to read my favorite book, Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," and to read at least one book by my favorite author, Flannery O' Connor. I know it's weird that my favorite book isn't written by my favorite author. It's a long story. But in case you were wondering, the best book to buy if you want to get started reading Flannery O' Connor (and you should want to) is "Everything That Rises Must Converge." It's a collection of short stories that are easier to sift through than a whole novel might be right at first. But don't read Flannery O'Connor if you're looking for affirmation of the basic goodness of human nature. Ms. O'Connor was a firm believer in the depravity of man, and it's kind of hard to look at such a stark depiction of original sin for very long without squinting your eyes. We're not used to hearing about that, but it's kind of refreshing to be given a walloping dose of the truth once in a while. If that doesn't sound like your kind of thing, it's worth noting that O'Connor was also a very funny woman and that comes across in her writing quite frequently.
Again, I promise to get back to writing things you actually care about soon. Hang in there.

Shelby Foote has died. There should be some kind of national day of mourning for nerds like myself. All of you from Mississippi should read his obituary even though I'm not totally sure how it ended up in the "Entertainment" section of CNN's Web site. Here's a link. May he rest in peace.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/06/28/obit.foote.ap/index.html

I think it's pretty obvious what I'll be doing all weekend. If you call, I make no promises that you will be getting whole sentences out of me unless you say "HALEY! PUT DOWN THE HARRY POTTER BOOK!" at the start of our conversation. Call me a nerd. I don't care. These books are highly addictive, as I and any 12-year-old in the world will tell you. Check out the numbers here and listen for the sound of pages turning around you this weekend. This is like Christmas for geeks. I love Christmas!

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/07/14/harry.potter/index.html

I just finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and I think my head is going to explode. There will be no spoilers posted on this blog, and any comments containing spoilers will be promptly deleted, but oh, people, if you're not done with the book yet, brace yourself. Your head is going to explode, too.
Now I need to go to sleep before midnight for the first time since Saturday. Dan is really thankful that J.K. Rowling only releases one of these books every few years.

This one right here.
In case that link doesn't work for you, the book is Peace Like a River by Leif Enger and it's wonderful. You won't want to put it down. I just got done reading it for the second time after handing out several copies for Christmas presents and I love it even more now.
Anybody else read anything good lately? I'm always taking suggestions.

I have a somewhat embarrassing admission to make. It's probably not something the average person would care about, but remember, I was an English major in college. OK. Here goes: I have never read The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, War and Peace or Anna Karenina in their entirity. I cannot tell you how many times I have started The Brothers Karamozov, and I truly think it is brilliant, and enjoy reading it. But for whatever reason, around page 600 on that book or any book written by Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, I lose the thread of the narrative and find it covered in dust a month later, when I have no hope of remembering all the Russian names and complicated back plots enough to finish the book, and I give up in defeat.

I mention this because I am currently on about Month Two of struggling through Anna Karenina, and I don't know if I'm going to make it. I find this particularly painful to admit, because I decided on about page 200 that Tolstoy was, essentially, writing the "Desperate Housewives" equivalent of his day. Yes, it's well written, has great character development, and is an interesting portrait of Russian society and mores of the day. But essentially, it's a story about a woman who marries a man she doesn't love and subsequently cheats on him. It's fluff, with, as far as I can tell, no great redemptive message. (Granted, it's not over yet. Not by a long shot.)

And now I will make the most truly shocking admission of the day: I'm starting to wonder how these books became great staples of literature in the first place. Perhaps it's because Anna Karenina, when it was written, was breaking new ground, but these days, stories about dysfunctional marriages are everywhere. The other thing I wonder about the great Russian novels is if everyone just decided they must be significant because they're so daggum long. I don't include the Brothers Karamozov in this, because based on what I've read, I'm pretty sure it really is a great book and it's just my own lack of attention span that is depriving me of the privilege of reading it. But in general, I'm not sure laboring over obscure back plots to the point that your novel reaches 1,200 pages is really good writing. Maybe what these boys needed was a good editor, but at this point, I would just about kill for some brevity. And some shorter names. Furthermore, if someone had forced me to read these books in junior high or high school, I probably would have stopped reading forever. We bemoan the fact that Americans are illiterate television gazers, but is it any wonder when we force kids to read this stuff at an impressionable age?

So now you can report me to the Literary Police and have them strip me of my English degree. But in the meantime, can anyone tell me if I'm really really wrong and should keep charging ahead with Karenina? At this point, I'm seriously considering viewing it as a handy ten pound weapon should anyone ever attempt to break into my home. Because you could drop a moose with that book.

This weekend I had the great pleasure of reading "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok for the first time, but probably not the last time. I think this is probably one of those books that everyone else read in high school (I found it on the "Summer Reading for High School" table at Barnes and Noble) but somehow I didn't pick up until now. I'm glad I read it, and I would really recommend it to anyone looking for the kind of book that just makes you feel what an enormous privilege it is to be literate. On that note, a digression from the book review:

One reason that I read fiction is because a good writer can use their story to help you sympathize with a character, even if you have nothing in common with that character. That's a valuable exercise. As human beings, I think our tendency is to only consider things from our point of view, shaped by our own upbringing and life experience. That, in turn, can lead us to judge people too quickly because we don't understand anything about the forces that have shaped their lives and the point of view that they hold. I know it's pretty easy for me to judge people. One way to avoid that is to make a conscious effort to try to imagine how other people feel about a situation. Reading fiction is one thing that has helped me practice doing that. I also read because I don't want my view on the world to be as narrow as my personal experience. Within the limitations of time and space, I can only really experience my life, as a white, middle class girl from a loving family in the Deep South who went to college, has a fantastic husband and a baby on the way. That's a wonderful life, and I wouldn't trade it. But it means that outside of reading or extensive world travel, I'm probably never going to know what it's like to live in, say, Turkey. World travel is expensive, so I read.

Maybe it's for that reason that the most satisfying books, to me, are the ones that allow me to really understand something new about other people or a time in history other than my own. I suppose I could pick up a history textbook and learn the same things, but I'm a story person, and I don't find the facts alone particularly compelling. I don't think I'm alone in that. Even the Bible reflects the human gravitation to stories. If you notice, Jesus told an awful lot of stories to help people understand the things he was teaching them.

The Chosen was helpful both in the category of human understanding and in terms of providing a great overview of the history behind the creation of the modern day nation of Israel. I know that the history of that part of the Middle East is extremely relevant to any discussion of what is going on in our world today, but to someone born in the 1980s, the conflict in that part of the world can seem inexplicable, unrtraceable, and too enormous to even try to unravel. So it was very enlightening to read a novel set against the backdrop of at least a small part of that story, the creation of Israel as a nation. I am also, I discovered, largely ignorant about Judaism, and so it was interesting to learn a little about that religion, albeit from an extremely orthodox perspective.

In the human category, well, I've never been a teenage boy, or a post-World War II American Jew, never known the weight of being part of a religious community for whom persecution is not a distant memory, and I've never been destined from birth to succeed my father in the leadership of an entire community of people. Really, even if I just tried to imagine that I was all those things, it's so far removed from my own experience that I don't think I could do it. But the book made it easy because the narrator and the story were so compelling.

"The Chosen" is also remarkably easy to read, and I used it as a break from another book I'm reading right now that is good but not particularly easy reading. This is why it's good to buy more than one book at a time. But that's another post for another day.

Happy summer reading, everyone. Please tell me about any good books you've read lately. I'm always looking.

Well, I can't remember my name anymore, but whoever I am, I know what happens at the end of Harry Potter! No spoilers here. Just wanted to let you know that the rules about "Lost" viewing habits previously discussed on this blog also apply to Harry Potter. In other words, if you spend 12 straight hours reading the final Harry Potter book and then go to bed immediately, you are bound to have some strange dreams. Apparently, my subconscious is concerned that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named might be planning to steal Kate from the hospital when she's born. So maybe you want to have a kind of detox period after your finish the last chapter so that your brain can readjust to, you know, reality.

Also, try to blink while you're doing your binge-reading or your contacts are going to dry out something fierce. This is the kind of advice you can only get from a true nerd. Write it down.

I have lots of thoughts about the book, but I will keep them to myself until I can see straight again. For now, here's what I think: It was good. The end.

Today, I got one of, well, a lot of emails that I get from Amazon.com because they have my name and email address and probably half of our expendable income from the last five years thanks to my book-buying habit. Usually, I ignore the emails. But today I saw one letter at the end of the subject line and thought .... "I might need to read this." And now for what will seem like a digression:

A while back, I read and proceeded to force many of my family and friends to read a book called "Peace Like a River" the first novel of a guy named Leif Enger. I love this book. Love. It. I love it so much that after a reasonable period of time had passed, I started pining for a new title from Enger. And that's how I got into a habit that probably looks a lot like an obsessive compulsive behavior to the Barnes and Noble people in Albuquerque, which is that every single time I go in there, I go directly to the shelf where "Peace Like a River" is stocked, and check to see if there is a new Enger book next to it. But there never is. So then I spend a couple of minutes considering whether or not there is anyone else I need to buy "Peace like a River" for and about half the time I pick up a new copy just in case.

So back to my email story. Today, as I skimmed my email subject lines, I saw the usual Amazon email. The part of the subject line I could read before gmail cut it off said "Save 40% at Amazon.com on "So Brave, Young and Handsome," by L".... end of subject line. First, I started reading the next subject line, and then I thought, "You know whose name starts with L? Leif Enger, that's who." And I opened the email, which told me that the day I have been waiting for is almost here, and Enger's new book comes out on April 22! So if you're looking for me that day, I'll be in the "E" aisle of the literature section in Barnes and Noble, weeping tears of joy.

In the meantime, if any of you have failed to read "Peace Like a River," please go pick up a copy. Or call me and I'll give you one of the two or three I have lying around the house waiting for owners.

About a month ago, I sheepishly admitted on Facebook and here on the blog that I had gone out and bought a copy of Stephenie Meyer's much-talked-about book Twilight, the first volume in a series of four about the love story between immortal vampire Edward Cullen and human Bella Swan. Having recently finished reading the last of the books, I've got some opinions to share now. I know that all three of you have been holding your breath. Oh, and spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn't read the books and plans to do so.

I have done it. I have read four books about a vampire. A teenaged vampire at that, and golly did that ever make me look forward to the day when I have teenagers of my own. I haven't read that much whiny self-centered drivel since I read back over my own journals from high school. But I want those of you who love Twilight to hang in here with me, because I wouldn't have kept reading through all four books if I had totally hated the whole experience. I will have some nice things to say. Unfortunately, there's just no way to avoid saying one really harsh thing here at the start. Here goes.

Stephenie Meyer is, well, she's just not that good of a writer, at least not at the start of the Twilight series. Before you send me hate mail, let me clarify that I am not attacking the woman's creativity or storytelling chops. Clearly, she hit upon a relatively new plot idea, which is difficult to do, and is imaginative enough to give the vampires-walk-among-us world she's creating some truly interesting angles. The vampires don't have to drink human blood. They can survive on animal blood. That is great! I would never come up with that! That is why I have not written a best-selling fantasy series, and probably never will. My hat is off to her. I'm also willing to concede that maybe the writing in Twilight is actually really good, because Bella Swan is supposed to be a junior in high school, and the first book surely does read like something written by a high school girl. A really boy-crazy high school girl. That is a problem, because we're supposed to perceive Bella as some kind of strong silent loner of a gal who is way more mature than her age. But I'm telling you, if Twilight had a drinking game attached to it where you had to take a swig of your favorite adult beverage every time Bella Swan used the word "gorgeous" or "incredible" to describe Edward's physical appearance, you'd be passed out under your reading chair within 25 minutes. Instead, I just counted the number of times I put the book down and laughed until I almost cried over some particularly awful sentence.

With that out of the way, I'll admit that it may not be fair to criticize these books on literary grounds, since I don't think they even attempt to be "serious" literature. Once you make your hero a vampire you're probably done waiting for that phone call from the Pulitzer Prize people. It's all about plot, and while that's not what I want to read all the time, it has its place. Kind of like candy. Not good for every meal, but unbeatable when you have a real craving for it. Still, the thing that bothered me from the start and continued to nag at me through all four books was that I never figured out what exactly made these two characters, Edward and Bella, so special aside from the fact that he's a vampire, she's not, and they think each other are really really hot. I kept waiting for someone to make me care about this couple on an emotional level, and it just never happened in the first book.

The good news is that if you keep reading the books, at a certain point you just accept that Edward and Bella are the hero/heroine duo of this story because you've been beat over the head with it so artlessly, and then you can focus on other, more likeable characters. The bad news is that If you don't buy the love story, there just isn't a whole lot to that first book, and that leads to one thing I concluded about the series overall -- it is very inconsistent, but it does improve. Having read the whole series, I would say that Twilight itself is absolutely the weakest book of the four, and by Breaking Dawn, the last book, Meyer has actually grown or been edited into being a decent writer. That is a big relief because man, that first book has some serious problems. Sure, there's that whole danger and suspense plot at the end, but that felt completely disconnected from the rest of the story. It was like halfway through the book Meyer forgot she was writing a love story and decided to write an action movie instead. But I'm not going to pretend that she didn't hook me on some level. I closed the first book thinking two contradictory things: First, "That was absurd. I could write this garbage." and then, "Holy cow, I have to know what happens next."

So onward I plowed. And I am glad, because it was in Book 2, New Moon, that I really got to know my favorite character of the whole series, the first one I believed in, and the only one I really rooted for during the remaining books -- Jacob Black, werewolf by birth, a childhood friend of Bella's who becomes her best friend when vampire Edward up and leaves at the height of his ongoing "You shouldn't date me, Bella Swan, because I am a very dangerous vampire and am no good for you" routine. I will have a lot to say about that in a minute, but first, Jacob.

Jacob is so endearing as a character. He's funny. He's likeable. He has a pulse. Maybe if Meyer had chosen Jacob as the romantic lead, I'd be happier with the books overall. But she didn't, so we have Jacob as the stalwart friend who grows to love Bella romantically and must deal with the fact that for reasons beyond anyone's understanding (mine in particular) she consistently chooses Edward. Yet Jacob always makes decisions that are good for Bella, even when that requires him to do things to help his romantic rival. He is, in short, a really good guy. So I feel thankful that Meyer at least gave him some kind of happy resolution, albeit a pretty weird one. (I just can't get into all the mechanics of vampire and werewolfdom here, people. If you need to know, you'll have to read the books yourselves.) The triangle between Jacob and Bella and Edward was the most compelling part of the books for me, even though I knew I was rooting for the losing team. After all, no one tells you that these books are about "that girl who falls in love with a vampire, but then marries the werewolf instead." No, these are the vampire books, so Jacob is pretty much doomed, and that is a real shame.

That leads me back to Edward, and why I could never find him appealing as a romantic lead: At the end of New Moon, when Edward returns to the story because he just can't stay away from Bella, I realized that I can't like Edward very much because he is That Guy. I think a lot of us have That Guy in our lives at some point, ladies.He's the one who keeps you hanging because he just hasn't made up his mind. He's complicated and mysterious and deep and that's intriguing. But eventually, most of us grow past the adolescent girl and, therefore, past the immature guy. Then we want a real man, someone who can make up his mind. Someone with a job, preferably, and who wants a life with us that includes some security and a family. I concede that eventually, Edward does become Bella's protector and committed man. Maybe they settle down and own a farm somewhere after the books are over. But before that happens, we have to somehow root for Bella to turn away from Jacob, who is her friend, and loves her, and can provide for her, and won't require her to trade her humanity for a life with him. Instead, we're supposed to want her to choose forever-17 Edward, who seems to love her based largely on physical attraction. Personally I never recovered enough from my feeling that she was making the wrong choice to be happy about the entire rest of the story. On the upside, the conflict of all that playing out made Eclipse, the third in the series, a decent book, and one that held my attention much more than the previous two did.

Of course, when we're rolling our way into Breaking Dawn, the last book of the series, the choice is made and now the chips fall. Going in, I felt like that was going to be pretty anticlimactic, but wowee, I was wrong. If you've been waiting, this is the part where I eat a lot of my skeptical words: That is a great read. It really is. It took her three books to get me, but she got me in the end. I read that book like it was on fire. I held my breath. And I finally cared about Edward and Bella. I still think that if Meyer had done some things differently, I could have cared a lot sooner, but better late than never, right? In fact, my only objection in Breaking Dawn was pretty minor, but I still have to mention it: Who names a kid Renesmee? That is not a name! I laughed OUT LOUD every time I read it. It took away from the overall effect of some of the more intense scenes ever so slightly.

So to recap, the report card from me on these books is as follows:

Twilight: D- Badly written, terribly executed, saved from total failure only by interesting premise.
New Moon: C+ Kind of boring, too much whining from Bella, but we get Jacob, which is worth a lot.
Eclipse: B+ Actually a character-driven story, and one that I can care about, even though I don't think the better man wins. Pretty good stuff.
Breaking Dawn: A Much better writing, possibly because of breaking the story up to be told in part by my man Jacob Black. Actually has a connected plot throughout. Really fun to read.

On the whole, I'd read Twilight again, if only because it was a fun detour from the kind of thing I usually read. I'm probably going to watch the movies, too. It's very creative and enjoyable, and has given me my new dinner party question: "If you were a vampire, what would your superpower be?" (Mine would be the ability to clean the entire house using only my mind.) The only thing that troubles me about Twilight on a serious level is that the books are, undoubtedly, marketed at adolescent girls. I think that for anyone mature enough to see the flaws, the story is pretty harmless, but nonetheless, it sets forth a pretty distorted picture of what it is to love someone. The idea seems to be that being in love is all about the drama. If you're a guy, it's about finding someone you just can't resist in a physical sense. If you're a girl, it's all about sacrificing everything normal and traditional for someone who may or may not be good for you because you've decided based on pure emotion that this person is your soul mate. Oh, and he's really really hot. Basically, it's how teenagers already think, and it's not a great way to choose a spouse.

Having been married for a few years now, I can tell you that Dan has yet to need to defend me from lethal threat, much less armies of the undead. Not that he wouldn't if the need arose, but it just doesn't come up that much in real life. What he does do is get up and go to work every day to support our family. He takes the garbage out. He is a great dad. He loves me. There is very little drama, and most of it is caused by Kate. Obviously, we wouldn't make a very compelling lead couple for a fantasy series. But I'd take what we've got over Twilight's version of love any day.

I did tell Dan it would be OK if he bought me a Mercedes like Edward bought for Bella. A Porsche would also be fine.