deborahmarkus7

The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee will tell you, just as its title promises, everything you ever wanted to know about Marja Mills.

Negative reviewers on Goodreads are often told to give a thought to the writers behind the books. These writers have hearts and souls and hopes and dreams. They care about what people say about their books.

Fair enough. But what if all we ever hear about in a book is the heart and soul and hopes and dreams of the author in question, when what we were really hoping for was a peek at the person the book's supposed to be about?

Perhaps reading this book is fitting punishment for anyone who wanted to read this book in the first place. Harper Lee, after all, insists that this book was not written with her approval or consent.

If you need a better reason not to read it, how about: it's boring.

Even if every word Mills wrote about Harper Lee is God's own truth, you're better off reading Lee's Wikipedia entry. It has more information, and it's short and to the point.

Reading this book will expose you to such deathless prose as Marja Mills taking an entire paragraph to knock on Harper Lee's door:

I raised my hand to knock and stopped. It occurred to me my cardigan might smell like the mildew that was my unwelcome roommate for the time being. The baskets of scented Walmart pine cones I placed strategically around the house only meant that the place now smelled of mildew with an odd note of cinnamon. Me, too? I lifted my forearm to my face and sniffed. Not great but passable. I knocked.

That's right, kids. She gets to Lee's door, thinks about knocking on the door, and then knocks on her door, only taking about a hundred words to do so.

If the door drama sounds almost too exciting, bear in mind that there are also paper towels.

Julia put the bowl on the counter to my left and set out a paper towel.

"For the seeds."

Mills obediently slips her scuppernong seeds into the paper towel a few paragraphs later. And then, on the next page:

I realized I was still holding the crumpled paper towel.

"Is there a..."

"I'll take that," Julia said. She threw away the paper towel and returned to the stove.

If that's not enough paper-product drama for you, have no fear! About forty pages later, there are: more paper towels!

The paper towel dispenser was on the wall, several steps from where Alice stood. To reach it, she would have had to grip her walker with wet hands. I handed her a paper towel.

Alice dried her hands and then matter-of-factly wiped clean the area around the sink.

There's more, but I'm having a hard time staying awake so you're just going to have to imagine it.

If you need more reasons not to read this book, or something to help you fall asleep tonight, I offer you the following lengthy pointless mess:

Late one morning, Nelle [Harper Lee] and I were taking the long way back from McDonald's to West Avenue. Instead of making the usual right onto Alabama, Nelle took the back way out of the McDonald's lot. She made a left onto the Highway 21 Bypass. We sped along past the Subway sandwich shop and the Ace Hardware store, both to our left, and up the incline to the intersection with Pineville Road. The Bypass ended here. Turn right and you were on the rural stretch of highway to Julia Munnerlyn's house in the country and, just beyond, to the tiny town of Peterman.

Turn left on Pineville, as we did, and you were headed toward the Methodist church. Immediately to our right, we drove past a couple of abandoned structures, a weathered house and a dilapidated gas station, neither of which looked to have been occupied since the Depression, give or take. We passed Dale's large redbrick Baptist church on our right. Nelle slowed and glanced over at me. We were coming up on First Methodist, its white steeple stately against a blue sky.

"Do you mind if we stop off in the cemetery?"

I did not mind.

She knew her way around the cemetery and idled the car in front of a few headstones. They weren't names I recognized. She didn't volunteer information about the interred and I didn't ask. Something reminded her of a story and a smile spread.

"Has Alice told you about our Aunt Alice and Cousin Louie encountering a problem at the cemetery?" Nelle laughed.

I'd heard about other Aunt Alice capers, to be sure, but none in a cemetery.

"You see, Cousin Louie took Aunt Alice and a couple of other old ladies to pay a visit to the cemetery." This was not in Monroeville but, she thought, Atmore. They paid their respects at a number of graves, and were having a perfectly pleasant outing, as cemetery visits go. Then Louie, who was driving, got the underside of the car caught on a mound of grass – more of a small, steep hill – she tried to drive over. The car was stuck there, like a turtle on a short pole.

Louie tried to go forward. Nothing. She tried to put the sedan in reverse. Nothing. They were stuck. The ladies peered out the car windows. They would have to half-step, half-drop out of the car to get out. And then there still would be the problem of what to do next.

Louie clambered down onto the grass from the driver's seat. She took several steps back and surveyed the situation. She walked around the car, perched firmly atop the grass mound, and issued her report to the others, who remained in the vehicle.

"What confronts us," Louie declared, "is a problem of physics."

Nelle dissolved into laughter as she said this, so much so that I never did hear the solution.

Okay? I hope you didn't miss the bit about passing the Subway sandwich shop on the way to that unfinished, only-funny-if-you-were-there-for-it non-story.

If reading that made you hunger for a couple of hundred more pages of such writing, read this book. If it inspired you to Google Steve Martin's frenzied rant on how not everything is an anecdote, don't.

A reviewer at the Saturday Review compared Camilla to The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield and Camilla Dickinson, the protagonists in question, are a bit like Romeo and Juliet: he gets some terrific lines and flails around memorably, but she's the one who grows and matures and doesn't have an ego so huge it could eat New York City without having to open its mouth all the way.

Anyway.

I don't understand why Camilla isn't better known. As in, it doesn't seem to be known at all. It's a beautifully written story, first published in 1951, about a girl becoming a woman. That doesn't mean sex or love or even deciding on a career, though she does experience her first romantic interest and physical attraction in the course of the novel, and she is quite decisive about becoming an astronomer. Womanhood means the end of childhood, and for Camilla that means understanding that her parents were not put on this earth simply to be Mother and Father to a solemn-eyed girl.

As Camilla puts it, "It is a much more upsetting thing to realize that your parents are human beings than it is to realize that you are one yourself."

The romance aspect of this novel hasn't aged well. Frank Rowan, the boy Camilla falls for and the brother of her best friend Luisa, is a dud. He's a pompous, self-important, patronizing, sexist pig. He treats Camilla like absolute garbage. He asks her questions and sneers at her answers, probably because all he wants from her is for her to say, "Oh, Frank, that's wonderful!" Which she generally does. It's painful.

Here's a perfectly representative passage. Frank has just spent the last million pages talking about his ideas about life, the universe, and everything. Seriously, his speeches go on for page-long paragraphs. I think he grows up to be John Galt. Anyway, he finally pauses for breath long enough to offer to take Camilla somewhere they can get a bite to eat.

But I wasn't hungry. I shook my head. "No. But you go on and have something if you want to."

"Me, you think I could eat?" Frank turned on me and his voice was suddenly savage. "You think I could eat when the minute you're born you're condemned to die? When thousands of people are dying every minute before they've even had a chance to begin? Death isn't fair. It's – it's a denial of life! How can we be given life when we're given death at the same time? Death isn't fair," Frank cried again, his voice soaring and cracking with rage. "I resent death! I resent it with every bone in my body! And you think – you think I could eat!"

He looked at me as though he hated me. He jammed a coin into the slot and pushed me ahead of him onto the New York-bound ferry and stood with his arms crossed in bitter and passionate anger. He did not look at me; he did not talk. Once when the ferry slapped into a wave and I was thrown against him he pulled away from me as though I repelled him.

Now, those thoughts about the people who never get anything like a shot at a real life are remarkably similar to my own teenage (and post-teen) rantings on the subject. But it's hard to have sympathy or empathy for Frank Who Thinks And Feels So Much More Deeply Than We Do That He Can't Eat when this is his response after he brought up food in the first place. His exact question was, "Want to go somewhere and have a frankfurter or something?" God only knows what he would have done if Camilla had said yes. Taken her on the ferry and promptly thrown her overboard, probably.

So, yeah, the parts with Frank are rough going. And the ending isn't happy, I'm not going to lie to you.

But if you were (or are) a kid who spent a lot of time wondering about the world and your place in it, and who went on walks at night hoping "to talk to someone else who wanted to be out all night walking too," and who would rather have one good friend you could talk about everything to than a bunch of friends who only ever chatted about boys and clothes – you could do a lot worse than read Camilla. Yes, it's a period piece; but so is Catcher, and Camilla's thoughts and struggles are often a lot more engaging than Holden Caulfield running around saying how phony everybody else is.

Preview Review

I see a lot of GR ads for books that have high ratings and enthusiastic reviews. ("Couldn't put it down!") I go ahead and read the first few pages and see that this is anything but four- or five-star prose. I think to myself, "I should read this book and write a review pointing out all the spelling errors/punctuation errors/horrifying prose/general badness this book contains. However, I barely have time to read all the good books out there. The lie will have to live on."

Finally it occurred to me that, provided I pointed out exactly what I'm doing, it would be perfectly fair to write a review based on the sample pages available.

This is one such review. (My first, to be exact.)

Up to that point I thought our conversation was informal; an effort to fill in some details before putting Catherine's case to bed.

Ruh-roh. A semicolon where a comma or a dash ought to be. That's a pretty common rookie-writer mistake. Doesn't kill my interest, but it's a distraction, and not a good sign.

I felt the muscles in my face clench in anger, "What's wrong with you?"

Well, there's that comma we needed a minute ago.

"You think that I killed my wife?" I felt my jaw slacken and my wrinkled brow un- furl, "She died in her sleep."

Yes, "unfurl" is hyphenated here. Yes, there's an unnecessary space (and, immediately following it, a comma where a period ought to be). Yes, that's a typesetting error nobody bothered to correct, followed by a comma splice. Yes, I have a bad feeling about this.

Catherine was Beautiful even in death.

"Hey, writers – here's a handy tip! If you want to keep your readers' interest, just throw in some random capitalization!" (Said no writing handbook ever.)

I choked on the word "die" and tears filled my eyes as the memory of Catherine's face appeared in my mind.

For heaven's sake, where else would a memory appear? Your elbow? Your back pocket? Either remember her face, or have her face appear in your mind.

Really not feeling good about this.

The interrogation room was dead silent outside of our breathing.

I just read this line to my 16-year-old son.

"Uh, no."

My response exactly. This is trying to sound clever, and it's failing.

He placed his face in front of mine, his nose to my nose. I backed up slightly, confused by his invasion of my personal space, but he pursued me and came within a fraction of brushing his eyelashes against my own.

So. Much. WRONG.

There is exactly NO need to explain why you would back away from somebody shoving (not "placing") his face into yours. And if he's "pursuing" you to the point where your eyelashes are getting to know one another, there's no way you're not making physical contact. Like, kissy-face contact. (And "a fraction" of WHAT? An inch? My sanity?)

"How old is your daughter?"
"Seven." I tried to steady my breathing to ease my anger.

They're still smoochy-face close at this point, btw.

"Kind of late in life to start a family, no?"

Actually, it would be pretty early for a girl to start a family at the tender age of seven. Also probably biologically impossible.

Oh, wait – you mean the guy? I wouldn't know. Neither now nor at any point in the sample pages am I told how old he and/or his wife are. The author has all the time in the world to splain why a man would back away from another man's aggressive eyelashes, but not a New York nanosecond to spare when it comes to stuff the reader can't figure out for herself.

He turned away from me and took a few steps before turning around, "Was your wife happy about raising a child so late in life?" "Catherine loved Sarah."

Moar comma splice action. Plus multiple people talking in the same paragraph. Joy.

I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of my shirt, "No." I lied.

This book has so many comma splices, it ought to be part of the title. Or at least the subtitle. All comma splices, all the time. And that period after the "No" just adds insult to injury. Was he playing with punctuation dice while he wrote, and just left commas and periods wherever they happened to fall? And where can I get some of those dice for myself? They sound like fun.

"Unless... do you mean..." I paused deliberately, "Amber Havisham?"
"You tell me?"

Moar punctuation dice!

Do me a favor. Say "You tell me" out loud in your best tough-guy cop voice. Did it come out with a question mark at the end? (Hint: It didn't.) My son just tried saying it with a question mark at the end, and he ended up sounding like his Italian great-grandfather twenty minutes after he got off the boat. It was adorable, but it's not how people familiar with the language talk.

"Your cell phone?" "Yes, my cell phone!"

Moar different people talking in the same paragraph! (There has to be a name for that. Somebody find out the name for that. Thank you.)

"What if I told you she was in Cleveland last night?"
His words sucked the saliva from my mouth.

...and I'm out. Just – ew.

This book's premise was intriguing enough that I wanted to give it a try. The narrator is accused of murdering his own wife, and comes to believe that his seven-year-old daughter is the real culprit. I could put up with some lackluster prose to find out whodunit. I can't deal with the constant punctuation errors and aggressively bad writing.

Will not purchase; will not put on wish list; will reject if offered as a gift; will not check out from library; will not finish reading.

Shirley Jackson is like Jane Austen: she only lived to write six novels and she died in her forties, leaving the tantalizing beginnings of a novel unlike any other she'd written. Both authors have shelves of their very own in my apartment, because I have multiple editions of everything they ever wrote as well as lots of books about the writers and their work.

Austen is the greater writer of the two, but I have to say that Jackson is my favorite. Not just of the pair, but of all time. Austen taught me to read; Shirley Jackson made me think I could be a writer.

So of course when I saw this novel about her, I was conflicted. I wasn't sure I wanted to read it, but I felt as if I had to, if only so I could tear the author a new one if she screwed up portraying my Shirley.

I'm a cranky old lady when it comes to novelizations of the (fairly) recently departed. Historical figures don't bother me, because nobody can know what they were really like, so such novels are obviously purely speculation; but when, for instance, all those novels about Sylvia Plath came out, I want to have a head-smacking party. (Other people's heads, not mine.) I mean, her kids were still around when those were written, you know? And her kids were in those novels. Being potty-trained, in one instance. I'm fascinated by Plath too, but that's just rude.

(Told you I was a cranky old lady on the subject.)

Really, though, I'm not just being righteous for the sake of the poor wittle children. That sort of novel just strikes me as presumptuous. Where do you get off thinking you're the one who knows what it was like to be Plath? Especially when, if you know anything at all about her, you know she was ferociously prickly and proud. She would hate to be the subject of such a project.

Shirley Jackson, on the other hand...given her sense of humor and her catlike self-assurance, I'm not sure she'd mind this kind of novel at all. I can imagine her ghost answering such a summons – leaning against the kitchen counter, smiling and lighting an incorporeal cigarette. Think you know me, do you? Well, by all means, have at it!

Susan Scarf Merrell keeps a respectful distance from her subject, and it works. Although the book is called Shirley, the main character is entirely fictional – Rose Nemser, who is 19 and pregnant when she arrives at Jackson's house. Her husband Fred has just become a teacher at Bennington College, where Jackson's husband Stanley Edgar Hyman is a popular professor. The Nemsers are boarding with Jackson and her family until they can find a place of their own, but very quickly everyone wants the arrangement to be a more permanent one.

I don't want to talk much about the plot of this novel, partly because it's a largely character-driven work and partly because it's the writing that smacked me over the head and dragged me off to its lair. I will say that anyone who knows anything about Shirley Jackson will understand immediately that this novel is set in the last year of her life, though she was only in her forties, and that Merrell really captures something about Shirley Jackson.

Merrell has also clearly read the eff out of Jackson's work. She knows her stuff, and she also knows how to weave this knowledge into her writing rather than bludgeoning the reader with it. I think her only blunders are early in the novel, where she treats Stanley as a sort of biographer of his wife who spouts paragraphs about The Famous Writer:

"Hill House," I murmured, thinking of the novel in my purse. It occurred to me then that I'd never seen evidence before this of how a novelist constructs a world from fog and fact.

Stanley smiled approvingly but shook his head. "Shirley will show you the one everyone thinks is that house. Perhaps it is; perhaps it isn't. She claims a house in California as the source. The wise man would wager that Hill House came straight from her imagination."

Stanley Edgar Hyman was a brilliantly odd duck by all accounts, but I don't think anyone talks like that.

Or like this:

"James Harris is folklore's proof that man has never been trustworthy. We're not alone in our preference for that ballad; it's Shirley's favorite as well. D'you know, her book The Lottery and Other Stories was supposed to be subtitled The Adventures of James Harris?"

Well, not exactly. First of all, see above re nobody talks like this. And second, the book in question was subtitled The Adventures of James Harris, originally. I have a 1949 second edition, and it says it right there on the cover. The subtitle fell away in later editions, but it was there at first. Stanley would have said "used to be," not "was supposed to be."

As you can see from the four stars I gave this book, these are minor quibbles. I was updating constantly as I read, because the prose is so gorgeous I had to share. Rose is haunted long before she meets Shirley Jackson, and Merrell perfectly captures this sense of a lost young woman seeking a mother only weeks before she herself becomes one.

She also captures a sense of Shirley Jackson herself:

She was in the kitchen, leaning against the sink with the water running. Yesterday's dress again. A cigarette trailing smoke. Her hair caught up in a limp ponytail. She was watching something out the window, staring intently.

...and of the time, so recent yet so unlike our own – a time when you went to the supermarket and told the clerk what you wanted and he went and got it for you, as Jackson uses to memorable effect in her story "Just Like Mother Used To Make" and her far creepier novel We Have Always Lived In The Castle:

When we got to the market, Shirley had already called; the chops were cut and the string beans and potatoes had been set aside. We took a container of milk, and some apples, and a bag of farina, as she'd asked the grocer to tell us.

...a time when men were men, and women were cute and decorative and useless:

We'd not talked about whether I would work, Fred and I. His mother never had; she was pretty and helpless and hardly knew how to open and shut the windows in their apartment. Her job at the store was little more than a social position, a way of visiting with her friends, keeping an eye on their children. Fred's father – most of the fathers I knew, my own the sole exception – would have been embarrassed if his wife had to contribute to ongoing expenses. A wife could work for something specific; if she wanted to buy new furniture she could take a job in a department store and reap the discount, without shame. Though most of the women I knew had been forced to work on and off over the years, no one ever talked about it.

Merrell also understands, and expresses, the kind of work and sacrifice it takes to be a great writer:

"It takes more than wanting," she said cruelly. "You don't have the language. You don't want to share. You hoard your past. You clean it up. Withhold the details that make you what you don't want to be."

..."You change your stories all the time – you do, you've told me so yourself!"

"I clean them up to make them read better. I don't care what the hell I look like, or anybody else."

And she knows how to be spooky as hell:

My mother. A slivered moon night, that part of winter before the snow has fallen, cold hits the body like a shock and we are outside, my fingers frozen, and those are her limbs by the crumbling stucco wall: her arms, her legs swept into a pile by some insane and diligent gardener. Her eyes are closed; her mouth is peaceful. I want to wake up, I admit it, I'm not ashamed. Wake up. Wake up! I tell the truth, confess it here: Momma, I saved myself instead of you.

That's chapter fourteen in its entirety, and it represents the tone and content of this novel perfectly.

I don't know if this is the kind of novel that will make people unfamiliar with Jackson's work run out and read it, or if you should read some of Jackson's stories and novels first and then read this. I can say that if you enjoyed the understated terror of such novels as Rebecca and The Haunting of Hill House, you will enjoy this book.

I swear to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I'm catching up on my reviews this month if it kills me.

(Okay, no. I love Goodreads and I'm all about meeting my book challenge, but I think death is a little drastic.)

I hereby aver that I'm going to try to catch up on my reviews, as long as the tasks I skip in order to do so are nonessential, like housecleaning and fretting.

(Much better.)

Okay: I reread this old childhood favorite a couple of months ago as a brain-break. It stands the test of time well – it was published in 1962. Which isn't all that long ago, but it's long enough that there are the occasional little awkward word choices. ("She supposed her nose must have been sniffing these odors for her all her life, otherwise she wouldn't recognize them so surely and easily, but until these past few days, she'd never paid much attention to them. It was queer." It actually wasn't at all. It was just kind of odd. These things happen.)

And of course there are technology quirks. This is way before books on tape, so when fourteen-year-old Cathy loses her vision, she has to get special equipment in order to be able to read. She learns Braille; but as everyone who's ever tried to read for pleasure without benefit of vision knows, recorded books are a lifesaver – much faster than bump-reading. So Cathy gets a "talking book machine" and the special records to go with it.

I remember all this equipment from a couple of decades ago, when I lived and worked in a home for severely disabled children. I was the only program aide there who liked to read, so I was the one who figured out that those records only worked on the talking book machine, which was basically a record player with a weird spinning speed. (I figured that out by trying those discs on my own little stereo. Amusing, but not exactly reading. But I digress.)

So, yes, this is a bit of a period piece – and yes, I feel weird saying that about a book published in the decade in which I was born. But the basic issues grappled with here are still of vital interest: namely, the tendency for the currently-able-bodied to feel deeply uncomfortable in the presence of the disabled, and for that discomfort to express itself in all sorts of offensive ways. Cathy's best friend Pete drops out of Cathy's life when she comes home sightless from what was supposed to be vision-saving surgery. A neighbor gushes over what she considers Cathy's newfound superpowers:

"Isn't Nature marvelous? Lose your sight, and, immediately, Nature sharpens the rest of your senses to where they're practically superhuman to compensate for it. It's a miracle that just seems to happen overnight!"

This same neighbor is equally adorable while speaking to Cathy's mother when she thinks Cathy is out of earshot, after Cathy and her younger brother have announced their intention to try riding their bikes together on their quiet street:

"Susan Wheeler, I don't see how you dare! If I had a child like that, I'd put her in an institution where she would be with her own kind, and I'd know she was safe and in trained hands. I wouldn't have the responsibility of keeping her at home."

Then there's Joan, the girl who offers "friendship" and assistance with Cathy's school-reading load, when what she really wants is the virtuous credit of being such a wonderful person – helping out that poor blind girl!

Cathy has enough to do coming to terms with what it means to be blind in a sighted world, especially when that means putting aside her cherished dreams of becoming an artist. She learns that it's just as much work to learn how not to go nuts from the condescension and general stupidity aimed her way by much of the sighted world.

Light a Single Candle is one of those YA books that's a terrific read for all ages. It feels like a modern classic, and I suppose it'll be considered a just-plain classic soon enough. Unlike many classics, this one's a lot of fun to read. If you haven't had the pleasure, treat yourself.

I gave up on this book because I was sustaining permanent damage from reading it and I was afraid I'd start hitting back. And it's a borrowed copy, so that wouldn't be cool.

In fairness, I should say there's a lot of good writing here. I really enjoyed the beginning chapters. They even kind of cracked me up, because I have friends who love genealogy and their husbands always get that look when they start talking about it and that's exactly how I imagined Claire looking when her husband Frank started droning on and on about his ancestors.

And Claire is a nurse, which is a really good transportable skill if you're going to be thrown back in time which it turns out Claire is. (Sorry. Spoiler alert.) Can you imagine if you were one of those Nerds On Wheels computer repair people and you got sent to eighteenth-century Scotland? You'd be totally screwed.

But Claire's skills come in handy without seeming out of place. A woman who's a dab hand at healing is always welcome in Olden Tymes, so Claire is able to land on her feet and kind of get a job once she figures out what happened to her and comes to terms with it.

Which is pretty much immediately. Which is when the book started to lose me. There's, like, no culture shock whatsoever. She gets knocked back two hundred years or so. She goes, "WHOA. What the flimminy?" She starts being The Lady To Go To With Your Eighteenth-Century Scottish Boo-Boos. That's it.

There are a few mentions of things like how shoes fit differently back then and anachronistic language, but there's no sense of the kind of thing a person from the future would be startled by. Not the food, not the weird underwear, nothing. Claire just settles in and starts being the resident nurse at a castle. She keeps half an eye out for a chance to get to the place that can take her back to the future, but it has all the deep emotional urgency that I feel when I really should stop by the grocery store on the way home but it won't kill anybody if I go tomorrow instead. Like, whatevs.

Still, there was plenty to keep me interested. Like – leeches! The stuff about leeches was cool. And the info about healing herbs. And that kid getting his ear hammered to a board because he was caught stealing.

Really, this book would have worked fine for me if it hadn't been for what everybody else seems to love about it, which is the Romantic Interest. Which still would have been fine, even with the whole SHE'S MARRIED ALREADY thingy.

But, okay – let's say that she has to marry that guy. They aren't in love when they get married and so the whole point of the book is to watch their relationship develop, while Claire struggles with guilt and fear and thoughts of how her real husband must be worrying about her and how the heck does time-travel work in this book and WHY IS SHE JUST ASSUMING THAT TIME IS GOING BY IN THE FUTURE AT THE SAME RATE IT IS FOR HER? WHY, I ASK YOU?

(Sorry. I'm a minor-league nerd, and this part really bugged me.)

So what I just described would have been a book I could read and enjoy, or at least read and not scream in pain. But apparently someone gave Diana Gabaldon the creepiest piece of writing advice EVER, and it was this:

"Listen – you know how if you're cooking and you're worried it's not turning out very well, just add bacon if it's savory and chocolate chips if it's sweet and everybody'll love it? Well, if you're working on your first novel and you don't know what to have happen next, just throw in some rape! Or attempted rape! Works like a charm!"

She follows this advice to the letter, and I'm sorry but I have to go home now.

I managed to read the "she disobeys him so he beats her with his belt" scene. I almost punched the book right in the face, but as I said, it's a friend's copy so I had to be nice.

Then I managed to get through the "she forgives him for the beating, like, the next freakin' day" scene. I started fantasizing about this book getting stuck in the elevator of a burning building, but I was able to hold on and keep going.

Then there was the scene where Big Kilted Oaf – I mean, Jamie – starts laughing about the whole beating thing and reminiscing about how hot she looked when he was holding her down beating the crap out of her and she forgives him for that, too. Like, instantly. And I'm all, "WHO AM I AND WHAT AM I DOING HERE?"

And still I staggered on. Heaven only knows why.

And how did the author reward me for my perseverance? What is this book all about? What's the recurring literary theme?

Rape. Attempted rape. More attempted rape. Marital rape. A little more marital rape. Conversations about rape. GIGGLING during conversations about rape.

And I'm all, "I'M OUT OF HERE AND I DON'T CARE HOW MANY OF MY FRIENDS HATE ME."

I read 444 pages in a row, plus I skimmed a lot of the rest of it including the creepiest, rapiest Chekhov's gun I've ever seen fired. Do NOT tell me I didn't give this book a fair chance. I TOTALLY DID.

In case you need proof, here's a list of all the things I learned about rape from Outlander.

1. It's a bummer for the woman involved, but save your sympathy for her brother. (Assuming you have any emotional response at all, which you won't if you're Claire.)

Jamie tells Claire about his sister Jenny being raped by a dastardly redcoat. He has a good chuckle talking about how Jenny punches and kicks her attacker. She isn't able to hold him off forever, though. And Jamie gets flogged for trying to defend her.

Claire's response?

"I'm sorry. It must have been terrible for you."

It is terrible for Jamie to have his sister "dishonor herself wi' such scum." (Nice.) So terrible that he can't bring himself to go back home to her when he gets out of prison, and "see her again, after what happened." She's impregnated by the rape. Left on her own both emotionally and financially, she is forced to become the mistress of another English soldier. Jamie finally sends her what money he can, but can't bring himself to write to her. Because, you know, "what could I say?"

Claire's response?

"Oh, dear."

(Really -- how could I give up on this book when the main character is so sympathetic?)

2. Rape can lead to comically inaccurate ideas about how people do "the nasty!"

After Jamie and Claire consummate their marriage, Jamie confesses that he "didna realize that ye did it face to face. I thought ye must do it the back way, like; like horses, ye know." Claire tries to keep a straight face as she asks him why on earth he thought that.

"I saw a man take a woman plain, once, out in the open. But that...well, it was a rape, was what it was, and he took her from the back. It made some impression on me, and as I say, it's just the idea stuck."

So of course Claire flips out and asks him what the heck that was all about. Who was it? Why was he witness to a rape "out in the open"? Was he able to help the woman? What happened to her?

Oh. Wait. This is Claire the Emotionless. She doesn't ask him anything, and he doesn't say anything else on the subject. Instead, they cuddle and talk about how much fun what they just did was.

Because a story about rape out in the open is just the kind of pillow talk a woman wants to hear when she's relaxing after a nice bout of bigamy.

I mentioned I loved this book, right? I didn't? Good.

3. Nearly getting raped turns you on for Mr. Right!

Jamie and Claire are off on their own in the woods for a spot of marital bliss when they're set upon by highwaymen. Claire is nearly raped, but manages to kill her assailant. Yes, she was a nurse during World War II, but I think there's a difference between witnessing violence and inflicting it yourself. She kills the guy in the nick of time. He's on top of her, so she undoubtedly gets his blood all over her. Meanwhile, Jamie manages to dispatch the other two guys.

And then Claire flips out about the fact that she was just attacked, and she had to kill a guy, and she had to kill a guy at close quarters with a knife.

Oh. Wait. This is Claire. She has no response to any of this, now or later.

Well, she does have one response:

When I put my hands on his shoulders, he pulled me hard against his chest with a sound midway between a groan and a sob.

We took each other then, in a savage, urgent silence, thrusting fiercely and finishing within moments.

If your marital love life has been a bit blah lately, why not get attacked and then kill the guy? It'll spice things right up!

4. It's not rape if it's your husband and he promises he'll hurry...

"Jamie! Not here!" I said, squirming away and pushing my skirt down again.

"Are ye tired, Sassenach?" he asked with concern. "Dinna worry, I won't take long."

(next page):

He took a firm grip on my shoulders with both hands.

"Be quiet, Sassenach," he said with authority. "It isna going to take verra long."

I gather it's especially not rape if your husband has an ethnic-slur nickname for you. He should use this at least three times a page. (Yes, "Sassenach" is derogatory. It'd be like if you were white and your husband called you his little gringo. Although that would actually be kind of funny if he's white, too. I think I want to get my husband to start calling me that now. But I digress.)

5. ...or if it's your husband and he just really, really wants it.

Claire is saying no, and no again. She's still in pain from the last time they did it, because he didn't take no for an answer even when she told him quite honestly he was hurting her.

So how does our romantic lead respond?

James Fraser was not a man to take no for an answer. ...Gentle he would be, denied he would not.

I quoted that last line to my husband, and he got the same look on his face that I had on mine all through a two-day bout with food poisoning.

If this book works for you, fine. I'm not here to judge. I'm just asking that you understand how completely creeped out I was by all this, and not tell me I didn't give it a fair chance. I did. I really hate not finishing a book once I start it, but I just couldn't stand it any more.

Dear Mr. Dresden,

What a confusing creature you are.

By rights, you ought to drive me out of my screaming redhead feminist mind. Not an adventure of yours goes by that you don't make some pompous reference to your own chivalrous feelings toward the fairer sex.

And what, you will argue, is wrong with chivalry? Surely wanting to protect women is the most feminist impulse possible!

Actually, no.

In this particular story, you muse that maybe it makes you a caveman, but you always find the death of a woman sadder than the death of a man. A noble sentiment, you'll insist.

But when it comes to untimely death, what group is the most tragic of all? Children, of course. It's especially awful when a child dies, because children are the most helpless and vulnerable members of humanity and we feel a visceral urge to protect them from harm. When we can't, we feel extra horrible. We're suffering from the double gut-punch of their loss and our helplessness.

Do you see where I'm going with this? Do you understand that your "chivalry" has to add up to categorizing women as overgrown honorary children? Not a compliment.

Mr. Dresden (I know you hate it when strangers call you "Harry"), even if you can't understand how cringe-inducing your attitude is, do you think you could try to think of women as people just to save your own arse? Your continued insistence on regarding us as helpless creatures in need of rescuing is going to get you killed one of these days.

I was delighted to see that what Susan rightly described as your being an idiot when it comes to women cost you a few of your most favorite possessions in the course of this particular adventure. If even the mild-mannered neighborhood priest thinks you were a moron for leaving that female merc alone, you really blew it. You know very well you wouldn't have treated a male criminal in such a gormless fashion no matter how good-looking he was. If you'd been that wise with a woman, maybe you'd still have all your stuff.

So how on earth is it possible that a screaming redhead feminist just gave yet another of your books yet another four-star rating?

I'm not going to tell you you're awesome. Your ego's too big already. Your adventures, however, are extremely awesome to read about, and you narrate them well. (As does your vocal amanuensis James Marsters. Mmm. But I digress.)

Most bafflingly wonderful of all, however, is the fact that your creator consistently follows the rule I wish more genre writers would adopt: When at all possible, fill a given role with a female character. It makes life so much more interesting.

It's technically impossible for a first-person story whose narrator is a guy to pass the Bechdel test, but I'm giving this story an honorary Bechdel anyway. You were surrounded by all manner of female characters, most of whom had plenty to do other than braid one another's hair and talk about boys. You may not appreciate their general indifference to your good looks and dazzling dusters, but I do.

Please continue to kick ass. And if you get your own ass kicked by a woman who isn't as stupid about guys as you are about dames, don't say I didn't warn you.

Sincerely,
Tough To Please (But In The End, Impressed)

You can tell from checking my million updates on this book whether you'll like it or not. My husband surprised me with a copy -- no special occasion, he just knew I'd love it -- so I wanted to share the wealth.

There were two awesome anecdotes that were too long to share as updates. This one made my son do a spit-take:

PATRON: [Gestures at son.] He doesn't like to read, but he needs a biography. It has to be more than one hundred eighty pages.

ME: Do you know if autobiographies count? Hole in My Life is a pretty engaging story.

PATRON: What's it about?

ME: Well, Jack Gantos is a Newbery-winning children's author now, but when he was a teen he ended up in jail.

PATRON: [Snatches book out of my hand.] No. No. Absolutely not. I want something Christian.

ME: Well, uh...he learns a lot from being in jail and ends up being a writer who doesn't commit any more crimes.

PATRON: What about Anne Frank? (note from reviewer: my son was taking a drink of water as I read to him, and almost choked when I said this. "It gets better," I told him, and continued.) Do you have anything about Anne Frank? He'd like that, right? It's got trapdoors and secret passages?

o_O

I want to file this last story wherever Dewey keeps "straight, priorities":

MAN: Them's toilet is broke.

ME: Pardon me?

MAN: Yer toilette...it's broke.

ME: Oh! Is it not flushing? Did it overflow or...?

MAN: It 'pears someone put a Pabst down that thang.

ME: Beer?

MAN: Yar. A can of it.

ME: I'll go check it out.

MAN: Waste of a beer, y'ask me.

ME: Yessir.

:D

Keep this book in mind the next time you need to buy a gift for someone. It's the kind of book even nonreaders will enjoy.

The short version: This book started out good. Then it got boring. Then it got irritatingly tedious. Then it got offensively bad.

True fact: It's impossible to read while simultaneously rolling one's eyes, smacking the book in question on the nearest hard surface, and yelling, "Oh, come ON!" I was doing all of those things on a regular basis by the time I hit the halfway mark. That's why this book took me so long to finish, and why I'm going to have to pay a library fine on a book I hate. Which only makes me hate it more.

Specifics: Barbara Ehrenreich was an intelligent, sensitive child. She was raised by dogmatic atheists who taught her to despise dogmatic religious beliefs. Her parents were also extremely unhappy – one of them eventually committed suicide.

Everybody who thinks this is a recipe for growing up to have the kind of midlife crisis that leaves you deeply religious, please raise your hand.

(In case you can't see from where you're sitting: Everyone in the entire world just raised their hands.)

Ehrenreich spends an entire book refusing to make this kind of obvious connection. The adolescent experience this book is supposed to be about is so poorly described that it's hard to sum up here, but basically: she took a trip to the desert. She arrived there after having had very little sleep and very little to eat. She'd also spent her entire adolescence on a ferocious quest to define the meaning of life.

(Ehrenreich seems to think this was an unusual thing for a teenager to do. Ehrenreich has apparently never bothered paying attention to any actual teenagers other than herself.)

When she gets to the desert, exhausted and hungry, she has a startling experience that I'm sure would have resonated profoundly with me if Ehrenreich had bothered to tell me what the heck actually happened. Here's the closest she comes to explaining:

At some point in my predawn walk – not at the top of a hill or the exact moment of sunrise, but in its own good time – the world flamed into life. How else to describe it? There were no visions, no prophetic voices or visits by totemic animals, just this blazing everywhere. Something poured into me and I poured out into it. This was not the passive beatific merger with "the All," as promised by the Eastern mystics. It was a furious encounter with a living substance that was coming at me through all things at once, and one reason for the terrible wordlessness of the experience is that you cannot observe fire really closely without becoming part of it. Whether you start as a twig or a gorgeous tapestry, you will be recruited into the flame and made indistinguishable from the rest of the blaze.

She couldn't just be a sensitive, intelligent teenager made emotionally vulnerable by hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and a landscape entirely new to her. Those couldn't add up to a sudden terrifying sense of her own insignificance. That would be too simple. Too ordinary.

All her life, she's felt herself to be someone special – an atheist in a country of believers, a skeptic among people who value conformity. Now suddenly she is nothing but a pitiful creature who could die of want and be swallowed up, utterly unnoticed, in these terrifyingly stark surroundings.

That emotional moment couldn't be meaningful in and of itself – a humbling experience that would prompt anyone to consider her life from a new and different angle. No, of course not. Being shaken up in this way must mean – duh! – that there really is something out there, some "Other" that needs to be found and defined.

I'm not objecting to the idea that there may well be "something out there." I'm arguing with the premise that having a gut-wrenching emotional experience while wandering young, hungry, thirsty, and tired in the desert makes someone an expert on how the universe works.

That's how Ehrenreich presents herself: the ultimate expert on the ultimate question. She never says "might be" when she can say "must be." She never says "I think" when she can say "I know." She trash-talks science for not exploring religious and spiritual matters, which makes about as much sense as sneering at Stephen Hawking for not being a concert pianist.

The scientific method is not equipped to grapple with philosophical questions. Why is this a problem? It's simply a statement of fact. Science is good at what it does, and what it does is narrowly defined. My food processor isn't equipped to make my bed for me. It's still a good food processor, and my bed still needs making. Well, okay.

Wild God reminds me of my favorite book of the Bible – an apocalyptic, apocryphal work called The Second Book of Esdras. Esdras is visited by the angel Uriel, and is understandably curious. Specifically, he asks some pretty heavy questions about the nature of God, good, and evil.

Uriel listens patiently enough and then says, sure, he'd be happy to answer Esdras' questions. But – fair's fair – Esdras should answer some questions first, mmkay?

If Esdras can answer three questions about three ordinary earthly matters, Uriel will tell him everything he wants to know about how things work in the rest of the universe. Aw, what the heck – Esdras only has to solve one of the Earthly problems Uriel sets for him.

Esdras thinks this is fair:

I said, "Speak on, my lord."

And he said to me, "Go, weigh for me the weight of fire, or measure for me a measure of wind, or call back for me the day that is past."

I answered and said, "Who of those that have been born can do this, that you ask me concerning these things?"

And he said to me, "If I had asked you, 'How many dwellings are in the heart of the sea, or how many streams are at the source of the deep, or how many streams are above the firmament, or which are the exits of hell, or which are the entrances of paradise?' perhaps you would have said to me, 'I never went down into the deep, nor as yet into hell, neither did I ever ascend into heaven.' But now I have asked you only about fire and wind and the day, things through which you have passed and without which you cannot exist, and you have given me no answer about them!"

And he said to me, "You cannot understand the things with which you have grown up; how then can your mind comprehend the way of the Most High?"

I love this passage so much I want to marry it, but that's not the point. The point is: Somebody, please, read this to Barbara Ehrenreich. And then ask her how exactly she has the nerve to admit that neither she nor anyone else knows everything about the human brain – a thing without which we cannot exist – yet she thinks we should skip past figuring out everything in this world and go right to an Unknowable she insists must be out there.

Because, you know, there's no way she could just be feeling something. If she has a strong sense that there's some Other out there, it must be true. Human brains never give us weird signals. Our sensations and emotions are always totally reliable. Ask any paranoid schizophrenic.

Read this book if you enjoy arrogant self-importance with a side of angst-ridden teenage poetry. (Of course Ehrenreich quotes her youthful scribblings. And of course the poems and deep thoughts she shares are totally awesome, provided that means something completely different from what the dictionary says.)

...because sometimes you just need to read some funnies. Especially when you're only about a quarter of the way into a book that everyone you know loves, and you're getting that sinking feeling you're going to end up hating it, and you want to postpone the inevitable for a little while longer so you start browsing on Amazon and HEY, LOOK! THERE'S A NEW STONE SOUP COLLECTION! And you just got a gift certificate, plus your kid likes this comic too, so it couldn't be perfecter.

If this applies to you, read this book. Or read it (and the earlier Stone Soup collections) if you like fun family cartoons that aren't mawkish, sentimental, or chock-full of gender stereotypes.

This seems to be the least-loved of Hanff's books. Readers seem to expect another book full of dated entries, be they letters or diary entries.

I think Q rounds out her other books very well exactly because it's more conventional in structure. 84, Charing Cross Road is the book that makes readers fall in love with Hanff's voice. The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street makes those fans cheer, because (spoiler alert!) she finally gets to go to England. And Q's Legacy is the closest Hanff comes to fulfilling her fans' natural curiosity about her life and background.

Hanff keeps her cards pretty close to her vest, even when she finally tells us a bit about herself. There's nothing about her parents or her childhood here – the book starts when she's 18 – and the closest she comes to any mention of romance is admitting that she "hankered after" one of her teachers at the business school she attended after graduating high school. As soon as her classmates learned of this crush,

they went to work devising ploys to get him for me. The best was Rita's. She got up in Business English class and suggested that after every Friday's English test, Mr. Smoter award a kiss to whoever got the best score. She made him stick to this award for the rest of the 90 days. Which was one reason why I had such a good time in that school I was almost sorry when the course ended.

Note that "almost." If you know anything about Helene Hanff, you'll know that business school and the sort of career future it promised were a horrible fit for her. Instead of going on to be a secretary, Hanff became an autodidact: reading at night and picking up work she could do at home by day. (She considered office work as bad as prison, if not worse.) She also began writing "bad plays." "They specialized in plotless charm," she explains, and that's probably accurate – because if it didn't sound so mean, one could say that's a perfect description of the writing that made Hanff famous.

And yet we love it. Maybe you can get away with a minimum of plot, if you're charming enough.

Q's Legacy begins long before the events of 84, and closes long after Duchess. It stretches into Hanff's old age, including a terrifyingly funny encounter with cataract surgery. (Hint: If an eye surgeon says you won't be able to read for a month after the operation, he doesn't mean that reading will give you a headache or tire you out. He means you won't be able to see printed letters. Or printed anything. Hanff learned this when she tried to take the elevator and "confronted a double row of buttons which no longer had floor numbers on them." Only Helene Hanff could make a month of this sort of blindness funny and fun to read about.)

If you're looking for a weekend of pleasure, get your hands on all three of her books and read them in order of publication. Then cuss me out for making you think you'd need a whole weekend to read these slim, joyful works. You will if you take frequent breaks to make tea and fresh scones, which you'll be in the mood for after reading so much about England.

(Let me know if you need a recipe for scones, btw. I've been told mine rival any you can get in England, possibly because the English don't understand the magic of miniature chocolate chips.)

84, Charing Cross Road should have a warning sticker on the cover: "Be sure to have a copy of The Duchess Of Bloomsbury Street on hand BEFORE beginning this book."

If you've read 84, you already know it takes maybe an hour to finish, including bathroom breaks and getting up to brew a cup of tea (and maybe trying to make that recipe for Yorkshire pudding, while you're at it). You also know it's impossible to read 84 and not want to read more of Helene Hanff's writing. Certainly you'll be longing to know what happened to her next. And oh, that bittersweet ending – you'll want a little antidote on hand to chase away any possible blues.

So get yourself a copy of Duchess, and find out what happens when – spoiler alert! – Hanff finally gets to go to London.

She writes another awesome book, is what happens. This one's a diary – okay, it's based on the diary she kept during the course of her visit. (A little editing never hurt anyone.)

This book's wonderful. It's funny and fascinating and touching and engrossing, just like 84 -- but richer in some ways, because Hanff can give us all sorts of little details a structure like 84's doesn't leave room for.

She's brilliantly insightful at times:

I don't know where I was. I could find no name to the street, I'm not even sure it was a street. It was a kind of enclosed courtyard, a cul-de-sac behind Clarence House and St. James's Palace. ...A footstep is loud and you stand without moving, almost without breathing. There is no reek of money here, only the hallowed hush of privilege.

And sometimes she's just her usual wry, witty self:

Somewhere along the way I came upon a mews with a small sign on the entrance gate addressed to the passing world. The sign orders flatly:

COMMIT NO NUISANCE

The more you stare at that, the more territory it covers.

Read this book if you're a New Yorker:

I am so tired of being told what a terrible place New York is to live in by people who don't live there.

...or if you're addicted to reading and love to hear the confessions of another bookaholic:

I'm always so ashamed when I discover how well-read other people are and how ignorant I am in comparison. If you saw the long list of famous books and authors I've never read you wouldn't believe it. My problem is that while other people are reading fifty books I'm reading one book fifty times.

(I can relate to that far too well.)

Read this book. It's lovely, it's lovable, and it's less than 150 pages. Just be sure to read 84, Charing Cross Road first.

This is, quite simply, the worst book ever written.

The only way it could be worse is if the author had opted for comic sans. Other than an acceptable font, it has every possible flaw.

Ludicrous spelling errors:

Helene finished off the beer in her glass, signaled the waiter for the check, and continued picking at the chow mien.

Her favorite was smoked turkey with Russian dressing and coleslaw on a crusty role.

As for the 1960s British wave of rock that crashed on American shores, in particular the Beetles, she quipped, "They're cute but that music!"

(Just so you know that's really how he thinks that's spelled, a few sentences later he confirms it:

Eventually she embraced the Beetles.)

Punctuation errors:

Why do people keep receipts, she asked aloud.

Really amazing punctuation errors:

The hat was gone, the sweater was gone,; only the rain boots remained in their place in the hall closet.

Lots of unnecessary dashes:

Helene was very careful to maintain a façade throughout the book that represented her as she wanted people to see her. It was never meant to be autobiographical and it was only my monthly payments to her – a topic I will discuss later – that produced the truth, if truth be the word – of the woman behind the typewriter.

(By the way, he never discusses those payments later. Or if he did, he held that discussion in the privacy of his own home. Certainly he doesn't tell the reader anything more about this ethically dubious choice.)

...and unnecessary hyphens:

I do not wish to re-hash material she covered so well.

If there are fabrications, I could not evaluate them and third party sources, as I have said, were non-existent.

This, I think, was unique to Helene – that she should pre-maturely abandon the hope of a meaningful relationship because of a heartbreaking jilting.

Sentences you'd sprain your wrist trying to diagram:

Always with an eye for the ladies, her striking slim figure and long jet black hair done up in a fashionable "French twist," Miriam caught his rapt attention.

A scofflaw attitude to proofreading that's almost refreshing in its arrogance:

Maxine had a four hour break, since they were working on a scene that did not incSo, she had hoped Helene would be available for a late lunch.

Sentences with so much wrong with them, they defy description:

I need inspiration, and tucked her arm in Simon's as they walked down Greenwich Avenue inspiration and a new place to live.

...and an author who thinks we're interested in his life, when really we're just here to learn about Helene Hanff's:

I was there and would have voted for Genghis Khan if he promised to save my butt by not drafting me to be cannon-fodder in a jungle I knew nothing about and cared even less for.

This author will tell you everything you never asked to know about obscure beverages:

...Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray tonic, a drink which had been touted for decades about its healthy content of celery juice. The USDA forced the company to call it Cel-Ray (it used to be "Celery Tonic") when it was discovered that virtually no celery juice ever saw the interior of Dr. Brown's bottling plant.

...but won't tell you how Helene Hanff's engagement to be married broke up. This is a point of vital interest to admirers of Hanff. No one who's read the work of this funny, friendly, obviously appealing woman can help wondering why the social life she describes in her published letters, diaries, and other autobiographical material has no hint of any romance, past or present. It's rude of us, and possibly sexist – would we be this curious about a single male author? But it's impossible not to be curious on the point.

Pastore mentions this several times in the course of this mess of words. One chapter even gives the impression that he's going to spill the beans. He goes into great detail about the fact that Hanff accepted a proposal from Joe Heidt, a man she was very much in love with if this account is to be trusted. They set a date for the wedding, and in a rare display of proper spelling and hyphenation from the author, Helene bought a "simple off-the-shoulder satin dress." The chapter ends with this paragraph:

Shortly after their conversation, Joe informed Lois he was going out of town for a short trip and asked her to take care of Helene for him. While the trip was secretive, Helene did not seem to wonder about it and used the time while he was away to relax and catch up on her reading.

Okay. So...then what? Did he just never come back? Or while he was gone, did she move without leaving a forwarding address? Or what?

Your guess is as good as mine. The next chapter starts with a confusing, undated description of Helene puttering around an apartment. She clearly lives there alone, and she had a roommate in the previous chapter, so this must be the future. Or something. No reference is made to the engagement, though this future Helene thinks wistfully about another guy she was romantically involved with and is now no longer dating.

What the cow? The author collected his information about Hanff from the "over 150 hours of interviews along with nine spiral notebooks of notes about everything from her literary interests to her friends, her paramours and her family." If Helene talked to Pastore about being engaged to Heidt and then suddenly refused to say how they broke up – well, Hanff is famously quirky. That could have happened. But then say so. And tell us more about that other guy, while you're at it.

This biography refuses to do anything as straightforward as tell a life story. It's nothing but a collection of random, undated scenes and anecdotes recorded by an aggressively bad writer.

If you're a fan of Hanff's work and you've always wanted to know more about her personal life, I sympathize. That's why I bought this book in the first place, before I knew what misery really was.

If you're interested, read her books. Not just 84, Charing Cross Road, although you should certainly start there – it's probably her most appealing book. Start there, and then read The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street and Q's Legacy. If you're still hungry, read Apple of My Eye, Letter From New York, and (for a look at her earlier life and adventures) Underfoot in Show Business.

Pastore insists that these accounts are fictionalized to the point of actually being fiction. He offers no evidence for this claim, and I'm not finding him a terribly credible witness at this point. Hanff herself admits that she edited and rewrote the travel diary that became the core of Duchess, but what of it? If Hanff tightened things up and made them funnier in order to please her readers, that's fine with me. If I want an exact account of something, I'll read court documents. I'd rather read Hanff.

If you still want more information about Hanff – and want to see what she looks like, given how famously unenthusiastic she was about her own looks, to the point of reportedly refusing to look at the painting of herself a portrait-artist begged permission to create in England – go read the obituary of her in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/11/arts/helene-hanff-wry-epistler-of-84-charing-dies-at-80.html

Read the lovely account written by James Roose Evans, who adapted 84 into a play:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-helene-hanff-1267169.html

But don't read this book.

This book is an atrocity that may just signal the end times. It brings the kind of pain that Anastasia Steele would flee with screams of genuine terror.

I bought this book because I was excited to see what I assumed was an actual biography of a writer I'd fallen in love with. I finished reading it because I finish reading books I've paid for. In this case, that means I paid twice for the mistake I made purchasing this book.

For heaven's sake, don't follow my sorry example.

Oh, Mr. Dresden. Why must you be so awesome and yet so annoying?

I love this series, but I've learned I have to steel myself for the two cringetastic moments that occur regularly in the Harry Dresden novels.

1. Harry always makes some scathing remark about how tough his job is since people don't believe in the supernatural anymore. Because apparently this series is set in a society that's completely different from our own. Yes, I understand the world's a little different from our own in these books; but the author is asking me to believe that people have stopped being superstitious. Or maybe everybody I know suddenly stopped believing in ghosts, astrology, zombies, vampires, demon possession, Ouija boards, Tarot cards, telepathy, and/or the positive power of talking to plants, and they forgot to mention it to me.

2. Harry has to say something about "chivalry" or "helping damsels in distress" instead of just kicking ass and getting his damned job done, already. I mean, what century is it when your supernaturally powerful opponent is threatening not just your life but (kind of, long story) the whole damned world, and when you finally get a shot at her, you preface it with a statement about how you guess it wasn't very gentlemanly of you, but you really had to punch her?

The fact that I keep giving these books four stars means they manage to be amazing in spite of some serious button-pushing on these two fronts. The fact that they never quite earn five from me is because, well, see above.

I can't talk about pretty much any of the plot here, because all the stuff I want to discuss (including one thing that really bugged me) is serious spoiler-alert territory. If anyone feels like chatting, meet me in the comments section.

I will say this, though: Pizza saves the day.

P.S. Buffy's "Spike" narrates these audiobooks, but he doesn't bring his awesome fake British accent. You should listen to them anyway. He does great work.

(This review is of an ARC I received from a Goodreads giveaway.)

Have you ever noticed that when it comes to talking fitness, it tends to be about what men can do and what women look like?

This is a broad generalization, one I'm happy to see pushed off the table when it comes to running (which is all about how fast you can run a mile and how many you can do without stopping). But whether it's with my friends or in fitness groups, I've noticed that for women the talk is all about losing weight, losing inches, and how you look in that bikini or those jeans. With men it's about how many pushups they can do and how many pounds they can bench press.

This is the kind of thing The Ministry of Thin got me thinking about. I found it quite literally a life-changing book.

It's not perfect -- you can see that from a few of the comments I posted as I was reading. I'm genuinely concerned from some of the things Woolf says that she may not be completely free and clear of the anorexia that once dominated her life. (As she points out, "When you develop anorexia or bulimia nervosa, you cross from the normal, healthy world into this realm of madness. It is so hard to cross back.)

But in general, this book is so well-written and makes so many brilliant points about the damage done to women by internalizing unrealistic physical standards that I'm having a hard time fighting the urge to buy a crate of copies and hand them out on street corners.

This book forced me to reexamine my thinking and my habits. It refused to let me weasel away from the question of whether I exercised and watched what I ate because I wanted to be healthy or because I was trying desperately to achieve a certain physical ideal I knew was impossible.

The answer? Honestly? Both.

But Ministry helped me shift that kind of thinking. Of course I still worry about what I look like. But I've been working on not torturing myself anymore, and it's paying off in measures of sanity and happiness.

A few years ago, I put on some unhealthy weight for unhealthy reasons. I took it off over the course of many months by slooowly changing my exercise and eating habits. Very gradually, I figured out workouts and meals I could live with. I was focused on losing weight, but also on gaining health.

For the first time in my life, I did a real pushup, and then five, and then ten. (I can now do 25 in a row on a good day, but that doesn't mean I like to.)

When I was a kid, I couldn't even walk much because of exercise- and allergy-induced asthma attacks. Now I've worked up to being able to jog 6 miles at a stretch. (Notice I say "jog." I can't call what I do "running" and keep a straight face. But at least I'm out there moving and sweating a couple of times a week.)

I learned how great it feels to challenge myself, to push myself to do just a little more than I thought I could in a workout and to see that same spirit and ambition extend into other aspects of my life.

That's the good news.

The bad news is, I also stumbled into some seriously troubling patterns of thought. I don't think they ever blossomed into a full-fledged eating disorder, but I certainly had some disordered eating.

I was able to stop myself from falling over that particular cliff -- but I kept looking at it rather wistfully. Admiring the dreadful view.

Sure, I hated feeling hungry all the time. And yes, it was a drag to think about my body pretty much every minute of the day (and for "think about," read "obsess over," "feel hideously self-conscious about," and "wonder if my friends have been trying to think of a nice way of telling me how horrible I look").

But dang, it sure would be nice to look all sleek and willowy.

I am built like a little workhorse. I'm 5'3" and have almost nothing in the way of a bustline, but that's where any resemblance to a sylphlike physique ends. So far as I can tell, I strongly resemble the Russian peasantry I'm descended from.

Could I content myself with thinking, "Hey, I kick ass -- quite literally, when necessary. I'm 46 years old. I have a great family, fantastic friends, and I just signed with a literary agent. My looks don't scare people -- I even get flirted with sometimes by perfectly presentable men. So screw worrying. I have better things to do with my life than be decorative, damn it"?

Or did I keep torturing myself with comparisons between my own small but stubbornly solid body and the ridiculously slim forms of my friend, an ex-model and ex-dancer, and her equally long lithe dancer daughter -- both of whom are at least five inches taller and several pounds lighter than I am?

Again: both. I was a part-time idiot, but at least I was attempting to fight my own stupidity.

This book is excellent, but I'm not sure it would have been the life-changer it was for me if Woolf hadn't included a genuinely terrifying chapter on the Minnesota Semistarvation Experiment of 1944-45. As the author points out, there's no way this experiment could ever be allowed to proceed nowadays. It was horribly risky, and ended up deeply damaging the participants.

But the story of how 36 initially healthy men descended into mental illness over the course of several months shoved me right off of what could have been a path leading directly into the same madness.

I looked at the obsessions these men developed.

I thought of how much time and energy I was already giving to idiotic concerns about my body -- not its health, but how it compared to Hollywood ideals -- and how much worse it would get if I continued to try to lose even a few more pounds and keep them off.

I realized that I would have to cut even more calories off a reasonably (but not unreasonably) lean, clean eating day, and spend two to three hours a day working out (as opposed to the one to two I currently aim for).

And I said, "What am I DOING?"

So I decided to focus on what my body can do rather than what it looks like. My abs are not perfect, but -- want to watch me do 150 perfect bicycle crunches in a row? My thighs are not "bikini-ready," but have I mentioned they can take me up my apartment's flight of stairs at a run multiple times a day? And what about those patient, unseen lungs that don't pant for breath after that 15-step jaunt? How about a little credit for the work they do for me? Hooray for strong, reliable insides!

I haven't weighed myself for weeks now. I don't plan to except on doctor visits, and even then I'm going to try not to look.

I'd like to think I would have managed to haul myself back to a reasonably sane place without this book, but I'm honestly not sure I could have.

So, yeah. I recommend The Ministry of Thin.

I love when people assume that any novel (like this one) that was a bestseller in Jane Austen's time must have been quaint and adorable. And then I get to tell them about all the prostitution and seduction and attempted abortions and attempted date-rape and out-of-wedlock babies.

True, Miss Betsy Thoughtless was a little before Austen's time – it was published in 1751, and Austen was born in 1775. But Eliza Haywood was widely known and eagerly read by Austen's contemporaries. I even found traces of her influence in the humorous writing Austen did as a teenager. (Stop me now, or I'll nerd out all over the place.)

I think one reason Betsy Thoughtless was so popular is that the female characters are completely human. Sure, they talk funny. But they like it when guys buy them gifts and talk about how hot they are. (Note to the curious: A pet squirrel was the kind of present that would move you up to the top of the list when it came to Guys The Girls Want At Their Next Party. Fer realz.) These women don't want to get married right away, because partying and flirting all night is fine if you're a single woman but What A Ho territory once you have a husband.

Don't get me wrong – Eliza Haywood wanted to teach her female readers some strong moral lessons. Eighteenth-century women really did have to be careful how far they went with a guy, because ruining your reputation meant ruining your shot at a respectable marriage and you couldn't just decide, what the heck, you'll go back to college and take charge of your own life. Career options were horribly limited. Being a single woman meant, at best, being looked down upon socially. And (as Austen herself said and knew from experience), single women in those times had a dreadful propensity to be poor.

And if you think single mothers have it rough now, try being one in eighteenth-century England.

But reading Eliza Haywood is very different from reading Samuel Richardson's Pamela, another popular novel of the time. Pamela has no discernible carnal desires, and only has to defend her virginity from those who would try to steal it from her – there's no way she'd give it away before her wedding night. She'd never feel the slightest temptation to do so. Sex? Fun? Only if you're a guy.

Eliza Haywood, who actually was a woman before she wrote from a female point of view, knew that women were just as tempted as men were to live, um, unchastely. Especially when a sophisticated French guy who knows how to please a lady comes along. In Pamela, he would have gotten his way only by forcing it. In Miss Betsy Thoughtless, Betsy listens with horror as her friend describes being seduced because being seduced is fun:

"In a word, my dear Miss Betsy, from one liberty he proceeded to another; till, at last, there was nothing left for him to ask, or me to grant!"

In Pamela's universe, this would have been a one-time Fall From Grace, and probably a fatal one. In Betsy's, her friend (the aptly named Miss Forward) has an affair with the guy all summer, and only stops, regretfully, when he leaves town.

I'm not recommending that anyone who doesn't love or live in the eighteenth century run out and grab this book. I read it as part of my research for a Regency novel. I'm the kind of person who reads Austen for fun, and even I found this a bit of a slog at times. The plot moves along briskly enough, but the language is a bit dense.

Just know that this time period wasn't all tea parties and ladylike behavior.