Like many people, I've been eagerly anticipating Masterpiece Theater's Austenpalooza coming over the next six weeks. I'm particularly pleased that they're doing Northanger Abbey, which got overlooked in the glut of Austen movies in the mid-90s, and doing a proper Mansfield Park (the movie of the same name from the 90s was many things both good and bad, but it was not Austen's Mansfield Park). I wasn't as sure about the prospect of new versions of Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility since it's hard to imagine anything that could top the two masterful big-screen versions. And sadly, last's nights Persuasion proved me right.
Several years ago, I rented an earlier version of Persuasion, thinking it would provide an interesting change from the 1995 version. After 15 minutes of the main characters sitting around the parlor spewing out stilted plot exposition, we revolted and put in the 1995 version, which managed to convey in two minutes more information than the fifteen we had watched of the other version. It was a textbook example of show, don't tell. Sadly, the movie last night completely ignored that lesson.
One of the things I like most about the book is that it's subtle. Anne is much more akin to Elinor Dashwood than Marianne, and doesn't sit around bemoaning her wretched present and the lost opportunities of the past. She holds it together and takes care of her ungrateful family, with her regrets existing as an undercurrent of sadness. The 1995 film excels in conveying that subtlety. Last night's, on the other hand, had all the subtlety of a sackful of anvils hitting you on the head. Reams of unnecessary plot exposition. Actors who delivered their lines in a way that made you wonder if they had trouble remembering them. Emotions conveyed through hammy overacting that seemed to convey constipation more than concealed heavy emotions. The actress who played Anne in this version couldn't compare to Amanda Root, who was able to convey more throught compressed lips and a slightly pained look than she was able to convey in an entire scene of sobbing exposition on Lady Russell's shoulder.
What offended me even more than the out-of-character weepiness, however, was that the scene was but the first of many that didn't appear in the book. The plot wound up in the same place as the book and hit the same major high points, but they seemed to feel no need to use the actual scenes from the book or remember little details like the fact that Anne's invalid friend in Bath couldn't walk, which would have made running after Anne a bit hard. I have nothing against making changes from book to movie, but these changes were utterly unnecessary and changed the story and the characters, almost universally for the worst.
I'm still looking forward to Northanger Abbey. It doesn't have a good earlier version to compare it to, so I'll be going in relatively fresh. I think, however, the night they show their new version of Sense and Sensibility, it might be a good idea to pop my dvd of the Emma Thompson version in instead.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Library ladies
The Friends group at work had a meeting Saturday morning and I had the rare privilege of a front seat at the sideshow. They are as fine a bunch of little old ladies as you would ever want to meet and goodness knows we couldn't survive without them, but lordy, that is a group of daffy people.
I was rather amazed that the meeting only lasted an hour and a half. How can you possibly fit in the going off on wild tangents, the pointless wrangling over irrelevant points, the minimum of four repetitions of all information that are vital to a committee meeting in a mere hour and a half? Not to mention dramatic moments like one of the women insisting that a corner of the park we're part of being sold to the hospital next door meant the park was going to be "GONE. The park will be GONE." Alrighty then.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I narrowly avoided a confrontation with the woman who runs the Friends bookstore in the basement. Here's the current procedure for book donations: they go to the library, where we go through them and cherrypick the good stuff that we don't already have. Then they go down to the bookstore to be sold for 25 cents to a dollar. Bear in mind that we're a small library with a tiny book budget, almost all of which is spent on the adult popular fiction. It's what brings our core patrons in, after all. But it means most of our non-fiction and pretty much all of our children's section languish somewhere in the Truman administration. Donated books bring in desperately needed fresh blood. So you wouldn't think this would be a controversial arrangement. But I overheard the bookstore manager telling some other people that she hated it when we took her books.
Okay. The average cost of a book coming into our library is probably $20, and it will circulate for years and be read by many people, so getting a donated book saves us a decent amount of money and continues to provide value for years to come. Or it could get sent down to the bookstore and earn at most $1, almost certainly less. Which of these scenarios do you think provides more value to the institution as a whole? And does it truly not occur to her that instead of selling twenty donated books to be able to afford one new book for the library, it might be a tad more efficient to just put the donated books in the library in the first place?
It's things like this that make me understand more and more why my boss is often in danger of spraining her eyeballs from rolling them so hard after dealing with our Friends.
I was rather amazed that the meeting only lasted an hour and a half. How can you possibly fit in the going off on wild tangents, the pointless wrangling over irrelevant points, the minimum of four repetitions of all information that are vital to a committee meeting in a mere hour and a half? Not to mention dramatic moments like one of the women insisting that a corner of the park we're part of being sold to the hospital next door meant the park was going to be "GONE. The park will be GONE." Alrighty then.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I narrowly avoided a confrontation with the woman who runs the Friends bookstore in the basement. Here's the current procedure for book donations: they go to the library, where we go through them and cherrypick the good stuff that we don't already have. Then they go down to the bookstore to be sold for 25 cents to a dollar. Bear in mind that we're a small library with a tiny book budget, almost all of which is spent on the adult popular fiction. It's what brings our core patrons in, after all. But it means most of our non-fiction and pretty much all of our children's section languish somewhere in the Truman administration. Donated books bring in desperately needed fresh blood. So you wouldn't think this would be a controversial arrangement. But I overheard the bookstore manager telling some other people that she hated it when we took her books.
Okay. The average cost of a book coming into our library is probably $20, and it will circulate for years and be read by many people, so getting a donated book saves us a decent amount of money and continues to provide value for years to come. Or it could get sent down to the bookstore and earn at most $1, almost certainly less. Which of these scenarios do you think provides more value to the institution as a whole? And does it truly not occur to her that instead of selling twenty donated books to be able to afford one new book for the library, it might be a tad more efficient to just put the donated books in the library in the first place?
It's things like this that make me understand more and more why my boss is often in danger of spraining her eyeballs from rolling them so hard after dealing with our Friends.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Retrenching
I know I've said that probably the best way to try and give my reproductive system a kick in the pants and fight PCOS is to try a low-carb diet. And yet I keep shying away from actually doing it. The latest stall is that a large part of my strategy revolved around the low-carb tortillas from Trader Joe's. And the last two times I've gone into Trader Joe's, they haven't had any tortillas. Just a gigantic empty bin in the refrigerated section, mocking me. I know there are plenty of other low-carb tortillas in the world, but the ones at Trader Joe's are the only ones I've ever seen that don't make heavy use of soy, which is something my body isn't terribly fond of.
However, Lack of Tortilla is still a terrible excuse, which is an indicator to me that my heart isn't really in this (I think the fact that I keep fantasizing about baking bread is pretty big hint in that direction as well), and if I can't muster up true enthusiasm for a diet change this radical, it's doomed to a quick failure. So I'm going to try something a bit easier. I'm setting the goal of eating 25 grams of fiber and 80 grams of protein every day. Those are both values within normal recommended dietary limits, but should be high enough that I'll be forced to eat a lot of fiber and protein and a lot fewer of the carbohydrates that send me on the blood sugar trampoline. Hopefully they'll keep my blood sugar on an even enough keel to keep the PCOS in check and maybe even let me ovulate, yet be a bit more bearable and allow me to continue my torrid love affair with the potato.
However, Lack of Tortilla is still a terrible excuse, which is an indicator to me that my heart isn't really in this (I think the fact that I keep fantasizing about baking bread is pretty big hint in that direction as well), and if I can't muster up true enthusiasm for a diet change this radical, it's doomed to a quick failure. So I'm going to try something a bit easier. I'm setting the goal of eating 25 grams of fiber and 80 grams of protein every day. Those are both values within normal recommended dietary limits, but should be high enough that I'll be forced to eat a lot of fiber and protein and a lot fewer of the carbohydrates that send me on the blood sugar trampoline. Hopefully they'll keep my blood sugar on an even enough keel to keep the PCOS in check and maybe even let me ovulate, yet be a bit more bearable and allow me to continue my torrid love affair with the potato.
Jubilate!
I had a lousy day today. A pair of jeans that I've been patching to extend their life finally ripped in an irreparable and totally immodest way and I can't afford to replace them for another 11 days, K decided that she's an oenophile at heart and therefore must communicate entirely in a complicated sets of whines and the combination of double utilities from two houses last month and much less work on my part has created an unwelcome crisis in the bank account department. And once I got sufficiently upset about all of those things, everything started to bother me. Since we're still only half-unpacked and K is a miniature force of entropy, there was plenty in my surroundings to drive me insane.
But! I was smart enough to call Fiddlefern (ed. note: best friend from college) tonight. And in the course of our usual conversation wherein we lament how far apart we are these days and try to figure out when in the next six months we might be able to travel to see each other, we were looking at the Skybus website. Skybus is a budget airline that offers one-way fares as low as $10 between various medium sized cities, Columbus (where Fiddlefern lives now) being one of their hubs. And as of yesterday, Wilmington, as in the Wilmington only an hour away from Philly, is one of their destinations! Suddenly we've gone from being a full day's drive from each other to being a short, extremely cheap airplane flight away, so cheap that it would actually be cheaper than driving. Yippee!
This wonderful new development will also be a big boon for us when we're traveling to the Midwest in general. It had occurred to me before that we could catch a cheap Skybus flight to Columbus and then rent a car to drive the rest of the way to wherever we're going. It would eliminate a day of travelling and be cheaper than normal airplane flights. But when the nearest airport Skybus flew out of before was north of New York City, it didn't seem worth it. Now, it definitely is. We wouldn't necessarily be able to do it too often, but this could make going home for a 4-day weekend feasible.
But! I was smart enough to call Fiddlefern (ed. note: best friend from college) tonight. And in the course of our usual conversation wherein we lament how far apart we are these days and try to figure out when in the next six months we might be able to travel to see each other, we were looking at the Skybus website. Skybus is a budget airline that offers one-way fares as low as $10 between various medium sized cities, Columbus (where Fiddlefern lives now) being one of their hubs. And as of yesterday, Wilmington, as in the Wilmington only an hour away from Philly, is one of their destinations! Suddenly we've gone from being a full day's drive from each other to being a short, extremely cheap airplane flight away, so cheap that it would actually be cheaper than driving. Yippee!
This wonderful new development will also be a big boon for us when we're traveling to the Midwest in general. It had occurred to me before that we could catch a cheap Skybus flight to Columbus and then rent a car to drive the rest of the way to wherever we're going. It would eliminate a day of travelling and be cheaper than normal airplane flights. But when the nearest airport Skybus flew out of before was north of New York City, it didn't seem worth it. Now, it definitely is. We wouldn't necessarily be able to do it too often, but this could make going home for a 4-day weekend feasible.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Concept album meme
I don't often do memes, but this one looked interesting
01. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
02. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
03. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.*
04. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal because it's more amusing that way.
*Note: I broke the rules on this because I wasn't comfortable taking a picture that didn't have a Creative Commons license, so this was the first one on the page that had one
01. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ra
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
02. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.ph
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
03. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesti
04. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal because it's more amusing that way.
*Note: I broke the rules on this because I wasn't comfortable taking a picture that didn't have a Creative Commons license, so this was the first one on the page that had one
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Crime and punishment
So no doubt because I took the time to complain about it, for the past two nights K has gone to bed cheerfully with no protests. B has been working late, so I've put K to bed and left her with the lamp on. She's played quietly until B got home and went in to say good night (I don't care if she doesn't go to sleep right away after we put her to bed as long as she stays in her room and is quiet), at which point she voluntarily turned out the light and settled down to sleep. After two nights in a row, I think we can officially mark the Passing of the Phase.
And as I predicted, she has a new way to drive me crazy - bothering the cats and pulling their tails. So far, our approach to discipline has been either removal and redirection or using natural consequences (e.g., if she deliberately makes a mess, she has to clean it up). But for the life of me, I can't think of the natural consequence of pulling the cats' tails, and then deliberately doing it again when I tell her to stop. Well, I can think of a natural consequence, but I don't find it acceptable (letting her attack the cats until they bite or scratch her).
Hurting the cats is an offense that requires swift action and immediate negative consequences, but I'm having trouble coming up with what that should be. I don't want to spank her, although I'm starting to really understand people who do. There's nothing like yelling at a toddler and having her laugh at you to make you want to do something to wipe the smile off of her face and get her to take you seriously. A timeout was certainly punishing for everyone involved, but since it was basically a two-minuts wrestling match to get her to stay put, I didn't really care for it. I'm not sure what other effective, non-violent punishments there are for two-year-olds.
So for those of you with two-year-olds (or former two-year-olds), what's your approach to discipline? What do you do when it's too late for prevention and the offense doesn't have a natural consequence?
And as I predicted, she has a new way to drive me crazy - bothering the cats and pulling their tails. So far, our approach to discipline has been either removal and redirection or using natural consequences (e.g., if she deliberately makes a mess, she has to clean it up). But for the life of me, I can't think of the natural consequence of pulling the cats' tails, and then deliberately doing it again when I tell her to stop. Well, I can think of a natural consequence, but I don't find it acceptable (letting her attack the cats until they bite or scratch her).
Hurting the cats is an offense that requires swift action and immediate negative consequences, but I'm having trouble coming up with what that should be. I don't want to spank her, although I'm starting to really understand people who do. There's nothing like yelling at a toddler and having her laugh at you to make you want to do something to wipe the smile off of her face and get her to take you seriously. A timeout was certainly punishing for everyone involved, but since it was basically a two-minuts wrestling match to get her to stay put, I didn't really care for it. I'm not sure what other effective, non-violent punishments there are for two-year-olds.
So for those of you with two-year-olds (or former two-year-olds), what's your approach to discipline? What do you do when it's too late for prevention and the offense doesn't have a natural consequence?
Monday, January 7, 2008
You'll know me by the gigantic bald spots
No matter how much I'm normally able to serenely endure the vicissitudes of my toddler's mercurial behavior, patiently chanting the mantra "Like a kidney stone, this too shall pass," every once in a while a phase comes along that totally kicks my ass.
We're in another bad sleep pattern. K will periodically go through phases where she wakes up in the middle of the night and is awake for two hours. I've more or less gotten used to it, and at least this time she usually just hangs out in her room and plays, which much better than crying for two hours or keeping me jumping in and out of bed for two hours starting at 3am. The insomnia isn't really the problem. It's the trauma at bedtime that seems to have come with it. She doesn't want us to leave the room after we're done with the bedtime routine, or I should say she doesn't want me to leave the room since she's also in a "all Mama, all the time" phase. If I stay to cuddle her, she wiggles and flops and doesn't fall asleep, but if I harden my heart and leave her, she cries pathetically and I can't stand to listen to it. When she was a baby, she needed to cry to release enough tension to fall asleep, so I didn't have a problem leaving her to cry. It was a very distinctive, pathetic tired wail that meant "I want to be asleep! Why aren't I asleep? I need sleep!" But this isn't that cry now, and it's more complicated now that she's older. I'm less willing to let her cry now that she's older, when it's more likely there are emotional issues behind it, not just being overstimulated. All I have are questions:
Is she experiencing separation anxiety from the move? Maybe, although she was fine the first two weeks after moved.
Is she afraid of the dark? We've tried leaving a lamp on and it occasionally helps, but not always and after a couple nights when she turned the lamp off, it really makes me doubt that theory.
Is she just manipulating me? Possibly, but I have no idea how to tell.
Is she trying to drive me crazy? Almost certainly.
Is she ramping up for another developmental leap which is completely screwing up her sleep and making her emotionally discombobulated? It seems likely, and there's nothing much I can do about that except hunker down and wait it out. And maybe take up recreational drugs.
That last one is the key, of course (the waiting, not the drugs). She was fine being left to fall asleep on her own two weeks ago, so I'm sure if I wait another week or so, she'll be going to bed just fine and finding some other way to drive me crazy. She's two, after all. It's her job to keep me from getting complacent. I just hate going through the emotional wringer every night when I'm just about to finally get some free time. My patience is very thin by 8pm.
We'll get through this. I'm just not sure how much hair I'll have left by the time it happens.
Om...This too shall pass...Om...This too shall pass...
We're in another bad sleep pattern. K will periodically go through phases where she wakes up in the middle of the night and is awake for two hours. I've more or less gotten used to it, and at least this time she usually just hangs out in her room and plays, which much better than crying for two hours or keeping me jumping in and out of bed for two hours starting at 3am. The insomnia isn't really the problem. It's the trauma at bedtime that seems to have come with it. She doesn't want us to leave the room after we're done with the bedtime routine, or I should say she doesn't want me to leave the room since she's also in a "all Mama, all the time" phase. If I stay to cuddle her, she wiggles and flops and doesn't fall asleep, but if I harden my heart and leave her, she cries pathetically and I can't stand to listen to it. When she was a baby, she needed to cry to release enough tension to fall asleep, so I didn't have a problem leaving her to cry. It was a very distinctive, pathetic tired wail that meant "I want to be asleep! Why aren't I asleep? I need sleep!" But this isn't that cry now, and it's more complicated now that she's older. I'm less willing to let her cry now that she's older, when it's more likely there are emotional issues behind it, not just being overstimulated. All I have are questions:
Is she experiencing separation anxiety from the move? Maybe, although she was fine the first two weeks after moved.
Is she afraid of the dark? We've tried leaving a lamp on and it occasionally helps, but not always and after a couple nights when she turned the lamp off, it really makes me doubt that theory.
Is she just manipulating me? Possibly, but I have no idea how to tell.
Is she trying to drive me crazy? Almost certainly.
Is she ramping up for another developmental leap which is completely screwing up her sleep and making her emotionally discombobulated? It seems likely, and there's nothing much I can do about that except hunker down and wait it out. And maybe take up recreational drugs.
That last one is the key, of course (the waiting, not the drugs). She was fine being left to fall asleep on her own two weeks ago, so I'm sure if I wait another week or so, she'll be going to bed just fine and finding some other way to drive me crazy. She's two, after all. It's her job to keep me from getting complacent. I just hate going through the emotional wringer every night when I'm just about to finally get some free time. My patience is very thin by 8pm.
We'll get through this. I'm just not sure how much hair I'll have left by the time it happens.
Om...This too shall pass...Om...This too shall pass...
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Hello World
This blog is something of a zen koan: how can a blog be new and not-new at the same time? Well, in this case it's because I've had a blog for a long time at Livejournal, but I want to comment more on non-LJ blogs and receive comments in turn and Livejournal doesn't work and play well with others. So I'm creating a mirror blog and publishing the same posts in both blogs. Hey, I'm bicoastal!
I'm probably going to publish a few old posts from the past few months here to provide a little context as to what the heck I'm talking about. I'll try and put a brief summary of my life on my About page as well. Beyond that, if you want to delve further into the intricate workings of my exciting past, they can be found at http://juthwara.livejournal.com.
I'm probably going to publish a few old posts from the past few months here to provide a little context as to what the heck I'm talking about. I'll try and put a brief summary of my life on my About page as well. Beyond that, if you want to delve further into the intricate workings of my exciting past, they can be found at http://juthwara.livejournal.com.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Resolved
When I look back at the resolutions I made last year, I get a bit depressed. So this year I'm going to make it more basic and vague: I'll make a sincere effort to get myself in better shape for getting pregnant. It seems very likely this will involve going low-carb for a while, but I'm still getting my ducks in a row on that front. I don't want to go through a radical diet change without having a complete plan for what to eat and then have it all on hand. Our exercise bike is set up in a convenient place again, so I'm climbing back on it, and I've been keeping track of my food on Sparkpeople, which usually helps me keep within reasonable limits. That's about as far as I'm willing to commit.
I finally managed to get my iud out right before Christmas. As it turns out, it needed to be pre-approved by the insurance company, so that explains part of the delay (although pre-approval for a two-minute appointment? Really? That seems to be over the edge of absurd even by health insurance company standards).* So I'm waiting for my period to come back and we shall see. I had a couple signs of ovulation right at Christmas, so I'm hoping that will be confirmed next week with the return of my cycle. It's all wait and see at this point.
*As a data point for anyone curious about the iud experience, removal was not completely painless as advertised, but that was because 1) the speculum was a bit wider than was really comfortable and 2) my cervix gave a bit of a spasm in response to having something pulled through it. However, it was brief and certainly nothing compared to having it put in.
I finally managed to get my iud out right before Christmas. As it turns out, it needed to be pre-approved by the insurance company, so that explains part of the delay (although pre-approval for a two-minute appointment? Really? That seems to be over the edge of absurd even by health insurance company standards).* So I'm waiting for my period to come back and we shall see. I had a couple signs of ovulation right at Christmas, so I'm hoping that will be confirmed next week with the return of my cycle. It's all wait and see at this point.
*As a data point for anyone curious about the iud experience, removal was not completely painless as advertised, but that was because 1) the speculum was a bit wider than was really comfortable and 2) my cervix gave a bit of a spasm in response to having something pulled through it. However, it was brief and certainly nothing compared to having it put in.
The view from up here
We saw Golden Compass today. Before I give my opinion of it, I should preface by saying that I've only read the first book of the series and that was at least five years ago so my memories of more than the broad details of the plot are pretty sketchy. That said, I enjoyed it quite a bit. I've heard complaining that it felt like the plot was too crammed trying to get all of the plot of the book in a two-hour movie, but it seemed fine to me - easy to follow, good pacing, no weird jumps. The visuals were fantastic.
I think Golden Compass falls into the rare category of movies I liked better than the books they were based on, usually because putting the book on screen takes out what I didn't like about the book and lets me enjoy the story.* In this case, I ground to halt because the narrative voice just felt too negative - barely anyone was likeable, almost none of the adults could be trusted, the main character was a little brat. I think the movie was an improvement because it's a lot easier to like Lyra when you can't hear her inner monologue. The movie version of Lyra came across as plucky and endearingly contrary, not bratty and oppositional defiant like her book counterpart. They also wisely ended the movie before the book ends, which left it on a much more positive note and made it easier to walk out of the theatre feeling good about what I had seen, instead of the somewhat depressed feeling I had putting down the book.
In any case, His Dark Materials is going back on my reading list, hopefully to make it all the way through this time. I keep finding myself wondering if I would have liked the books better if I had read them when I was ten. At that age, I was a lot more oblivious to the things that bother me now. Certainly seeing children in danger didn't bother me nearly so much, and I think I wouldn't have disliked Lyra nearly so much when I was a child myself.
I've been thinking again about the odd experience of rereading childhood books with adult eyes lately because I've been reading the Little House books. I discovered a while ago that while I had read the rest of the series many many times, I never read Little House on the Prairie. I think maybe my elementary school library didn't have that book for some reason. Goodness, it's much harder to enjoy a book when you're much more aware of racism and the devastation that Western settlement caused to the Native Americans. I suppose it was gracious of Pa Ingalls to disagree with the idea that the only good Indian was a dead Indian, but his airy assurances that the US army would move the Native Americans who were inconveniently inhabiting the land they had stolen and that white people deserved that land more than the people who had just lived on it for the past thousand years or so are more than a little appalling, and dampen my enjoyment of the book, to say the least.
And yet I'm still reading the series. The books are mostly about Laura, after all, who was innocent in what her parents were doing (well, until she grew up and settled her own stolen land). I enjoy the stories (that don't involve Manifest Destiny or naked racism) and the historical detail is fascinating. One thing you have to be prepared for when reading historical books is encountering historical attitudes that were the prevailing opinion of the day, so this sort of thing is the price of admission for this sort of book. You can either put it down in disgust or take it as an object lesson of how far we've come and a reminder of our not-so-glorious past. And most of the Native American stuff is concentrated in the one book, so once you get past it, it's not so bad.
Still, this reminds me a bit of a couple years ago when I was looking for a book to read while I was in Michigan and decided to reread Narnia before I saw the movie. I had read them again when I was twenty, but clearly the years since then have changed my perceptions. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe wasn't so bad, although the sexism made me sigh resignedly and for the first time, the shallow, hand-waving nature of the ending really bothered me (they lived entire lives in Narnia, and then just left them to go back to our world without a second thought? No homesickness on either end or mourning for the adult live they had left?). Prince Caspian was fine. And then I read The Horse and His Boy, which was my favorite, and ran aground on the rocky shoals of the book's naked racism. Do I condemn C.S. Lewis for the obvious prejudices in his books? No, because like Laura Ingalls Wilder, he was a product of his times and I don't generally condemn people for being unable to see past the values of the times they lived in. C.S. Lewis was a generally good man who had the somewhat congenial racism and sexism common to British men in the 50s, and I don't really expect much different out of him.
At the same time, it's hard not to let it affect my enjoyment of the books, and I'm now planning to have some discussions with K about these issues when she's old enough to read them. I'm pretty sure my reaction to the movie of Wardrobe was influenced by my new perceptions of the book. I found it disappointing, largely because I think I wanted to see the movie as a ten-year-old, and instead I got a movie that stuck most of what bothered me about the book up on the screen and emphasized it.
It's a dicey thing, revisiting the things you loved as a child. I'm certainly a better person for my increased empathy and sensitivity and being more aware of my cultural assumptions and trying to see past them, but occasionally I miss being able to read with the uncritical eye I had when I was ten.
*The other movie/book that falls in this category is Lord of the Rings, which was able to correct Tolkien's inability to grasp the concept of "Show, don't tell." I had always wondered why I couldn't get into the books more, until the last time I took a stab at them after watching the movies and discovered that it was all of the pointless detail. He took three pages to describe what happened to the hobbits' ponies after they ran away in the first book. Three pages. Good Lord, nobody needs that level of detail. No wonder I had trouble getting into the plot. (Note to rabid Tolkien fans: please don't hurt me)
I think Golden Compass falls into the rare category of movies I liked better than the books they were based on, usually because putting the book on screen takes out what I didn't like about the book and lets me enjoy the story.* In this case, I ground to halt because the narrative voice just felt too negative - barely anyone was likeable, almost none of the adults could be trusted, the main character was a little brat. I think the movie was an improvement because it's a lot easier to like Lyra when you can't hear her inner monologue. The movie version of Lyra came across as plucky and endearingly contrary, not bratty and oppositional defiant like her book counterpart. They also wisely ended the movie before the book ends, which left it on a much more positive note and made it easier to walk out of the theatre feeling good about what I had seen, instead of the somewhat depressed feeling I had putting down the book.
In any case, His Dark Materials is going back on my reading list, hopefully to make it all the way through this time. I keep finding myself wondering if I would have liked the books better if I had read them when I was ten. At that age, I was a lot more oblivious to the things that bother me now. Certainly seeing children in danger didn't bother me nearly so much, and I think I wouldn't have disliked Lyra nearly so much when I was a child myself.
I've been thinking again about the odd experience of rereading childhood books with adult eyes lately because I've been reading the Little House books. I discovered a while ago that while I had read the rest of the series many many times, I never read Little House on the Prairie. I think maybe my elementary school library didn't have that book for some reason. Goodness, it's much harder to enjoy a book when you're much more aware of racism and the devastation that Western settlement caused to the Native Americans. I suppose it was gracious of Pa Ingalls to disagree with the idea that the only good Indian was a dead Indian, but his airy assurances that the US army would move the Native Americans who were inconveniently inhabiting the land they had stolen and that white people deserved that land more than the people who had just lived on it for the past thousand years or so are more than a little appalling, and dampen my enjoyment of the book, to say the least.
And yet I'm still reading the series. The books are mostly about Laura, after all, who was innocent in what her parents were doing (well, until she grew up and settled her own stolen land). I enjoy the stories (that don't involve Manifest Destiny or naked racism) and the historical detail is fascinating. One thing you have to be prepared for when reading historical books is encountering historical attitudes that were the prevailing opinion of the day, so this sort of thing is the price of admission for this sort of book. You can either put it down in disgust or take it as an object lesson of how far we've come and a reminder of our not-so-glorious past. And most of the Native American stuff is concentrated in the one book, so once you get past it, it's not so bad.
Still, this reminds me a bit of a couple years ago when I was looking for a book to read while I was in Michigan and decided to reread Narnia before I saw the movie. I had read them again when I was twenty, but clearly the years since then have changed my perceptions. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe wasn't so bad, although the sexism made me sigh resignedly and for the first time, the shallow, hand-waving nature of the ending really bothered me (they lived entire lives in Narnia, and then just left them to go back to our world without a second thought? No homesickness on either end or mourning for the adult live they had left?). Prince Caspian was fine. And then I read The Horse and His Boy, which was my favorite, and ran aground on the rocky shoals of the book's naked racism. Do I condemn C.S. Lewis for the obvious prejudices in his books? No, because like Laura Ingalls Wilder, he was a product of his times and I don't generally condemn people for being unable to see past the values of the times they lived in. C.S. Lewis was a generally good man who had the somewhat congenial racism and sexism common to British men in the 50s, and I don't really expect much different out of him.
At the same time, it's hard not to let it affect my enjoyment of the books, and I'm now planning to have some discussions with K about these issues when she's old enough to read them. I'm pretty sure my reaction to the movie of Wardrobe was influenced by my new perceptions of the book. I found it disappointing, largely because I think I wanted to see the movie as a ten-year-old, and instead I got a movie that stuck most of what bothered me about the book up on the screen and emphasized it.
It's a dicey thing, revisiting the things you loved as a child. I'm certainly a better person for my increased empathy and sensitivity and being more aware of my cultural assumptions and trying to see past them, but occasionally I miss being able to read with the uncritical eye I had when I was ten.
*The other movie/book that falls in this category is Lord of the Rings, which was able to correct Tolkien's inability to grasp the concept of "Show, don't tell." I had always wondered why I couldn't get into the books more, until the last time I took a stab at them after watching the movies and discovered that it was all of the pointless detail. He took three pages to describe what happened to the hobbits' ponies after they ran away in the first book. Three pages. Good Lord, nobody needs that level of detail. No wonder I had trouble getting into the plot. (Note to rabid Tolkien fans: please don't hurt me)
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