DVDs are basically books now, right?

...complete with the faint air of obsolescence that comes with physical media nowadays.

Ivanhoe's going... great... in the sense that I keep seeking out other things to read and forgetting that, technically, I already have a book going. And recently I've devolved to watching moving pictures in order to avoid reading it; which means I've disqualified myself for At least she's reading! No sympathy please; I'm not even reading. (Except for the sociology articles, travel guides, and various spiritual books.)

First of all, you will be pleased to know that I have now seen Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel (or as I like to think of it, Anne of Green Gables 2: The Gable-ing). What a thing of glory. If I had seen that in my prime Anne years, I would have been a dead duck. The dresses, the hats, the red hair, the monkeyshines, the GILBERT. I seriously appreciated how the film ended right after Anne and Gilbert get engaged, because what else is there?

Nothing. There is nothing else.

I watched it with some other girls (also a bottle of bourbon and a pan of brownies) (#adults) and there was spontaneous clapping and cheering at the end. Also, one of us (*ahem*) shouted "Gil, no, I've been such a fool!" during The Gazebo Scene, and there was much speculation about the poofy hairstyles. So all in all, a massively rewarding four hours and I might need to own that and watch it weekly now.

Switching tracks... did you know there's a BBC version of the Barchester Chronicles? I probably should have known; I probably would have guessed it; but I didn't know it specifically until Super Hans brought it to my attention. Yes, I was lying around watching Peep Show (which is really too explicit for me and I have to skip over lot of scenes but it's still funny so I keep coming back), and the show's resident lover of crack brandished a DVD of Barchester Chronicles as the perfect viewing material for a hard-partying gig at a music festival. "Don't pigeonhole me, dude," quoth Super Hans. "Ecclesiastical politics when you're high. These guys really knew how to do a fucking number on each other." I laughed really hard, but I was also thinking, "oh, I want to watch that."

I should state that I was not high at any time when I watched this. The Super Hans joke did elevate my enjoyment of it though. The DVDs I got from the library had a stale B.O. smell that was as inexplicable and improbable as it was intense, so I sort of imagine a graph of people who have checked these out as looking something like this:

Yes, indeedy, there is a very young Alan Rickman in this. (The designers of the DVD cover have given him pride of place; they know where the money comes from.) The series itself is enjoyable although I don't know how hard it would be to get into without a prior appreciation of the books. This is the kind of dry-toast costume drama that gives costume drama a bad name. It's all pretty sedate and low-key, without excessive attention to things like "pacing" or "tension". There are scenes that end really abruptly and others that are weirdly drawn out; at one point a character calls over another character and we watch her walk across the lawn in real time for no particular reason. The production values are charmingly low; my favorite example is that in some of the London scenes there's a background track that sounds exactly like what you get in one of those "old timey Main Street" museum exhibits.

[clatter clatter clatter] [watermelon watermelon]

But the actors are all good and do a good job bringing the characters to life. I liked seeing the apoplectic Archdeacon "in the flesh", and Alan Rickman does a great job as Mr Slope, which is important given that he carries so much of the story. He delivers a really smarmy proposal in a delightfully smarmy way and gets a good smack for it, so that alone is worth the price of admission. (Price of admission in this case =  $0, support your public libraries.) Netflix could suggest this and the 1995 P&P (you know whereof I speak) together under the heading of Hilariously Awkward Clerical Proposals. The first two episodes cover the book The Warden, and much like that book, they give a good introduction to the characters and local politics but the real fun comes from episode three onward so don't give up on it too soon. I could endorse just starting with episode three if you feel confident in your ability to just figure out the context clues.

So a win all the way around with my movie watching this week: I got to pass the time revisiting some favorite characters and not reading Ivanhoe, plus now I know what I'll bring with me in the tour bus if I ever become a drug-addled musician -slash- what I'll watch on Friday nights if I ever become a live-in teacher at a boarding school.

In which my childhood is not ruined

Anne of Green Gables, y'all. Like so many other girls my age, I was obsessed with Anne of Green Gables when I was 10ish. I read all the book in the series multiple times; I don't think I ever owned them but I knew right where to find them in the library. My Victorian dollhouse Playmobil figures were always Anne and Gilbert and family, acting out incredibly dramatic scenes.

I didn't have this puppy, so I would use masking tape to make a house floorplan on my bedroom floor.

When I got to the end of the series, I would start over; at one point I remember feeling vaguely like maybe I should read something else, but ANNE was all I wanted to read, so ONE MORE TIME. That's just the kind of groove I get into now with 30 Rock on Netflix so, as they say in Quebec, plus ça change.

For all that, I discovered in conversation with some friends this winter that I had mostly forgotten what the books were about. I mean, I recognized various incidents ("oh yeaaaah...") but I couldn't have summarized anything to save my life. So when I saw this very attractive Oxford Children's Classics edition:

the book magpie strikes again

I thought I should re-read it. Not without some trepidation! You may remember that my re-reading of Nancy Drew was rather disappointing. And in general, what are the odds that a book for little girls published in 1908 wouldn't be embarrassing in 2014?

Actually, as it turns out, the book holds up pretty well! A lot of that has to do with one of Anne's key characteristics: that she is a whiz kid at school. There's no conflict about this in the book; I hate hypotheticals like this, but if it were a historical novel being written today, would the author have refrained from making "Anne is made to feel unfeminine for being smart" a major plot point? As I was reading, I both recognized that this is why I identified so intensely with Anne and also that this book, with its glorification of studying to win top marks, really shaped the way I approached my schoolwork as a kid.

And, not unrelatedly, Gilbert is still such. a. dish.*

Let's review, shall we? Gilbert Blythe (SIGH sigh sigh) is a boy who teases Anne about the color of her hair and she not only schools him good at the moment, she swears eternal hatred. Anne and Gilbert battle it out to be the top student in school on every assignment, exam, etc. Gilbert is clearly attracted to this girl who is so able and willing to fight back. Anne is mostly contemptuous, but by the end of the book they agree to be friends.

Amen amen, my fellow Ameriwomen, you can put away your tired "ooo, Disney princes gave me unrealistic expectations" meme, because that right there is kryptonite. Oh, you mean the most handsome boy in school will only love me more if I whoop him on spelling tests? I CAN DO THAT. And definitely, an antagonistic relationship like that will resolve in mutual respect and eventual love. Oh yes; Gilbert Blythe (SIGH sigh sigh) remains my one and only fictional crush.


* I've never seen the Canadian TV movie (series?), mind you. It seemed relevant to mention that at this particular moment.

The Mini-Readathon (now even minier)

I don't really know about Readathons as an organized blog thing. (As you can tell, I'm kind of a sucky blogger.) Alice always wants to do them and can't, that's what I know. But I do love a theme, and the GIF Admiration Society, so here we are!

Now, I'm already Doin It Rong in two ways. First, I will be carrying our awesome theme to a self-defeating extreme by quitting at noon CST. My workload tripled on January 1st, you guys, and I've been freaking out about it all week, which wouldn't be so bad if "freaking out" including "actually doing some of the work".

Yeah, yeah

Anyway, so that's one thing. The other is that I started reading early, just to compensate. Which is maybe a violation of the rules or something? But then I burned up any advantage I may have had with getting dressed. Anyway.

So

The First Book of Mini-Readathon:

Nancy Drew #8: Nancy's Mysterious Letter
Mini, you say? How so? This is a children's book, written for mini people, which I myself enjoyed as a mini person. Also it requires mini effort.

I read a lot of Nancy Drew as a kid so I was glad to have an excuse/opportunity to revisit
the series and see what they were about. One of the things that struck me in reading this this morning is how little personality Nancy (or really anyone) in the book has. Everything's written in such simple language and there's very little in the story that doesn't relate to the mystery. Kid's books, eh!

The part where Nancy, Bess, and George go to visit their boyfriends at college was the most entertaining from a kitsch perspective. I remembered that Ned was the star of the football team but not that Bess and George's boys are on the second string! Haha. Actually the boys are always referred to as "friends" or "dates" which is sort of interesting -- as well as the fact that the author does not hesitate to put in six pages describing the progress of the Big Game in (what seems to me) play-by-play detail.

There is also a sailor character who says things like "she's gone to the chandler's for supplies and will be back at six bells. Haul your anchor and sit down, lass!" Oh dear oh dear.

Alright, I'll check back in in an hour and we'll see if I manage to read two whole books in my mini-Mini-Readathon.

In which I review a book that was not for me on every level

The kid-lit thing is usually Alice's beat, but when The Mysterious Benedict Society was on Kindle sale for 99¢ I couldn't say no. Ironically, the first time I came across the book was when I picked it up at a Goodwill, where it was also 99¢. FATE.

I know I'm wildly inconsistent as far as warning you about spoilers, but I want to discuss some of the "secrets" of this book, so if you want to find out what's so mysterious about Benedict for yourself, you might want to skip this post.

Not THAT mysterious Benedict! (I crack myself up)

The Mysterious Benedict Society seems to have been produced for the precocious "smart kids" of elementary schools everywhere. Its heroes are a group of misunderstood gifted children with various special abilities. In a world where the vast majority of adults and children are being brainwashed via TV and (quaintly enough) radio, only clever Reynie, acrobatic Kate, stubborn Constance, and Sticky, who remembers almost everything he's ever come across, can save humanity from a mad scientist.

I liked the four members of the Society, and I thought the book did a good job of highlighting their various strengths without being too tidy about the diversity factor. I did not guess Constance's secret strength until it was revealed at the very end. The children's sad backgrounds were well-done too, I thought, and when Kate was reunited with her father I may have been a little choked up.

There was a lot about the book that felt sort of homey and classic to me; surely the "adults don't pay attention to kids or give them their due" business is about the hoariest chestnut in the box (or wherever hoary chestnuts would hang out). When I was a kid, I got to join Gifted classes (when I attended schools that had them), and our Weekly Readers always featured kids who'd done amazing things and got to meet the president or whatever. The 90s were really into celebrating overachieving kids; so much so that I actually thought I was sort of a slacker because I wasn't on track to graduate college at 16. So, personally, the idea that all adults are dumb clods who don't pay attention to kids never rang true with me; but apparently it's still going strong.

Going a little further down the "I'm an old curmudgeon" trail, I was struck by the way much of the dialogue in this book sounds like it was written for a sitcom.

"A canary in a coal mine?" Constance mumbled without looking up.
     Sticky failed to notice Reynie's warning look. "Oh yes-- miners used to bring canaries with them to gauge oxygen levels in the mine. If the canary died, they knew the oxygen was running out and they'd better get out of there."
     "If the canary died?" Constance repeated.
     Sticky looked suddenly regretful.
     "That was perhaps an unfortunate comparison," Reynie said.

"Whatever happened to asking?" Sticky said. "Whatever happened to please?"

Maybe this particular aspect only struck me because it's been all 19th century, all the time around here lately; but I stand by my reaction that this is rather ironic given that TV is one of the villains of the book.

So overall, I thought the book was fun if decidedly part of the books-for-the-smart-kids genre. But I can't say that I would whole-heartedly recommend it for any child of my acquaintance and that's because of a bewildering moral hole in the center of the story. I feel like an awful bore just writing that sentence but it must be done. I would not buy this book as a gift or recommend it to a child.

I know what you're thinking, and I do not care

 The book sort of sits on the line between sci-fi and fantasy, in that the villain uses some sort of crazy machine to broadcast subliminal messages, but only those who have an unusual love of the truth can resist them. At one point in the story, our heroes, who are embedded as spies, are instructed to cheat in order to get ahead and penetrate the secret organization faster. Reynie rightly struggles with this; he even wonders whether the message could be a fake. Later, when he has cheated and lied even further, he wonders whether he really can have such an "unusual love of the truth" after all. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and... nothing. The kids accomplish their mission, they go home, and they're all rewarded with family reunions; cheating and lying were apparently the right things to do. On a purely functional level, it's pretty bizarre that the author would raise these (really rather thorny) moral issues and hint at how they could affect the plot in very promising ways (I was especially intrigued by the possibility that the cheating instruction could be phoney). Going further, I think it's baloney to endow "unusual love of the truth" with near-magical qualities and then write off any possible negative effects of cheating and lying on that love of the truth. "Love of the truth" therefore appears to be some kind of inherent quality, possibly linked to intelligence or possibly just genetic, and unaffected by actual actions or choices made. That's problematic for me, particularly in a book where, again, "love of the truth" is being upheld as a heroic trait.

I have one last minor quibble.

That morning, as they'd said their good-byes over breakfast, Mr Benedict had pointed out that if they said "Binnud Academy" aloud, it would remind them his thoughts were with them always.

Okay, I have said "Binnud Academy" aloud about twenty times and I don't get it. It... has... some of the same sounds as "Benedict"? If you hate me for panning this book you are welcome to go ahead and think I'm a moron now. I was also unimpressed by "Ledroptha Curtain" as a villain's name. "Let drop the curtain" is almost painfully clumsy -- the author should have just named him "Percy Glyde". Much more repellant.

Top Ten Tuesday: Children's books

Alice has alerted me to this meme being hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, which is perfect for giving me an opportunity to gush...

Guys, I love kids' books. Kids' books are the best. I love any excuse to look at kids' books and have gone to Lengths to create excuses to buy them. So without further ado and not in any order:

1. Each Peach Pear Plum - there's maybe some punctuation in there - this might be the first book I really remember from childhood. It's by Janet and Allen Ahlberg, so it has adorable illustrations. The text is a little rhyme involving various fairy tale characters, and then you can search for them in the pictures. It's so cute and simple and wonderful.

2. The Jolly Postman - another Ahlberg book with cute, detailed illustrations and fairy tale characters. This one has little letters you can pull out and read, hence the subtitle: Or, Other People's Letters. Little kids will enjoy it, although it's kind of a "learning opportunity" about being gentle with books, and then when they get older they'll marvel at the level of detail and humor.

3. Flat Stanley is now, apparently, a whole media empire or something, with at least two series of early-reader books and a new set of illustrations. I can't find a picture of my old one, but I remember the pictures being black and white and pea-green. Stanley was a favorite bedtime story for Young Julie despite or perhaps because it was very long. At some point mom put her foot down and divided it up into chapters.

4. Dear Zoo - whenever I mention this one to my peers they don't seem to know what I'm talking about. Their loss: it had flaps. Flaps.

5. Flecki Hat Geburtstag - or as you Anglos might know it, Spot's Birthday Party. I spent Pre-K and Kindergarten in an international school in the Netherlands and my dad brought me this from West Germany. I don't remember the German classes we apparently had but I do remember making dad read this to me in German and English.

6. Officer Buckle and Gloria was my brother's book but I loved the pictures even though I was too old for it. If I'm remembering correctly there were lots of little details snuck in (which you might notice as a theme on this list). I could describe the Arthur books the same way.

7. The Berenstain Bears - good lord, we had so many of these. My brother and I learned (or were expected to learn) a large portion of our good behavior from the Bear family. I looked up the spelling of this on Amazon just now and spent a good ten minutes scrolling through the list: "Trouble with Money! No Girls Allowed! The Messy Room! Get in a Fight!"

8. Arty the Smarty and The Blue-Nosed Witch were two of my mom's old Weekly Reader books. She loved those books and I remember giggling when she would tell me about them, and then eventually gramma found them in the attic for me. I giggled because I thought it was goofy that mom would be so excited telling me some dumb ol' story about a fish, but you can bet if I ever have kids, I'll wear my enthusiasm on my sleeve like that. My mother, god bless her, maybe isn't the sort of bookworm I am, but we were always more enthusiastic about books than movies in my house growing up.

9. Usborne Newspaper Histories - I'm giving you a link for these because I think they're a little less well known. It's stunning how these manage to be so good on both a humor and an educational level. Again, they're the kind of thing that kids and adults can enjoy because there are all kinds of details in the writing and imagery. If I recall correctly, the Medieval Messenger and the Egyptian Echo are the funniest ones, but they're all hilarious. There are many imitators and wannabes but these are unbeatable (the "tour guide" types books in particular always fall flat for me).

10. If You Give a Mouse a Cookie - Just plain fun. There are a lot of other entries in this series now, but this is the original. I think if you were to look at all the books on this list together you could piece together my present-day sense of humor.

And, just to round out this list, one book that doesn't rank at all for me: Goodnight Moon. It was not a part of my childhood and has no magic for me. Flat Stanley all the way!