EBN A Book You Can Finish in a Day: W;t by Margaret Edson

You would think that a play is something you should be able to read in a day. After all, a plays performance shouldn't last longer than a day. Nobody would see it otherwise. But there have been times when reading a whole play in a day was difficult for me. Shakespeare plays in high school took me a fair amount of time, and The Cursed Child  took me two days (real life kept interrupting my reading time). And the first time I read this play it took me two days. I was in college, engaged to my husband, and so wrapped up in wedding plans that I am surprised that I managed to get any school work done at all. I'm glad I reread this play though. It is beautiful and so very real.

Wit is a play about a professor of 17th century poetry who has been diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer. The whole play is a fourth wall break and shows the final moments of her life broken up with different flashbacks.

As its name suggests, this play is pretty witty. The main character is sharp, quick, and uses a fair amount of sarcasm. She also made a name for herself in academics showing the "wit" of John Donne's poems. The whole theme and point of the play is how wit is just a cover for or protection against reality or truth. The character has spent all her time so caught up in the intellectual fluff of life that she has failed to see the deeper, cleaner, and simpler truth of life and death. It is only through her experience as a dying cancer patient, when wit and fluff is stripped away from her, that she can see it. My favorite part was when her old professor came to visit her just before her final hours. She wasn't all together there and so the professor read her a children's book she had gotten for a great-grandchild. The story was an allegory of a person always wanting to run away from God or Truth but never being able to do so and, in the end,  embracing that which they denied so strongly.

This was a beautiful play.

EBN A Ghost Story: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I've just learned that they have put up two more seasons of The Great British Bake Off on Netflix. I love that show. It is one of the best competition shows I have ever seen. My husband would say that NBA games or any sporting event would beat it hands down, but I think it's the best. I keep trying to think of ways to combine my love of books with my love of cooking and baking. Maybe I'll make a YouTube channel about it. Hmmm...

If you can't tell by the Newbery Medal on the cover of this book, it is a YA novel. I was looking for a ghost story book but was a little leary of things. I am a bit of a chicken when it comes to the horror genre, especially if it is something I think exists like ghosts or serial killers. The worst for me are ones that involve children. This book actually embodies all three, but it's meant for kids so I thought I would be ok. My sister had read it and said it was good. And it was, indeed, good.

The story was about this little toddler whose family is murdered and is then raised by this ghost couple who live in the graveyard by his house. Since his adoptive parents are ghosts and can't leave the graveyard, he has a guardian who cares for his physical needs (e.g. food). His guardian, Silas, is neither dead or alive. In fact, I'm 99.9% sure he is a vampire.

This book had a lot of interesting portrayals of classical horror characters. Vampires and werewolves are mentors and warriors (if anyone knows who the guy with the lucky pig is supposed to be let me know). The Ghosts are just people with regular human motivations. I thought the "Jack's of All Trades" were a pretty neat idea too.

So, part of the theology I associate myself with is the belief in an afterlife. I believe that when a person dies their spirit lives on her on earth, though on a different plane. The best part about this book is its humanizing portrayal of the ghosts. They really were just people, subject to all the foibles that controlled them in life. I think some human flaws are brought on by physical shortcomings and so wouldn't be continued after death, but that's a conversation for another time. I think if we recognize or think of ghosts more on that kind of level develop a really great sort of relatability.

The other thing I really loved about this book is how the events in the main character's life all played a part in the resolution of the climax. But all these life events were, on the surface, very stupid. He puts himself in danger, or breaks a rule, or storms off in a huff and finds himself in terrible trouble. He learns something from each of these experiences though and, had he not had them, the story would have ended in his death. Life is what it is and that is good. Regardless of how awful things get, we can always grow from them.

EBN A Book You Would Never Read: Real Account by Okushou and Shizumu Watanabe

I'm a couple books behind my schedule and have a few heavier duty books sitting in my pile so I thought I might cut myself some slack and read a quickie. I'm not a big graphic novel fan. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the occasional comic book and I've found a few manga series that I really love, but generally speaking it isn't my thing. It is my sister's thing though. The girl is even getting a B.A. in illustration. She told me about this particular graphic novel. The premise sounded really interesting so I thought I would give it a shot.

The premise of this book is social media gone psycho. Basically everyone is on this social networking site called Real Account (RA). Every profile on RA has a number of followers, they can play games and post "tweets". Basic. But then some crazy Saw puppet character zaps 10,000 of the most frequent users into this virtual world where they need to survive a series of social networking challenges in order to survive, because once they die in the network, they die in real life. The most twisted part is that all of their followers die too. The character also dies if their followers drops to 0.

This book is pretty twisted and really reminds me of the Saw movies (granted I've only watched one of those and had nightmares for about a week afterwards). But the whole social media spin is really interesting. So much about social media is inauthentic. Relationships are shallow and fickle. The image a person portrays is a mask that can be deceitful. Genuine interaction with others is difficult. Yet these are the things people like about online life. Because the relationships are shallow, they hurt less when they end. Because our face is only a mask, we feel freer to act and say what we want. There are rules to online etiquette but they don't actually have to be followed. Anonymity protects us. The world of this manga takes away the protection and makes it real. You die virtually, you die literally. The realest part is the link between the followers and the contestants. It doesn't matter how many people think your funny or enjoy seeing your posts, if they think your a douche then they aren't going to risk their necks for you. If all you have are superficial internet friendships then there will be nobody to love you with their life on the line. Thank goodness social media isn't this real. But it does make you stop to think about how substantial your real life is. Is it enough to keep you alive?

EBN An Author's Debut Novel: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

So, a little factoid about my life right now. My five month old baby now has two very sharp teeth, and they hurt... me. I have nursed all of my babies and all of them at one point or another have bitten me, but either I have forgotten how much it hurts or this baby's teeth are sharper. I still love breastfeeding and will continue to do it, but right now I hurt and feel a terrible need to shout it out to the void that is the internet.

This was kind of a sad book, good, but sad. I should have guessed it when I saw the Oprah book club sticker on the cover. My dad told me about this book. He had gotten it from his library and said it was pretty good. He mentioned it was the first novel published by this author, and I was like, "That's one of my book challenge categories. I'll check it out at my library." I was surprised I hadn't heard about this author before. She apparently is on the list of best Southern Gothic authors alongside Harper Lee and William Faulkner. Just based on this book, I say she deserves that spot. The writing was raw and beautiful. The imagery was filthy, moving, and religious. It was sad, but good.

There are five main characters that the story follows. Blount is a wandering hobo communist. Dr. Copeland is an African-American medical doctor blindly fighting for the betterment of his race. Biff is the emasculated and slightly trannie owner of the local diner. Mick is a 13 year-old girl painfully trying to navigate that transition between kid and adult who loves music. Then there is Mr. Singer, the glue that holds the rest together. He is a deaf-mute. They all have great moments and developments throughout the book but the biggest character was Singer.

Singer is pretty obviously a representation of Christ. He is seen as constantly kind and patient. He is constantly giving to others and helping where he can. He even is supposed to look Jewish. In his last chapter of the book we even see a lot of reflections between him and Christ's final days. (Sorry if I'm being vague, but I don't like giving spoilers to books I enjoyed.) Even his relationship with the other four main characters is a comment on how followers project their own feelings onto the one they follow weather they are there or not.

So, Singer is supposed to be Christ, but mcCullers doesn't leave it there. She provides a Father as well in the form of Spiros Antonapoulos, Singer's best friend and former roommate. The two had lived together for 10 years when Antonapoulos' overindulgence in primal urges causes his cousin to have him committed in an asylum. The imagery all fits, though it isn't a very positive image. Singer is a very humble and giving person, but he always gives the greatest of what he has to Antonapoulos. When they are apart, all he can think about is his friend and the separation between them is intensely painful for him. What I found interesting is how Singer almost does the same thing to Antonapoulos as the others do to him. He projects his own feelings onto Antonapoulos making him into something he might not actually be. We sometimes do this with Christ, did Christ do that with The Father?

Another element she uses in this worshiper-deity relationship is lack of effective communication. Singer is a deaf-mute and relies on lipreading to understand the others. Antonapoulos is a deaf-mute as well, but understands very little sign language. The fact that the communication is hindered allows the worshiping relationship to develop. If we could communicate with God through something other than prayer would we still worship him?

This book was great. I could go on forever on the themes and motifs of this book. Actually, if anyone is looking for a good book to do a critical analysis for school or publication, this would be a great choice.

EBN A Famous Author's Lesser Known Work: The Roald Dahl Omnibus by Roald Dahl

I'm getting a little behind in my reading. I think I probably ought to stop picking such huge books to read. Looking at the stack of books I have sitting by my bed waiting to be read, at least three of them are a good 2 1/2 to 3 inches thick. Looks like I'm just going to have to step up my game.

I loved this book. It has been a long time since I have read a collection of short stories that I loved as much as these. They were clever, witty, full of dramatic irony, and cleanly written. Some of the stories were absolutely hilarious. I really liked the Claud and Gordon story "The Champion of the World". The two main character's made me think of Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street, if Burt and Ernie had been a couple of lovable low level con men.

I found Dahl's female characters kind of perplexing. I felt that his portrayal of them was both sexist and feminist at the same time. I had grown up reading his children's novels and especially loved his heroines like Matilda or Sophie. These girls were all pretty tough and bravely took the problems life had thrown them and made them better. The female character's in these adult stories were, I was surprised to find, all just a little pathetic. They were all cast in very traditional rolls and prone to traditional foibles. They fell pray to emotional breakdowns and were either hysterical or downright crazy. This sexist portrayal is probably due to the time period Dahl is writing in, as well as his gown-up audience. I don't like it, but I can excuse it. The feminist side of his work is not in the female characters themselves but in what causes their psychotic breaks. With the exception of one (whose back story we don't learn about) all the main female characters are brought low by the men in their lives. In "Lamb to the Slaughter", the main character was a perfectly happy expectant mother until he husband tells her he is leaving her; happy housewife then turns killer. Maybe Dahl is pulling a "Yellow Wallpaper" here. It's the oppression of their lives, caused by men, that makes them that way.

All in all. This was a great read. I enjoyed the stories a bit too much (I took too long to get through them all). It was fun and I would definitely recommend it.