Time Travel Paradoxes and Rainbow Rowell

 

    I have read several books by Blake Crouch, like Dark Matter and Upgrade. He has solid, semi-scientific sci-fi plots about the multiverse and gene editing. His latest book, Recursion, is about time travel. I especially like time travel as a plot line. One of my favorite authors, Connie Willis writes amazing time travel books: Doomsday, and To Say Nothing of the Dog are two of her best. Crouch deals credibly with several hiccups in time travel. Can you kill Hitler and stop World War II? Can you kill your grandfather or grandmother? Would you cease to exist because your parent was never born? Time travel brings out a person's violent nature, apparently. He also addresses a larger question of who might control time travel and for what purpose? He rocks the ideas, but his characters are like sock puppets and not flesh and blood people. In that way, he reminds me of old school Sci-Fi where the idea is the essential part of the story. I liked it.

Here is a informative website about time travel paradoxes: https://www.astronomytrek.com/5-bizarre-paradoxes-of-time-travel-explained/ 

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   I have been reading another Young Adult book about a magical school with a prophecy of a chosen one who will come and save the supernatural world, and it's been good. It is the Simon Snow trilogy by Rainbow Rowell. I've read Carry On and Wayward Son and am working on the third. A secret vampire at the school--a creature killed by magicians on site--is also gay. Rowell uses Baz's need to keep his vampireness a secret as a metaphor for being in the closet. His roommate Simon Snow suspects, but can't prove it. This gives the story a spellbinding 😉 tension. Simon and Baz have been enemies since they were magically forced to be roommates at age eleven. Simon's best friend, Penelope, and his girlfriend, Agatha, help him in his fight against Baz. They are in their senior year, and the threat to the magical world, the Insidious Humdrum, is about to overwhelm their school and the larger world of magic. The story is complex, suspenseful, and staffed with full-orbed characters. When a character's motives are revealed through magic, they could be red for evil, and blue for good, but most are a shade of purple. That describes most characters and makes the books compelling.

    In the second book, Wayward Son, Penelope, Baz, and Simon go to America to visit Agatha. Rowell's characters mature over the course of the series learning things about others and themselves. There is excellent poking fun at Amercan culture. A Renaissance Fair through British eyes are hilarious. Rowell uses the friends on a journey trope and they encounter wonderful and deadly creatures, fall in and out danger, and acquire a new friend. I like the second book better than the first.

    These books are a spin-off from Rowell's earlier book Fangirl in which the main character writes fanfic about the Simon Snow series. Rowell went to actually write the series.

    Rowell and I share the same birthday, February 24th, but are ten years apart, and she lives in Omaha, Nebraska, where I lived during high school. So I suspect I might be living in a time travel paradox, and she has my writing life! 

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I Didn't Like the Books at First, but then I Did 🙃

 

    The two books I read this week had this in common; I didn't like them at first. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón was an overgrown, claustrophobic garden on a moonless night with the wind whipping dark trees in a frantic, anxious dance above forsaken lovers searching hopelessly for knowledge of what is true and what is an illusion as the hot breath of fate sizzles their necks. Only more so. It helped me understand the book when I read a sentence review from Stephen King.

Stephen King wrote, "If you thought the true gothic novel died with the 19th century, this will change your mind. Shadow is the real deal."

    Oh, a Gothic novel like my least favorite Jane Austen novel, Northanger Abbey. 

    Genre aside, I found the characters good or not so great; only a few middle-of-the-road ones. The Bechdel Test is a test that asks if two named female characters talk to each other about something other than a man. (what-is-the-bechdel-test) I find the women in Shadow of the Wind only exist in relation to men or as a convenient device to move the plot forward. They don't stand on their own merit. And it irked me. Maybe this is how Gothic Novels work?

    I almost abandoned the book, but its twisted plot captured me, and I had to finish. Zaphón skillfully shows the theme of fathers and sons in many different iterations, and it reminded me of all the father/son duos in Hamlet. There were many themes:themes It is a complex book to wade through. Zaphón is a good writer, but not one I enjoyed.

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    The Measure by Nikki Erlick has an intriguing premise. One day everyone in the world over the age of twenty-two found a box outside their front door. In the box is a string that was the measure of their life. Everyone could know how long they would live by opening their box and measuring their string. It throws the world into turmoil. This book passed the Bechdel Test, but its many characters felt flat. However, the plot was braided together with constant surprises. I enjoyed Erlick's sleight of hand in using every character. Everyone has a purpose. I don't want to give anything away, but the ending was hopeful and encouraging. I asked myself if I would open the box to find out how long I would live? The answer is yes. I couldn't stand not knowing! 

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Mucho Mystery

 

    I picked How to Write a Mystery: A Handbook from Mystery Writers of America, edited by Lee Child, on a whim at a local Indi bookstore. Then my book club decided to do a year of mystery books, and this was a valuable resource for different genres and exposure to new authors. Hello, Craig Johnson of Longmire fame. It has essays from many big names in the mystery game, like Lee Child, Charlaine Harris,  Deborah Crombie, Jeffery Deaver, etc. I read it straight through because maybe there's something about children's mystery literature I may need to know one day. Surprise, it's more than Encyclopedia Brown. I can't think of a topic it didn't cover--character development, building community, and legal considerations are a few. A debate I enjoyed was the Pantsers versus the Outliners. Some authors write by the seat of their pants and go where the story takes them; others OUTLINE everything. Jeffery Deaver's essay "Always Outline!" is followed by Lee Child's "Never Outline!" Both are insightful and humorous. If you are a reader, and I suspect you are, or a writer, this is a worthwhile book. I read it over several months, an essay at a time. It is a solid resource and also entertaining.

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    This is my second read of Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke. My mystery book club is reading it for Black History Month. Here is the link to my previous review, and not to brag, but I was pretty eloquent: mostly-mysteries.html

I didn't think I would need to reread it because the story was memorable, but so much happens, and there are unexpected connections and family ties that I needed to. There are several murders, and I like that Locke tied them all up at the end. It is annoying when I get to the end of a mystery book, and the killer isn't revealed clearly. 😡

I benefitted from the reread, seeing things I hadn't noticed before. It wrestled with the dichotomy of home and belonging. Home, for Darren Matthews, is East Texas, a place that doesn't value or welcome him, a black man and a Ranger. This creates a continuing churn that gives the novel tension. I find Bluebird, Bluebird to be well-crafted with genuine, gritty characters. If you haven't read it, give it a try. 

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Pregnancy--or Not, Picture Brides, and Gardens

    Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi is a translation from Japanese. Ms. Shibata works in an all-male office and is the grease that keeps the office running. She cleans up after meetings, sorts the mail, and replaces the ink in the copier on top of carrying the same workload as the men. Most nights, she doesn't leave until 7 or 8 PM. One day, faced with missing lunch to clean the conference room, she announces she's pregnant and has morning sickness, only she isn't. This is a fantastic book. Her lie changes her life for the better. She eats better, gets more sleep and exercise, and is treated with deference at work, but how far can she take it? I have been a reader my entire life, and reading books in translation means I encounter ideas, characters, plots, and ideas that jar me in their unpredictability. I didn't know a story could go that way. I recommend this book because it is interesting, readable, and a bit subversive.

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        I've been reading Julie Otsuka lately. This week I read The Buddha in the Attic. This novel tells the story of a specialized category of women. Japanese women who came to America in the early 1900s as brides to immigrant Japanese men. They saw each other pictures, and the women were called picture brides. Otsuka writes in a list format that works well and shows the complexity of the group expressing a wide range of situations and emotions. I know of no one besides Otsuka who writes in this fashion. Each chapter recounts a significant mile marker in the women's lives: Coming, First Night, Whites, Babies, Children, Traitors, A Disappearance. It is skillfully done. Even though the central protagonist is a group of women, the story is powerful and effective.

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    The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden by Karin Yan Glaser is the second in the Vanderbeekers of 141st Street. Yan Glaser is terrific at creating a compelling problem and setting a clock on it. Tick, Tick. The plot moves along, and I can't stop reading. It really is a book for all ages because there are multiple characters--adults, teens, tweens, children, and pets--that are treated with respect and honor. She tackles real-world problems like illness, death, and bad choices, honestly and kindly. I'm working my way through the series, and they brighten the dark winter months for me. 

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