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Drama by Raina Telgemeier

For our discussion on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, the Banned Book Club selected the graphic novel Drama by Raina Telgemeier.  We usually read one graphic novel per year and this year I gave the Club choice between Watchmen, and the top two challenged books of 2016: Drama at number 2 and This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki at number 1.  We had to choose the book before August because the owner of King’s Books wanted to announce the meeting for a special arts month promotion in October.  Drama is a very colorful book about a middle school stage crew producing a school musical.  I wasn’t familiar with the musical in the book but it looked like it took place in the South during the Civil War.  The graphic novel centers on one member of the crew, Callie, an energetic girl with purple hair.  Early on she has crushes easily but she goes through a lot of growth over the course of the story.  The themes of theater, drama both on and off stage, personal growth, acceptance of LGBTQ, and friendship combine to make a rather compelling story.

The book contained an interesting relatable reference.  One of the characters is named Bonnie Lake.  Telgemeier must either not be from the Puget Sound area or paying homage to it.  Another relatable reference is one panel shows Callie using a cell phone with a keyboard.  The acknowledgments at the end of the book thank David Levithan.

Not surprisingly, theater plays a strong role in the book.  Each chapter actually shows a curtain as if the story itself is a play. Callie’s love of theater is explored very deeply.  She first got into it when she was younger and saw a professional production of “Les Miserables.”  Callie takes Jesse to a place with an old book about theater with pictures of plays from the early 20^th century.  While paging through the book Callie and Jesse “jump” into it “Mary Poppins-style.”  Callie tells Jesse that “I want the audience to believe that the actors really live inside the world on the stage.” (p. 53)  Drama even has a bibliography of books on theater that Telgemeier used for research.  Drama occurs both on and off stage in the book.  West asks Bonnie, “Why are you creating extra drama for yourself?” (p. 172)  Observing an argument, another character exclaims, “Ooh, drama.” (p. 194)

The book contains several twists and surprises that I enjoyed.  I liked how some of the characters surprised me.  The most impressive was Callie’s growth.  She starts out falling for boys and lamenting not having a boyfriend.  But by the end she’s happy with just herself and her friends.  The beginning of the book has an image of Callie alone at the empty baseball field, hurt and humiliated after Greg has Matt lie to her about being at baseball practice. (p. 17)  Her back is turned toward the reader.  At the conclusion of the book, the final page shows Callie happy and exciting about the future, and facing the reader.

As stated earlier, Drama was the second most challenged book of 2016.  In 2014, parents in Mt. Pleasant, Texas claimed the book was sexually explicit and administrators removed the book from Chapel Hill Elementary School.  In 2015, the book was removed from a Texas junior high school for being “politically, racially, and socially insensitive.”  A small but vocal minority objected to the inclusion of two gay characters, one of whom shares an onstage kiss with another boy.  Negative online reader reviews have accused Telgemeier of literally hiding an agenda inside the brightly-colored, teen-friendly covers.  In 2017, Drama was challenged for including LGBT characters, being sexually explicit, and the book was considered too have an offensive political viewpoint.  It has also been challenged for having “subject matter too advanced for elementary students.”

We had a good discussion on Tuesday, October 17.  I think over ten people showed up including three or four new people.  Everyone seemed to like the book and one person gave it to their 10-year-old grandchild to read after they finished it.  Some of the characters in drama do some immature things such as breaking up right before a performance.  Someone at the discussion said such insensitivity isn’t surprising for middle school students.  We liked that the story had unexpected twists.  Some thought it might have been banned or challenged because of an interracial kiss.  We saw no reason why teens and preteens couldn’t read it.  I later gave my copy away at a drive for children’s books.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

(Spoilers)

For our discussion on Tuesday, September 19, 2017, the Banned Book Club selected Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.  I was familiar with the story because I had seen the miniseries on Masterpiece Theater starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews back in the 1980’s.  I didn’t quite understand the miniseries, why the story took the turns that it did, and why things didn’t seem to work out for the main character Charles Ryder by the end.  I was hoping the book would shed some more light on it and it did.  It wasn’t the easiest book to understand but I enjoyed it and maybe now that I’m an adult and have gone through much of the process of growing up, I can understand better.  I also enjoyed the writing, the descriptions, and the inner reflections of the first person protagonist, Charles Ryder.  The book takes place during times of great change in England as the power of the aristocracy wanes.  Major events are mentioned such as the General Strike and the coronation of King Edward VIII in the 1930’s (or maybe it was Kind George VI).  Religion also plays an important role since the Flytes, the aristocratic family with whom Charles becomes entangled, are minority Catholics in a Protestant country.

I already knew that Brideshead was the name of the large country estate of the Flytes, though Lord Marchmain had long since settled in Italy with his mistress.  He has actually gone to the Lido while his wife Lady Marchmain “never went near the Lido, of course.” (p. 58)  But I didn’t know that Charles’ army camp (the novel’s “present day” with most of the story told in flashback) lies “along one gentle slope; opposite us the ground led, still unravished, to the neighborly horizon, and between us flowed a stream—it was named the Bride and rose not two miles away at a farm called Bridesprings, where we used to walk to tea; it became a considerable river lower down before it joined the Avon.” (p. 17)  I remember the fountain at Brideshead from the miniseries: “an oval basin with an island of sculptured rocks at its center; on the rocks grew, in stone, formal tropical vegetation and wild English fern in its natural fronds.” (p. 89)

Waugh has a rambling writing style that can sometimes be hard to follow but can also create vivid images.  In his letters referenced at the end of the book, he states about it, “I should not think six Americans will understand it.” (p. 3 of the letters)  He kind of comments on the writing through Charles’ narration who describes how Lady Marchmain “came to see me and, again, I must reduce to a few words a conversation which took us from Holywell to the parks through Mesopotamia, and over the ferry to north Oxford where she was staying.” (p. 161)  In his letters, Waugh observes that, “The first person singular is a most treacherous form of narration, I found.  It is so fatally easy in some ways, one can go on and on almost effortlessly and then one comes upon something which ‘I’ cannot possibly say which must be said.” (p. 9 of the letters)

Waugh uses many words in the book that were new to me.  In the preface he states that, “Much of this book is therefore a panegyric preached over an empty coffin.” (p. x)  A panegyric is a lofty oration or writing in praise of a person or thing.  Charles narrates that, “Strife was internecine during the next fortnight” (p. 79) where internecine means destructive to both sides in a conflict.  The drawing room at Brideshead is “a long, elaborate, symmetrical Adam room, with two bays of windows opening onto Green Park.” (p. 238)  I’m not sure what an “Adam room” is.  At a bar “Half a dozen youths were drinking and playing with slot machines; an older, natty, crapulous-looking man seemed to be in control.” (p. 310)  Crapulous means marked by intemperance, especially drinking.  Rex’s public life approaches “a climacteric” (p. 341) that’s a period of decreasing reproductive activity.  Maybe it has another meaning I don’t know that applies better.  In the Letters section, Waugh writes, “My Magnum Opus is turning into a jeroboam” (p. 9) that’s a wine bottle with a capacity four times that of a regular bottle.

The book also includes some familiar words and names.  Lunt, the dorm servant at Oxford tells Charles, “And there’s some even goes dancing in town at the Masonic—but the proctors will get them, you see.” (p. 23)  By leaving Hardcastle’s car out, Charles and Sebastian get “him into grave trouble with the proctors.” (p. 43)  Proctor seems to mean enforcer of the rules as opposed to an invigilator who administers an exam.  Later Charles and Sebastian watch “the grave crowds crossing and recrossing under the campanile.” (p. 110)  That reminds me of that restaurant in Los Angeles that served gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches.  One character has the nickname “Boy” Mulcaster that sound Filipino.  Charles’ sees Rex Motram’s name “now and again peeping into the Tatler” (p. 268) that sounds like a tattletale magazine.  At an exhibition of Charles’ paintings, Anthony Blanche tells him, “I have not come to a social function; I do not want my photograph in the Tatler, I have not come to exhibit myself.  I have come to see the pictures.” (p. 308)  Around that time in the book, Celia tells Charles, “Mr. Samgrass.  Apparently he’s one of Lord Copper’s middle-aged young men on the Daily Beast.” (p. 304)  I think the Daily Beast and Lord Copper show up in another book by Waugh called Scoop.  I remember watching a Masterpiece Theater production of Scoop and one of the characters often says to another, “Up to a point, Lord Copper.”

Most of the book covers Charles’ life from college to early adulthood.  By the “present day” during World War II, he is in his late 30’s.  Early on he narrates, “It seems to me that I grew younger with each adult habit I acquired.”  Lord Marchmain’s mistress Cara tells Charles that his Lordship “is very fond of me and I protect him from his own innocence.  We are comfortable … Sebastian is in love with his own childhood.  That will make him very unhappy.  His teddy-bear, his nanny … and he is nineteen years old.” (p. 114)  Sebastian later tells Charles, “it’s a rather pleasant change when all your life you’ve had people looking after you, to have someone to look after yourself.  Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me.” (p. 248)

Waugh very effectively presents the subtle dysfunction of the Flyte family.  After crashing a car Rex says that Sebastian “is liable for anything up to six months imprisonment for being drunk in charge of a car.” (p. 135)  Lady Marchmain tells Charles, “I slept very little last night, and all the time I kept coming back to one thing; he (Sebastian) was so unhappy.” (p. 163)  Charles warns Lady Marchmain, “If you worry (Sebastian) with keepers and cures he’ll be a physical wreck in a few years.” (p. 188)  She laments that “Any failure in my children is my failure.” (p. 194)  Later Cordelia tells Charles, “I wonder if you remember the story mummy read us the evening Sebastian first got drunk—I mean the bad evening.  ‘Father Brown’ said something like, ‘I caught him’ (the thief) ‘with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.” (p. 254)  She goes on to describe how her mom is like that with her grown children.

Religion is also a strong theme in the book because the Flyte family is Catholic in heavily Protestant England.  Charles says, to Bridey, “For God’s sake,” I said because I was near to tears that morning, “why bring God into everything?” Bridey answers, “I’m sorry.  I forgot.  But you know that’s an extremely funny question.” (p. 164)  By the end, Julia tells Charles, “Probably I shall be bad again, punished again.  But the worse I am, the more I need God.  I can’t shut myself out from his mercy … But I saw today things in the schoolroom, so bad they were unpunishable, that only mummy could deal with—the bad thing was on the point of doing, that I was not quite good enough to do; to set up a rival good to God’s.  Why should I be allowed to understand that and not you, Charles?” (p. 392-393)

The book was banned because of its gay characters such as the overt Anthony Blanch, the more subtle Sebastian and potentially Charles.  Blanche tells some students planning to kick him out of a place on campus, “nothing could give me more pleasure than to be manhandled by you meaty boys.”  Sebastian tells Charles that Anthony Blanche “wrote to me.  Apparently he’s taken a flat in Munich—he has formed an attachment to a policeman there.” (p. 118)  A couple of women potentially for hire at the Old Hundreth club say about Charles and Sebastian, “we’re wasting our time.  They’re only fairies.” (p. 129)  Julia asks Charles why he married Celia and he answers, “Physical attraction. Ambition.  Everyone agrees she’s the ideal wife for a painter.  Loneliness, missing Sebastian.”

“You lived him, didn’t you?”

“Oh yes.  He was the forerunner.” (p.295)

Later Julia says to Charles, “It’s frightening … to think how completely you have forgotten Sebastian.”

“He was the forerunner.”

“That’s what you said in the storm.  I’ve thought since, perhaps I am only a forerunner, too.” (p. 348)

In 2005, Alabama State Representative Gerard Allen proposed House Bill 30 that would have banned public school libraries from purchasing books by gay authors or with gay characters.  The billed also proposed that books with gay characters and college textbooks that suggested homosexuality was natural would have to be removed and destroyed.  Banned books included Brideshead Revisited with its gay character Anthony Blanche and potential romantic love between Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte.  The bill was proposed to “protect our culture” and prevent immoral ideas from spreading. The bill did not pass.

We had a good discussion on September 19.  I believe at least 6 or 7 people showed up.  Most of us believed that Charles and Sebastian have a romantic relationship even though Charles isn’t gay.  The situation is more complex than that, just as Sebastian’s relationship with his family simply isn’t “affluenza” or alcoholism on his part.  We talked about Charles’ future.  By the end of the book he is “loveless, friendless, and homeless.”  But some of us felt he would find love again.  We talked about end and why Julia feels she has to choose her Catholic faith over Charles.  When I first saw the English TV series many years ago I thought it was depressing.  But now I understand it better, though not as well as the six Americans who understand it.

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

For our discussion on Tuesday, August 15, 2017, the Banned Book Club selected Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh.  I thought we should read something “edgier” than the children’s and young adult books we had been reading in 2017 such as The Giver for March, The Graveyard Book for June, and A Wrinkle in Time for July.  I gave the choice between Trainspotting, American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis, and Children of God by Cormac McCarthy.  The Club selected Trainspotting despite one club member warning that it was too scatological.  I had seen the movie made from the book back in the mid-1990’s when it first came out.  I enjoyed it then.  The book is actually very similar to the movie despite being more of a collection of related short stories from different perspectives than one coherent narrative that it was in the movie.  The book also has more characters and gives more insight into the main ones Sick Boy and Begbie who seem even more despicable, if that’s possible.  The book is very profane and scatological but also contains some humor and profound insight.  I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

The book is told in the Scottish dialect the majority of the time as different characters’ inner monologues and some dialogue.  A few chapters are told in the third person such as the 2-3 with women as the perspective characters.  The back of the book includes a glossary of many dialect words such as bairn for child or baby.  Some are funny such as coffin-dodger for senior citizen and specky for someone wearing glasses or spectacles.  Much of the dialect is slang such as Spud saying, “Ken” all the time.  He even narrates, “Ah’ll huv tae stoap sayin ‘ken’ sae much.” (p. 67)  Later Begbie watches “a young girl in a blue cagoul hold hands with Sick Boy.” (p. 324)  Cagoul is a British English term for a lightweight (no lining) weatherproof raincoat or anorak with a hood which often comes to knee-length.

I found it interesting to read from the different perspectives of the characters and I often had to figure out which character was narrating.  I got to know their slang patterns.  The narrator was most often Renton or Spud but sometimes it was a new character that seemed to have no connection to the others.  I could often figure out the connections such as that Nina’s “Auntie Cathy and Uncle Davie, had two sons: Billy, who had just come out of the army, and Mark who was supposed to be into drugs.” (p. 37)  It’s not hard to figure out that Mark is Renton, but interesting to perceive him from an outside point of view.  I think only one chapter is narrated by Sick boy who is surprisingly articulate: “and what is Renton proposing, on this beautiful afternoon of vintage cruising weather.” (p. 28)  I think I had the hardest time understanding Spud’s vernacular but he is still fun to read: “Ah git called ‘Spud’ that often, even ma Ma calls us it, ah sometimes forget ma name tae—Danny.” (p. 125)  I tried listening to some of the audiobook but I couldn’t understand the dialect as fast as the actor read it.

The book contains some relatable references.  The glossary defines a scouser as a native of Liverpool.  I knew this from the song by The Monkees, “Randy Scouse Git.”  While shooting up Renton comments that “The wallpaper is horrible in this s---pit ay a room.” (p. 14)  That sounds like Oscar Wilde’s last words.  One of the words in the glossary is Subbuteo, a table-top football (soccer) game.  My brother used to have a Subbuteo set.  Other references relate to music.  In a third person perspective chapter, “Spud turns and says something to Renton, who can’t hear him above a song by The Farm, which, Renton considers, like all their songs, is only listenable if you’re E’d out of your box.” (p. 137)  I actually hadn’t heard of The Farm.  I had heard a song that Renton’s mom sings, “‘Momma’s little baby loves shortnin shortnin, momma’s little baby loves shortnin bread …’ She sang tunelessly.  Sick Boy gleefully joined in.” (p. 169)  Another character has been “singing Joy Division’s ‘She’s Lost Control’ in my head all day.  Ian Curtis. Matty.  I think of them intertwined in some way; but the only thing they have in common is a death wish.” (p. 203)  There’s a passage from The Smiths’ song “There is a Light that Never Goes Out” that Spud has always liked: “and in the darkened underpass, I thought Oh God my chance has come at last but then a strange fear gripped me and I just couldn’t ask.”  “Morrissey’s sad voice summed up his feelings.” (p. 267)

The characters, especially Renton, comment on the life of an addict.  Early on Renton describes how “the real junky (as opposed tae the casual user who wants a partner-in-crime) doesnae gie a f--- aboot anybody else.” (p. 7)  He comments that “whin yuv goat a real junk habit.  Yuv goat one thing to worry aboot.  The simplicity of it aw.” (p. 133)  He reflects how “Ma Problem is, whenever ah sense the possibility, or realise the actually of attaining something that aw thought aw wanted, be it girlfriend, flat, job, education, money, and so on, it just seems so dull n sterile that ah cannae value it any mair.  Junk’s different though.  Ye cannae turn yir back oan it sae easy.  It willnae let ye.  Trying to manage a junk problem is the ultimate challenge. It’s also a f----- good kick.” (p. 95)

They give commentaries on class and philosophy.  Renton feels that “Football divisions were a stupid and irrelevant nonsense, acting against the interests of working class unity, ensuring that the bourgeoisie’s hegemony went unchallenged.” (p. 48)  He tells Spud, “It’s a well-known fact thit ye nivir stand a f----- chance ay gittin anything decent in this city if ye didnae go tae a posh school.” (p. 63)  He describes how in school “Ah only did well … tae git into an O Level class tae git away fae Begbie.  It was the same story at secondary.  Whin Begbie wis expelled n sent tae another school in route tae Polmont, ma performance declined.” (p. 83)  After Granty dies, Lenny gestures angrily to a group of old guys playing dominoes: “they’ve hud their lives!  Long f----- lives! Aw they dae is moan like f---!  Granty nivir complained aboot f--- all.  One ay the nicest c---- ye could hope to meet.” (p. 101)  Nina realizes “for the first time that laughter was about more than humor.  This was about reducing tension, solidarity in the face of the grim reaper.” (p. 39)  The familiar rant from the film appears in the middle of the book: “Society invents a spurious convoluted logic to absorb and change people whae’s behavior is outside the mainstream.  Suppose that aw ken all the pros and cons, know that ah’m gaunnae huv a short life, am ay sound mind, etcetera, etcetera, but still want to use smack?  They won’t let ye dae it.  They won’t let ye dae it because it’s a sign ay thir ain failure.  The fact that ye just simply choose tae reject whit they huv to offer.  Choose us.  Choose life.  Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting aon a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows …” (p. 187)

According to an interview of the author Irvine Welsh by vice.com, “Trainspotting was banned in Russia for a while and in Greece.  A lot of my books have been banned in different countries, mainly because of graphic drug use, swearing, and violence.”  He goes on to say that he doesn’t know why the book was banned from Guantanamo Bay.  “I can only guess that because we are all living in an increasingly prescribed world, anything that’s seen as outside of what’s ‘normal’ is seen as deviant and dangerous and is to be stamped out or at least marginalized”  In the book itself, Begbie has a rather humorous rant about books that seems to support banning them.  “It’s getting oan ma f----- tits.  Wir supposed tae be doon here fir a f----- laugh, no tae talk about f----- books and all that f----- s----.  See if it wis up tae me, ah’d git ivray f----- book n pit thum on a great big f----- pile n burn the f----- loat.  Aw books ur fir is fir smart c---- tae show oaf how much s---- thuv f----- read.  Ye git aw ye f----- need tae ken ootay the paper n fae the telly.  Ah’ll give thum f----- books!” (p. 116)

Before our discussion on August 15, one previous participant said that Trainspotting was too scatological and would not attend the discussion.  Another had too much difficulty reading the Scottish dialect.  But we still had a pretty good turnout on August 15 of eight people.  Most of them had not attended the previous month’s discussion of A Wrinkle in Time.  One said they felt the book accurately portrayed drug use and would be better than the DARE program for encouraging kids to abstain from drugs.  Most liked the book despite all its profanity.  I was pleasantly surprised by it and I now like it better than the movie, though they are very similar.  They made a sequel to the movie in 2017 that is partially based on one of Welsh’s other books and takes place 20 years later.  It reveals which of the characters turns out to be the writer of Trainspotting.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

For our discussion on Tuesday, June 20, 2017, the Banned Book Club selected The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. At the April meeting I had made some suggestions for the next next book. The others weren't very enthused about any of them and one of the newer participants suggested The Graveyard Book. I decided to trust their judgment and I'm glad I did because I enjoyed the book very much. I already knew that Gaiman was a good writer from reading Neverwhere several years earlier. I enjoyed The Graveyard Book even more. It's a children's novel that won both the Newbery Medal for best children's novel and the Hugo award for best science fiction/fantasy novel the year after it was published. It is written for children to understand and supplemented with striking though dark illustrations. But it also has enough complexity and enough unexplained phenomena to keep me intrigued. Perhaps children are better at accepting the unexplained than adults.

The book is about a living boy, Bod, who spends his childhood in an old English graveyard. He can see ghosts of the dead there who raise him and teach him. A good vampire, Silas, helps with other tasks such as getting Bod his food. Sometimes he has to leave and has someone fill in for him. In the graveyard, there are "all told, some ten thousand souls …, but most of them slept deep, or took no interest in the night-to-night affairs of the place, and there were less than three hundred of them up there, in the amphitheater, in the moonlight." (p. 21) Silas tells Bod about people who commit suicide and Bod asks, "Does it work? Are they happier dead?" Silas answers, "Sometimes. Mostly no. It's like people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but it doesn't work that way. Where ever you go, you take yourself with you." (p. 104) But in the graveyard, "no one ever changed. The little children Bod played with when he was small were still little children." (p. 221) Some of the dead are quite eccentric such as Nehemiah Trot who says, "I left instructions that upon my death my poems were to be buried with me, unpublished, and that only when posterity realized my genius … could my poems be removed from my cold dead hands." (p. 234)

The book is a fantasy and contains many supernatural elements, though they seem to fit naturally into the story. Every hundred years occurs the Macabray when the dead dance with the living. Bod says to Silas, "You saw us! You watched us! The living and the dead. We were dancing. Why won't anyone talk about it?" Silas answers, "Because there are mysteries. Because there are things that people are forbidden to speak about. Because there are things they do not remember." (p. 165) After Bod exhibits some fighting skills to protect Scarlett, she is more shocked than thankful: "You aren't a person. People don't behave like you. You're as bad as he is. You're a monster." (p. 286) Silas later assures Bod that "People want to forget the impossible. It makes their world safer." (p. 289)

There were several relatable references. One character visits the graveyard, places a piece of paper on a tombstone and rubs a crayon "back and forth across the stone with the stone with easy, practiced movements." (p. 221) We learned about the similar practice of brass rubbing when we visited St. Martin-in-the-Fields church in London, UK in June 2004. I think the practice of tombstone rubbing was also mentioned in The Namesake that we read for the May 2017 Banned Book Club discussion. Later a character suggests, "What do you say we swap information over a cuppa?" (p. 244) In the Acknowledgement section, Gaiman mentions, "Moby … The famous Lorraine Garland, the Wonderful Kat Mihos, and the amazing Kelli Bickman all struggled with my handwriting." (p. 312) Just like Gaiman I prefer to write things out longhand. At the end of the book is the text of Gaiman's acceptance speech for the Newbery medal. He describes how "I had loved A Wrinke in Time as a boy, even if they had messed up the first sentence in the Puffin edition …" We discussed that banned book in July 2017.

Gaiman's Newbery acceptance speech contains some interesting and profound observations. He mentions the hilarious attacks by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report. I saw the clip from this show and agree it was hilarious. I especially liked when Colbert identified Gaiman's accent as not American and says that the Newbery Medal is an American award. In the acceptance speech, Gaiman says that librarians "tell me they are worried that people will misinterpret my story and use it as an excuse to use their libraries as free day care for their children." But my favorite point is that it seems as if "some people believed there was a divide between the books you were permitted to enjoy and the books that were good for you, and I was expected to choose sides … And I don't believe it … I … am on the side of books you love."

I read most of the book from the print edition but when I didn't have it handy I read a little from the epub edition. I actually found a difference between the two. Bud describes what he learned from Miss Lupescu who filled in for Silas. He points up into the night sky. In the print book he says, "That's the Big Bear and her son, the Little Bear. That's Draco the Dragon snaking between them." (p. 97) In the epub edition he says, "That's Orion the Hunter up there, with his belt of three stars. That's Taurus the bull." (p. 97) I'm not sure why they differ. Maybe one is the English edition and the other is the American edition. I did find one word I did not know. Silas had originally been on a team of four monsters but "they had lost Haroun in a cave, when the Infrit, as naturally overconfident as all of its race …" (p. 231) According to thefreedictionary.com, an infrit is a gigantic and monstrous demon in the Muslim tradition.

In February 2015, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) was confidentially involved in a defense of the graphic novel edition of The Graveyard Book which was challenged in an undisclosed middle school for violent imagery. CBLDF's defense was successful. The review committee voted to keep the book on library shelves. I didn't read the graphic novel version. The original version had some dark but still quite impressive illustrations usually at the beginning of the chapters. They complemented the story but did not reveal too much. The first one shows a hand with a knife. Stephen Colbert complained to Neil Gaiman during the interview that the first sentence of his "so-called children's book" states that a hand held a knife.

We had a good discussion on June 20. I think around 12-14 people attended with four new people. One of them liked how the book made it more comfortable to talk about death, especially with kids. Many also enjoyed the clip from The Colbert Report and we all felt the book should not be banned from middle school.

The Stranger by Albert Camus

(Possible spoilers)

For our discussion on Wednesday, June 14, 2017, the Classics Book Club selected The Stranger by Albert Camus. It's about a fairly despicable first-person protagonist, Meursault, and several other despicable characters in French Algeria in the early 1940's when the book was written. There's old Salamano who beats his dog and swears at it. Another character beats his wife. Meursault seems indifferent to all this and to life in general. But he comes to some profound insights and by the end finds some things worth living for. It's a fairly short book at 144 pages and reads quickly. I found a few parts of the book humorous, though also disturbing such that I felt uncomfortable laughing.

Meursault has developed a strong indifference to life. He feels that "people never change their lives, that in any case one life was as good as another." (p. 41) In court an attorney asks, "if I had felt any sadness that day … I answered that I had pretty much lost the habit of analyzing myself and that it was hard for me to tell him what he wanted to know." (p. 74) He soon thinks, "As always, whenever I want to get rid of someone I'm not listening to, I made it appear as if I agreed." (p. 80) By the end he feels, "As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself the to the gentle indifference of the world." (p. 122)

Meursault does seem to have a negative philosophy. From his mother he learns that, "after a while, you could get used to anything." (p. 87) At his trial the caretaker at the convalescent home says that Meursault "hadn't wanted to see Maman (his mother), and that I had smoked and slept some, and that I had some coffee. It was then I felt a stirring go through the room and for the first time I realized that I was guilty." (p. 90) The prosecutor urges that the jury conclude "that a stranger may offer a cup of coffee, but that beside the body of the one who brought him into the world, a son should have refused it." (p. 91) Meursault reflects, "How had I not seen that there was nothing more important than an execution and that when you came right down to it, it was the only thing a man could be interested in." (p. 110)

Meursault does much of his reflection in prison. He realizes "that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored." (p. 90) While being transported from the prison to the court house he can "make out one by one, as if from the depths of my exhaustion, all the familiar sounds of a town I loved and of a certain time of day when I used to feel happy." (p. 108) But it is "back to my cell that I went to wait for the next day … as if familiar paths traced in summer could lead us easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent." (p. 108)

I had previously heard of The Stranger as the inspiration for The Cure song "Killing an Arab." The song is not supposed to be racist or xenophobic but just the setting for the song as in Algeria and referencing the book. The Cure have more recently performed the song as "Killing Another." The song describes exactly the scene in the book when Meursault shoots the man on the beach and thinks that it doesn't make a difference if he pulled the trigger or not: "We stared at each other without blinking, and everything came to a stop there between the sea, the sand, the sun, and the double silence of the flute and the water." (p. 68) Later in court Meursault testifies that "I said I killed an Arab and they were all silent." (p. 82)

We had a decent discussion on Wednesday, June 14, 2017. I think a lot of people showed up, around sixteen or seventeen. One person kept going on about how they didn't understand the legal system used in the book. I can understand that a legal system in French-occupied Algeria would differ from what we think it is supposed to be. Others had a better understanding of the book. Some felt the message is that life is meaningless. I don't think it's that simple. It's more that many of the things we think are important are actually meaningless. Meursault does find a little bit of meaning by the end when faced with certain death. I mentioned The Cure song and the others enjoyed hearing about it. Later I sent them a link to the video that doesn't seem to have much to do with the song other than taking place on a beach. Before the discussion I send a link to a Thug Notes review on Youtube that I thought was hilarious. One participant said that they bought the book at the Barnes and Noble in Lakewood and the bookseller there said The Stranger was their favorite book. I'm glad I got the chance to read it and get the full story behind The Cure song.

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

(Spoilers)

For our discussion on Tuesday, April 18, 2017, the Banned Book Club selected The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. The story mostly takes place in the Puget Sound area and is told from the first-person point of view of Enzo, a dog whose guardian is Denny. The book covers some philosophy of auto racing, family tragedy and conflict, loss, pain, and redemption. I thought it got a bit overly profound and emotional at times. But it also has humor and Enzo's unique perspective as a dog is interesting. It is certainly more introspective than that of Chet in Dog On It by Spencer Quin.

The book mentions several places in Washington State, some new to me and others familiar. Denny picks Enzo as a puppy out of a pack of them "behind a barn in a smelly field near a town in Eastern Washington called Spangle." (p. 9) I hadn't heard of Spangle before. It's a real place in Spokane County. From there Denny moves Enzo "to a Seattle neighborhood called Leschi where he lived in a little apartment he rented on Lake Washington." (p. 15) That was probably before it got so expensive to live in Seattle. Denny's in-laws live on Mercer Island, an area I've visited many times. Enzo observes that for "having such a beautiful place to live, they were among the most unhappy people I've ever met." (p. 84) Enzo later narrates, "In February, the black pit of winter, we went on a trip to north-central Washington, to an area called the Methow Valley." (p. 13) I've heard of Methow Valley since some of my ancestors lived there. Other relatable references include Enzo describing that he and Denny "fell out of the sky and into the verdant fields north of Sacramento." (p. 150) Skip the car washer washes "an immaculately cared-for British racing green BMW 2002." (p. 188-189)

I learned some things from the book, mostly about racing but also about having children. Denny's wife Eve learns to make her unborn baby "move around by drinking orange juice." (p. 23) After she is born, Zoe clumps "along in her first pair of waffle stompers." (p. 94) Waffle stompers is slang for boots or shoes with a big tread resembling a waffle iron. Enzo can get very profound with his inner monologue. He describes memory as "time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present. In order to reach any kind of success in automobile racing, a driver must never remember." (p. 13) Enzo believes "that which we manifest is before is; we are creators of our own destiny." (p. 43)

Much of what Enzo observes has to do with being a dog. He believes that dogs and women understand pain "because we tap into pain directly from its source, and so it is at once brilliant and brutal and clear, like white hot metal spraying out of a fire hose, we can appreciate the aesthetic while taking the worst of it straight in the face. Men, on the other hand, are all filters and deflectors and timed release." (p. 62-63) Denny's friend Mike takes Enzo to Denny's house and asks Enzo, "Where's your dog?" Enzo says to himself, "I didn't want to admit that I still slept with a stuffed animal, but I did. I loved that dog." (p. 104) As a house pet, Enzo is left alone a lot. He believes that "being alone is a neutral state; it is like a blind fish at the bottom of the ocean without eyes, and therefore without judgment. Is it possible? That which is around me does not affect my mood; my mood affects that which is around me." (p. 192)

Enzo believes he will become a human in the next life. He explains, "Here's why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak, so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. It's like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street." (p. 101) Sometimes it feels like that at book club discussions. Enzo recommends, "Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories." (p. 102) But Enzo does have some doubts about becoming a human. He marvels at "how difficult it must be to be a person. To constantly subvert your desires. To worry about doing the right thing, rather than what is expedient." (p. 122) But later Enzo feels "strangely anxious … in a very human way. People are always worried about what's happening next. They often find it difficult to stand still, to occupy the now without worrying about the future. People are not generally satisfied with what they have; they are very concerned with what they are going to have." (p. 188)

In 2014, the school board of Highland Park Independent School District in Highland Park, Texas (Dallas area) voted to ban the book. Students had been reading it for 10^th grade English. They banned the book because of a scene involving an underage girl who tries to force herself upon the main human character and later accuses him of rape. The scene made parents so uncomfortable that they bombarded school officials with furious emails and vented at a packed school board meeting. The parents said that high school students should not be exposed to some of the hardships of adulthood. The author, Garth Stein, responded by defending teaching the book to 10^th graders and said the controversial subject matter was taken quite seriously. He further elaborated, "I think in 10^th grade it's time to be able to have these discussions about adult subject matter and … do so in a thoughtful way … The objective is to raise awareness by having a discussion about these things rather than suppressing the discussions … They should be teaching students to raise those objections themselves." I thought it was interesting that Stein has adapted The Art of Racing in the Rain into a separate book for young people titled Racing in the Rain: My Life as a Dog. I wonder if the scene to which the parents objected in the original book was altered or removed in the adaptation.

We had a good discussion at Doyle's Public House on Tuesday, April 18. Nine people attended including two new people who would go on to attend several more. A Doyle's patron did bring their Chet's guy, though they didn't participate in the discussion. I had the lamb and rice bowl without tzatziki sauce that was pretty good. One participant felt that the book could have dealt with the issue of sexual assault in a more nuanced way. At the end of the discussion I announced that the book for the next month of May 2017 would be The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. A discussion participant mentioned what they felt was a similar book: White Teeth by Zadie Smith.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

(Possible spoilers)

For our discussion on Tuesday, March 21, 2017, the Banned Book Club selected The Giver by Lois Lowry. It's a young adult novel first published in 1993 that won the Newbery medal. In the Introduction to the 20^th Anniversary edition, the author Lowry describes how "Twenty years ago I didn't own a cell phone. I didn't know what quinoa was and I doubt I ever tasted kale … I wrote The Giver on a big machine that had recently taken the place of my much-loved typewriter, and after I printed the pages, very noisily, I had to tear them apart one by one, at perforated edges … it was a dedicated word processor." (p. ix-x) The Giver is a science fiction novel about how Society has chosen to reorient itself after years of chaos. The setting is a little bit similar to The Handmaid's Tale though the negative aspects are more hidden and subtle. As the reader I felt they sneaked up on me and I like how Lowry wrote the story that way. But it does get horrifying by the end.

The most important characteristic of society in The Giver is order. The character known as The Giver tells the main character, 12-year-old Jonas, that "Life here is so orderly, so predictable—so painless. It's what they've chosen." (p. 100) Society maintains this order through discipline. When a younger Jonas in flashback commits an infraction, he is reprimanded publically. "No one had mentioned it, not even his parents, because the public announcement had been sufficient to produce the appropriate response." (p. 29) Children are initially raised in the Nursing Center where "The first steps of a newchild were always the occasion for celebration .. but also for the introduction of the discipline wand." (p. 128) But as Jonas learns from the Giver how things really are, he becomes more disillusioned. "At dawn, the orderly disciplined life he had always known would continue again, without him. The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without color, pain, or past." (p. 154)

Despite being discouraged from feelings, Jonas still acknowledges them. At the beginning he feels that taking a pill to quell the "stirrings" of puberty is "the sort of thing one didn't ask a friend about because it fell into that uncomfortable category of 'being different.' Asher took the pill each morning. Jonas did not. Always better, less rude, to talk about things that were the same." (p. 42) But Jonas notices "the tenderness with which (Fiona) had bathed the Old." (p. 66) The Giver tells Jonas that "you and I are the only ones who have feelings." (p. 144)

Each member of society is assigned their professional role at age 12 and their personal roles are also structured. Most of the people on the Nursing Center night crew "have not been given spouses because they lacked, somehow, the essential capacity to connect with others which was required of a family unit." (p. 10) Jonas's father works in the Nursing Center because when he was a tween "again and again during free time, I found myself drawn to the newchildren. I spent almost all my volunteer hours helping in the Nursing Center." (p. 19) At the Ceremony of the Twelve when children are granted their lifelong role, the Chief Elder announces, "You Elevens have spent all your years until now learning to fit in, to standardize your behavior, to curb any impulse that might separate you from the group … But today we honor your differences. They have determined your futures." (p. 65) The Giver tells Jonas, "My spouse lives now with the childless adults." (p. 98)

Jonas and the Giver have different roles from the others in society. Jonas can "conceivably (though it was almost unimaginable) ask someone 'Did you lie?' but he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received was true." (p. 90) Jonas complains to the Giver about not being able to choose what he wears: "I know it's not important, what you wear. It doesn't matter. But—" The Giver then asks, "It's the choosing that's important, isn't it?" (p. 123) As Jonas spends time with the Giver, his "childhood friendships, his carefree sense of security—all these things seemed to be slipping away." (p. 169)

In 1994 The Giver was awarded the Newbery Medal for being judged the best book published in the United States for children or young adults in the preceding year. But parents protested that it contained the themes of infanticide, euthanasia, and suicide. Many of the people who challenged The Giver confessed that they had not read the novel in its entirety. The school board in Pickens County, South Carolina voted to ban the novel from elementary school libraries and classrooms in 1999 but they allowed the book to remain in high school classrooms and libraries. Also in 1999, the superintendent of schools in Union County, Florida, ordered The Giver removed from seventh grade classrooms. A parent stated at a school board meeting that "12-year-old children are too young emotionally to deal with concepts presented in the book" and "the book opens a child's mind to experiences and thoughts that are not appropriate." In 2001, parents in the same Colorado school district as Columbine High School protested that the book was particularly inappropriate "in a state with the nation's fifth highest suicide rate." The school board voted to keep the book in schools. Challenges occurred in Missouri and Iowa in 2005. The book remained on the reading list in the Missouri district but the review committee in the Iowa school district recommended that elementary school teachers not teach the book and that it should be removed from classrooms and the school library.

We had a good discussion on Tuesday, March 21 that I believe around 8-9 people attended. Most liked the book though there was some disagreement on the benefits of the society described in The Giver. Some liked the idea of having society choose your role rather than having to figure it out on your own. We discussed what happened at the end of the book. Some had read the three sequels to The Giver but they nicely did not reveal what happens in them. A movie of the book was made recently that changed the story and was not well-received. At the end of the discussion we chose to read The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri for May. In April we planned to discuss The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, a book written from the point of view of a dog (Chet's guy). Someone had brought their dog to Doyle's on March 21. I wondered if they would return in April.

The Batman by Jo Nesbø

Between February and March 2017, I read The Batman by Jo Nesbø. It's the first of Nesbø's series that features Harry Hole but it was not the first of the series that was translated into English. My wife got me the book a couple of years ago. The title is actually translated as "The Bat" but I had seen an earlier translation of the title as "The Batman." It was originally published in Norway as Flaggermusmannen. Harry Hole travels to Sydney, Australia to investigate the death of a Norwegian woman there. The title comes from something the important character Andrew says to Harry: "The bat is the Aboriginal symbol for Death. Do you know that?" (p. 50) Naturally, Harry is younger than in the later books in the series and this one takes place in a different setting than the usual Oslo and other parts of Norway. But I feel that The Batman is comparable in story and in writing quality to the other books in the Harry Hole series.

Harry has to get used to the new setting of the story along with me the reader. Nesbø knows his settings well and truly transports us to them. Harry and an Australian detective park "below Gap Park, one of Sydney's many green lungs." (p. 13) Further in the distance they can see "verdant Manly, the suburb on the north side of the bay." (p. 14) Harry must also contend with Australian English. At one point he searches "in vain for the English word for Bakevja. Rut." (p. 119) At Bondi Beach he sees "surfers with suncreamed lips and noses" and "towels and bathing costumes." (p. 177-178) Later he has to tell an Australian colleague that, "I know what an answerphone is." (p. 36)

Harry decides "to spend the first days in Australia correcting the pronunciation of his surname so that he wouldn't be confused with apertures or orifices." (p. 7) He quickly impresses the Australians who ask, "How did you manage to find a guy without a record from one photo and a Christian name in a population of eighteen million in such a short time?" (p. 37) I learned about some of Harry's background. "The Christian name Harry was a result of his father getting his way. Olav Hole, a man who usually ceded to his wife in all things, had insisted the boy should be named after his grandfather who had been a seaman and apparently a fine fellow." His mother asked, "Has anyone ever heard of anyone called Harry ever making it in anything?" (p. 143-144)

The Batman has many references to music that I always enjoy. The copyright page credits lyrics from "Where the Wild Roses Grow" by Nick Cave. Harry meets a record store owner who says, "'Where the Wild Roses Grow' from 'Murder Ballads' S*** song. S*** album." (p. 123) His Australian colleague Andrew waxes on about Grieg and Harry interjects, "Sorry, Andrew, I grew up with two-chord punk and the closest I've been to a symphony is Yes and King Crimson. I don't listen to music from previous centuries, OK? Everything before 1980 is a Stone Age. We have a band called the Dumdum Boys who—" At that point Andrew interrupts, "The C minor symphony was first peformed in 1981. Dumdum Boys? That's a pretentious moniker." (p. 68) Harry later tells some lowlifes, "Has anyone told you that you have the same voice as the singer from Seputura … (to another lowlife) and you're Rod Stewart, aren't you? Aha, you've been sitting here and planning Live Aid 2." (p. 132) The faster Harry speaks, the slower he drives: "Like David Bowie on Harry's old cassette player. Years ago he'd been given a battery-powered recorder by his father, and the louder you turned up the volume, the slower the tape went." (p. 280)

The book contains many relatable references. They go to Doyle's, a seafood restaurant "situated at the furthest end of Watson's Bay." (p. 12) Harry recounts, "When I was a student and lived in a bedsit in one of the town's finer areas." (p. 147) The Australian police chief McCormack reminds Harry "of a fat old leopard he had seen at the zoo when he was young." (p. 285) Several chapter titles are relatable including Chapter 14: A Dressing Gown (p. 84), Chapter 15: Statistical Significance (p. 90), and Chapter 34: Frogner Lido's Top Board (p. 212). In that last chapter Harry climbs "over the fence into the Lido." (p. 218)

I learned from the book that Harry's father's favorite authors are "Sigurd Hoel and Kjartan Flogstad" (p. 89) and Harry notes something down "in a little black Sparebanken Nor almanac his father gave him every year for Christmas." (p. 140) Then again, when Harry takes out his notebook to interview a witness, he doesn't intend to "jot anything down, but it was his experience that people felt their statement was more important if you pulled out a notebook." (p. 98) Chief McCormack is described as "A tall, broad man with a stomach designed to impress." (p. 7) Andrew laments that "In traditional crime fiction, every detective with any self-respect has an unfailing nose for when people are lying. It's bulls***! Human nature is a vast impenetrable forest which no one can know in its entirety." (p. 74) At the beach "Those who didn't have hats to hold on to watched comb-overs and other hairstyles unravel." (p. 285)

I enjoyed reading The Batman just as much as I've enjoyed the other Harry Hole novels. I look forward to reading the second novel in the series, Cockroaches, the latest installment, The Thirst, and any other ones Jo Nesbø may write.

A Wolf Called Romeo by Nick Jans

I read A Wolf Called Romeo by Nick Jans in late January and early February 2017. I had heard of the wolf Romeo in Juneau, Alaska from my parents who lived there and from online articles in the local newspaper, Juneau Empire. He was a wolf who interacted with people and their dogs near Mendenhall Glacier between 2003 and 2009. Jans is a writer who was one of the first to meet Romeo. Jans and his wife Sherrie first noticed him on a frozen lake that they could see through a window of their house. After they start to see him regularly, Sherrie murmurs, "Well, there's that Romeo wolf again," and Jans narrates, "Though at first she didn't intend it as a name, it fell into private usage and stuck because it fit." (p. 51) My parents have actually seen Romeo. They were taking relatives to the airport and decided to stop by the Mendenhall Glacier to try to see him. As soon as they parked, Romeo ran up to their car. He thought they were one of the regular visitors.

Since I used to live in Juneau, the book contains several relatable references. Jan's mentions respected "naturalist and retired Fish and Game biologist Bob Armstrong" (p. 105) who I've met. Jans describes how Park Myers and his family "put down money on a modest home on Birch Lane" (p. 208) near where I used to live. Jans asserts that Romeo has a reliable food supply in the summer because of "four species of salmon available in his territory—pinks, chums, sockeye, and coho, in overlapping runs spanning early July into October." (p. 100-101) We learned about the different types of salmon from a guide at the DIPAC hatchery in Juneau many years ago. The guide taught us to use our five fingers to identify them: pinky for pink salmon, ring finger for silver/coho, middle finger for king since it's the largest, index finger for sockeye since it's the number one salmon, and thumb for chum. Jans believes that Romeo's story might have been different if it had occurred more recently. It occurred in the early to mid-2000's when "Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter didn't exists in those days. If they had, the phenomenon of Romeo the wolf might well have exploded into viral mode with the help of a few smartphone videos." (p. 72)

The book digresses a bit from Romeo's story to give related information such as "The genetic Latin-based appellation Fido ('I am faithful') was bestowed (on early pet dogs) with good reason." (p. 66) I like how the index of the book gives the pages about Jans's dog Gus as "Gus (dog), 3, 29, 164-165." (p. 258 (Index)) Jans gives some of the history of how society has treated wolves. They've been unfairly cast as vicious predators even though they are more often scavengers. Jans mentions John James Audubon and observes, "Far more telling is Audubon's lack of comment at the farmer's sadistic treatment of the wolves; his tacit acceptance from a man who would become renowned among conservationists worldwide—offers a window into the mindset of that period." (p. 16) Back to the more recent past in Juneau: a wolf poacher ends up "in jail for several days; but after much behind-doors folderol and legal proceedings that are a story in themselves, the state declined to pursue the case or to enforce any of the suspended fines or prison time …" (p. 234) The word folderol means either mere nonsense or a flimsy trifle.

The reason I read A Wolf Called Romeo in February was that the Vegan Book Club chose to discuss the book on Tuesday, February 28, 2017 at 7 pm at King's Bookstore. I attended the discussion that consisted of me, the coordinator, and two other people new to the group, though they hadn't read the book. The coordinator had been to Juneau, but not to the Mendenhall Valley. The others had recently moved to Tacoma from North Dakota. They talked about wolves there. I mentioned the passage in the book about a wolf in the Midwest that would regularly hop on and off a train to get to a specific location and return by train. We discussed how wolves have great intelligence and how difficult it is for a wolf to join an established pack. We talked for about an hour. After the discussion I posted a comment to the Meetup.com page for the discussion with a link to a National Geographic article about Romeo. It has some great photos including one taken by Jans of his dog trying to stare down Romeo. Romeo looks very large compared to Jans's dog, like an entire other scale of size altogether. This photo is also the cover of the book. I'm glad the Vegan book club gave me a reason to read it.

So Far From God by Ana Castillo

For our discussion on Tuesday, January 17, 2017, the Banned Book Club selected So Far From God by Ana Castillo. I wanted to read a Realismo Májico book by a Latinx author. In November I gave the choice between How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez, Borderlands/ La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa, and So Far From God. We chose the latter because we hadn't heard as much about that book as How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents and Borderlands/ La Frontera is more of a collection of essays and poems than a novel. But the book we chose wasn't received very well. A couple of regulars just couldn't get into it and skipped the meeting. I think only three or four people attended. But I thought that reading the book was still an interesting adventure.

The book takes place in a suburb of Albuquerque called Tome primarily inhabited by Chicanos. The time period is the early 1990's when the book was first published. The story centers around Sofi and her four grown daughters. It contains culture, magic realism, and plenty of humor. The title refers to where it takes place. The book begins with the epigraph "So far from God—So near the United States" by Porforio Diaz. A secondary character is part of a group that makes statues of saints called bultos. To make them, "nothing was store-bought because everything that went into making a bulto must be prepared with utmost reverence." (p. 101) Although the group does not have "actual relics of saints to mix with their paints like the Russian monks who produced Byzantine icons, they labored with the natural elements, sun, air, and earth and prayed all the while they worked together in silence—like their Spanish ancestors had done for nearly 300 years on that strange land they felt was so far from God." (p. 101-102)

The Catholic religion does play a strong role in the book. The elderly woman Doña Felicia no longer entrusts "her prayers to the child Jesus who once saved Christians from the Muslims in conquered Spain and in North America saved the conquering Catholics from pagan Indians." (p. 82) A small town in New Mexico is called Belen and a neighbor tells Sofi that "Saturday there's a baile in Belen at Our Lady of Belen Church." (p. 103) The author explains that San Isidro is "the patron saint of farmers and not to revere him could bring a farmer the worst punishment of all: bad neighbors. A farmer could survive droughts and bad crops, but not an ill-willed neighbor." (p. 191) She later writes that "everyone in heaven was thirty-three years old, forever." (p. 220)

The book taught me about the characters' lives and the culture of New Mexico. During one afternoon, Sofi and two of her daughters make "a batch of biscochitos which are really customary at las Crismas, but are also a delight at weddings and other types of fiestas. Biscochitos are Spanish cookies or Mexican cookies, depending on who you talk to." (p. 167) At one point Sofi insists "that she put on a pair of her own Ropers." (p. 258) I later researched and learned that Ropers are a brand of boots. A description of healers mentions that they have "lived in the Rio Abajo region, on the Isleta Pueblo, from Alameda to Socorro." (p. 258) One of my grandmothers was originally from Socorro, New Mexico.

The book has some interesting magic realism. Regarding a relationship between two characters, Helena and Maria, "what really happened, unfortunately, as ideal as it started out to be, was not that they had succeeded in becoming one, but that they had become neither." (p. 122) Sofi's daughter La Loca is "represented by the key D of the Major Arcana, the Fool. The Fool Card represented one who walked without fear, aware of the choices she made in the journey of life, life itself being defined as a state of courage and wisdom and not an uncontrollable participation in society as many people experience their lives." (p. 250) Not much later there's a chair test that is "structured to prove that you were in fact a 'mom' or at least you could have been." (p. 252)

I enjoyed the humor in So Far From God. Sofi laments, "and you would have thought by now I would be a content grandmother, sitting back and letting my daughters care for me, brining me nothing but their babies on Sundays to rock on my lap! But no, not my hijitas! I had to produce the kind of species that flies!" (p. 84) After Sofi declares that she would like to be mayor of Tome, the neighbors think, "Then why stop at mayor? Why not elect herself la juez de la paz or la comandante of Tome as they had in the old days? Why not Queen of Tome for that matter? Who would care as long as she didn't try to tell no one what to do?" (p. 137) A religious character doesn't smell like anything and La Loca isn't sure if she is "a present nun or a past nun, or maybe hasta una future subjunctive nun." (p. 244) I enjoyed the mustaches mentioned such as Sofi's estranged husband Domingo who gives "her a sly smile from beneath the Clark Gable mustache and Sofi would blush." (p. 104-105) Fe's boyfriend Casimino still looks like "a sheepherder, with thick black eyebrows and mustache, wearing tight denims, a big cattleman hat, and snakeskin Tony Lama botas. Hijo! What a show-off!" (p. 136)

So Far From God was removed from all schools in the Tucson School District in 2012 because of Arizona House Bill 2281 that banned the teaching of ethnic studies in classrooms in all public school districts and charter schools. HB 2281 prohibits any classes that 1) promote overthrow of the government, 2) promote resentment toward a race or class or people, 3) are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group, or 4) advocate for ethnic solidarity instead of treatment of pupils as individuals." HB 2281 dismantled Tucson's successful Mexican-American studies program. All books for that program were boxed and removed as students watched. So Far From God was removed because it was part of the course English/ Latino Literature 5 and 6. It is interesting that it was banned for this reason because one character in the book, Esperanza, "had gotten her B.A. in Chicano studies." (p. 25) "Back in college, if it wasn't for la Esperanza who led the protest, they never would have had one Chicano Studies class offered on the curriculum." (p. 239)

As I wrote earlier, we had a fairly small group to discuss So Far From God on Tuesday, January 17. But the three or four of us who did show up mostly enjoyed the book. We thought the plot was haphazard and the story was a bit sad by the end. The others didn't like the Spanish words and phrases as much as I did. All of our other discussions in 2017 consisted of many more people than the January discussion of So Far From God.