Where have you been all this time? The joy of rereading favorite titles.

I recently picked up my copy of The House with the Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs. Please understand, the books of John Bellairs have a special place in my heart. Maybe it has something to do with the memory I have of my father reading Bellairs year after year, to class after class of students. Maybe it has something to do with how identifiable Lewis Barnevelt has always been to me. Maybe I just have a strange addiction to the thrill of stories about social outcasts that regularly find themselves mixed up with supernatural forces that are out to get them. I didn't say it made sense, only that I felt it.

Anyway, I've read The House with a Clock in Its Walls, the first book in the Lewis Barnevelt series, at least a half dozen times in my life, and yet I still found myself drawn back into its pages recently. What is it about books like that? They sit on my shelves for months or even years, completely untouched, and then BAM! It's 12:30 A.M. on a weeknight and I can't stop reading because I'm in the middle of a chapter and I know a good part is coming up. The joy of a book like that never dies.

As an educator, I have a habit of reliving similar reading experiences many times. Anyone who stays at a job for more than one year consecutively will experience at least some degree of redundancy at some point. For me, that means reteaching the same concept more than once, rereading the same books, answering the same questions innumerable times, but knowing all the while that I might be the only person in the room for whom the experience isn't entirely new. If I'm teaching place value to the twelfth or twentieth different group of students that I can remember teaching place value to, it doesn't mean that class hearing it or experiencing it for the twelfth or twentieth time too. It would be wrong of me to teach it the way I'm feeling it. Sadly, that might mean I'm masking boredom around my students some of the time. And part of the time that I'm hiding my boredom might be while I'm reading a book that I've read enough times to recite it from memory. I don't want to mention any of the titles that float through my head when I write that, but some books are better off read once, but not twice.

That said, some books stand the test of time, and others don't. I've read the poem, "Homework, Oh Homework" by Jack Prelutsky, to enough students that I don't even need to pull out The New Kid on The Block to refresh myself on the order of the lines anymore. That's despite that fact that I am about as talented at memorizing as I am at bull fighting on the Moon. You would think "Homework, Oh Homework" would have lost some of it's former appeal, but I still laugh at the line about wrestling a lion alone in the dark almost every time. I can't prove that's to you in this medium, but trust me. It happens.

Every time I read Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls, I laugh when the monkeys get Jay Berry drunk, and I cry at the end. I'm referring to the book, not the horrific Disney movie adaptation. I'm sure the Disney movie would make Wilson Rawls cry, but not for the reasons that Disney might hope it would. I've reread that book enough times that I could probably write you a pretty good Cliff's Notes edition, but I don't regret it even once. I love the predictability of knowing just how a chapter is going to strike me. I love the relationship between Jay Berry and his Grandfather and it comforts me to read something so familiar, genuine, and goodhearted. It's truly one of the finest books I've ever read. I don't want to hit you with any spoilers, but if you don't tear up at least a little in the last scene of that book, I would recommend that you get some therapy because you're probably bottling up your emotions in a dangerous fashion.

I'm not alone in this rereading habit either. My entire family, with the exception of my wife and my mother, rereads favorite books. I don't try to figure out why two of the most important women in my life don't reread. I suspect it has something to do with their questionable taste in reading material. Rereading can be a powerful experience. It can give us a powerful jolt of nostalgia. It can change our perspective on something we thought we knew pretty well before. Certainly, rereading books that we remember from our childhood can provide us with a different outlook on the text or our younger selves. I recently reread a book by Bruce Coville that I was enamored with as an eight-year-old. I worked through the entire My Teacher is an Alien series in late elementary school. Upon rereading, I discovered that I still enjoyed the book, but a character that I remember liking when I was younger now seemed flawed and cowardly. I don't know how I didn't see that the first time I read, but time changes everything, I suppose, including perceptions.

I feel like rereading has a bad wrap among many readers though. I'm not saying rereading is always great. Rereading can be a strange and unproductive experience too. I know someone who rereads the entire Harry Potter series again and again without taking a break for other reading in between. Last I heard, she was on her fifteenth broomstick ride through Hogwarts. I don't know what can be gleaned from a record number of consecutive loops through the same books, regardless of how good the story was a first, second, or third time around, but I have to admit that as I went through the books and then the movies, more than once I returned to some moments in the books that I really enjoyed. Rereading is like a second look at something to enhance the first impression.

That said, I'm moving back through the three series by John Bellairs right now. If you haven't taken a look at John Bellairs' writing before, I highly recommend it. The three series that he created are that of Lewis Barnevelt (my personal favorite), Anthony Monday, and Johnny Dixon. Because Bellairs died with unfinished work, two of his series were continued by Brad Strickland. The Strickland books are equally entertaining in my opinion, though my father and I have discussed the matter extensively and have never come to a complete agreement. They are all realistic fantasy, as though that label isn't entirely befuddling. They contain elements of magic, macabre, horror, mystery, and adventure, all while being set ordinary, small towns in the mid-1900s. All three characters are likable to the reader, though they are generally unpopular with their own peers. They are the sort of protagonists that you root for despite remaining acutely aware of their outsider status at all times. If this is the sort of story that sounds like it could worm its way onto your reading list, then don't hesitate, but don't be surprised if you find it making its way back into your hands a few times after that first read. Rereading is probable. 

Wolven by Di Toft, OR I Conquer the Wilds

It was a weekend worth remembering; a disastrous attempt at building a fire with wood that just wasn't having it; a carefree jaunt through a flea market that redefined rockbottom pricing; an opportunity to dive headlong into a British paranormal adventures series about that most overdone of angles, lycanthropy. I couldn't be much happier. Okay, in certain respects my weekend camping trip could have gone much better. In others, it was pretty near perfect.

Let's choose to accentuate the positive though. That boils down to the number of stars that are visible in central Pennsylvania, good company making for good times, and Wolven by Di Toft. Before I dive into the depths of joy that Toft's book of a boy and his dog boy brought me, let me just thank my wife and my sister-in-law for pulling me along with them on their trip to the wilds of central Pennsylvania. I don't normally go for the whole roughing it angle. Don't get me wrong. I have no aversion to nature but, as Jim Gaffigan so eloquently put it, "I'd like to keep the relationship professional." You really don't get to see so many stars in my small suburban town. That was hardly the case in the pitch black of the campground I spent a few days in this week. The trick was finding a patch of sky unobstructed by the abundant trees to view the spectacle overhead.

In the daytime, between wrangling with an energetic niece and nephew (a nephew that could run even an olympic marathoner ragged), I read Wolven and what a pleasant reprieve it was. No vampire romances to be found in this one. In fact, neither of the characters are old enough to have any interest in that, though there was the one scene where the two of them were entranced at the carnival by a girl with a swirly gown and wild hair. Instead, this was more akin to Shiloh if Shiloh had been partially human. Toft writes a fair adventure, though I feel somehow uncertain after this first book. I know that there's a second adventure in store for those brave enough to plow forward, but I was kind of expecting the villains to be more lasting. You see, she killed all the baddies by the end of book one. Now she's going to have to introduce a whole new batch of rotten toads for book two. I suppose that's the way it works for some series. Each volume would stand on its own well enough that it wouldn't need a series to back it up.

We'll have to wait on that second one as I haven't seen it in any of my local bookstores, though it claims to be out and ready for reading already. In the meantime, I'm going back to the land of the shrouded night sky. I'll miss the constellations, but home is where your stuff is after all.

A Little Something Unbearable…

Two o’clock on a Saturday and where do I find myself? In a women’s clothing store, waiting for my dear fiancée to try on a few pairs of brown dress pants. What does a man do in a women’s clothing store? He waits, occupying himself with anything that he can find to distract himself from the misery that is sitting in a women’s clothing store on an otherwise beautiful spring day. And so, the time had come for me to acquaint myself with Miss Sookie Stackhouse. You see, my fiancée is a True Blood fan, one among a legion of fans by my understanding, and so like many True Blood fans, she has decided to read the series from which True Blood was derived.

Now, if you are among the few who has read some of my earlier blog entries, you’ll remember that the last unbearable thing that my fiancée dropped upon my lap was equally paranormal, and equally cringe worthy. I am speaking, of course, of the Twilight books, Stephanie Meyer’s saga of strange creatures with strange addictions to sorry excuses for humanity. That’s right, Bella Swan, I still think you’re a dimbulb. I was never much for the Team Edward versus Team Jacob argument. I was always on Team You-Both-Could-Do-Much-Better. But this is a new beast altogether. Sookie Stackhouse has her own skills, her own vampires, her own dog man, her own messy home life. And I am not reading the entire series. It’s enough for me that I have passed by the television a few times while she was watching an episode.

No, my meeting with Sookie is due to an acute oversight on my part: leaving the house without sufficient reading material. I make a point of always keeping something to read from or write upon whenever I go out. This is primarily to prepare me for just such a situation as this one, the unplanned visit to pick up a pair of pants, or shoes, or a blouse, or just to browse for the sheer joy of it. As long as I have something to occupy myself with, I know I can persevere through whatever is thrown my way. Yet, on this particular Saturday, as we pulled into a parking space and prepared to disembark, what did I find behind me? Nothing. Well, the near equivalent of nothing. Just the volume of Sookie Stackhouse short stories that my fiancée recently checked out but neglected to remove from my backseat. Desperate times. I picked up the book and trudged into the store.

The book was in large print, not because my fiancée needed it, but because that was the only edition the library had available. That was fine by me though. If there’s one quirk I don’t take issue with, it’s the publisher that takes unnecessary pity on my eyes. Aside from that, it turned a 300 page book into a much more manageable burden should I become strangely enthralled. So I cracked it open to the beginning and dove in. Around me, my fiancée began draping pants that she wanted to try on. I become a human coat rack in stores. It’s okay. I’ve happily resigned myself to this lot in life. She’s more than worth the slight indignity.

I started reading a story about a trio of fairies who suspect that one of their own has been slain by a coworker at a strip club. This is not exactly my choice of material, but it’s better than price stickers and clothing labels. They’ve rounded up their collection of suspects and tied them up in various parts of the house. Sookie, who reads minds (but apparently doesn’t see the moneymaking potential therein, since she works as a waitress at a dive bar), has been brought in to interrogate the suspects. After cross-examining one after another, each with their own backlog of reasonable suspicion, Sookie uses her powers of deduction to piece together a plot that pins the club owner with premeditated murder by lemon juice. Oh boy, I think. Fairy murder by lemon juice doesn’t bode well for what’s to come.

The next story is of the vampire persuasion. It centers on the coming of who else but Count Dracula, and via a few slightly funny “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” references it builds a story around a vampire holiday, of all things. It ends with a vampire being staked by Sookie while other vampires, werewolves and werepanthers (that’s right, I said werepanthers) all look on. Oh my, maybe the clothing labels would have been better. But I keep reading, and horror of horrors, I am getting hooked. I manage to blow through the third story, a story centered on another vampire who killed Sookie’s long-lost vampire cousin, before my fiancee picks out her pants, and I am started on number four by the time we exit the store. Maybe there’s something to this paranormal escapade after all.

So you’d think that after leaving the store and returning home to my room-o-literature, I should be ready to set aside Sookie’s stories and get back to the high-quality books I normally read, but you’d be wrong. I keep on keeping on. In fact, I read the final two stories before dinner. Story four involves some simple detective-style storytelling focused on an insurance agent who dabbles in magic to increase his clients’ luck. I’d hardly even call it a story as much as an inconclusive yet colorful anecdote. Story five is a shameful attempt at paranormal harlequin writing. Basically, the story boils down to a lonely Sookie looking for a little lovin' and finding it in the arms of an abandoned werewolf. Then, because everything isn't odd enough, it turns out that the werewolf was only a shifter/actor hired to give the required lovin' by Sookie's recently discovered fairy great-grandfather as a Christmas gift. Yet I still manage to zone out everyone, everything, even through the fairy grandparent hiring his human granddaughter her own prostitute. Even my fiancée seems a bit peeved with me before I’m through, though when I read a book like this she does offer me some leniency.

So, I have fallen prey to Sookie Stackhouse. I don’t have any desire to read the other stories. I’ll leave them to the masses. But for one day at least I have to admit that I became a Sookie faithful. She helped me through something unbearable, even if the reprieve she offered might have been every bit as unbearable under other circumstances. I guess I owe her one.

Boy Heaven by Laura Kasischke

Boy Heaven by Laura Kasischke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is hardly a typical book selection for me. It had been sitting on my shelf for a year already by the time I gave it a try, and even then it was just the book I grabbed blindly on my way to bed for the night. To its credit, I read the entire book in a couple of days. I'm not normally a fan of this kind of literature. It's the kind that they call young adult in some bookstores only because the main characters are teenagers. The thing is, I've read quite a few books targeted at adults that broach fewer "taboos" than this book did and they do it with a greater sensibility in their approach. This one was a bit over the top.


It was a pretty good ghost story. Or maybe it's wrong to call it a ghost story. Is a ghost only a ghost if the person they are born out of is already dead? Maybe I'm just mincing the details too much. Anyway, the thing that this book does best is take the reader along on the psychological train wreck of being haunted or stalked by something creepy. It follows three teenage cheerleaders, Kristy, Kristi, and Desiree, at cheerleading camp (yes, I almost put the book down for that alone). They are your typical self-absorbed, petty, contradictory messes that you have to anticipate a writer creating as filler in most high school dramas, basically three overfilled barges of mental baggage. Top it off with the story being written in the first-person view of one of those aforementioned messes, Kristy Sweetland, and you've got a world-class narcissist on your hands.


It opens with an unplanned afternoon excursion to go skinny dipping at a local lake that goes terribly wrong thanks to a few relatively creepy local boys playing stalker after crossing paths with the girls at the local gas station. Okay, so the beginning reads like just about a thousand movies I've consistently avoided like the plague of American cinema that they are. There's the predictable chase through the backroads of nowheresville, the narrow escape, and the triumphant taunting of their pursuers wherein they decide to give them a taste of what they missed by baring all from the waist up as they cruise past the gawking hormonal creeps. Yes, I even suffered through the nauseating descriptions of each girl's chest as compared to that of insecure Kristy. Where it all picks up is in the aftermath of that ill-fated trip.


Back at camp, their victory is short lived. Of course, the stalkers somehow aren't through with the girls yet, not after getting a look at the three of them topless. The girls try to return to business as usual, Kristi going back to sulking, Desiree angling her way into the pants of the attractive male camp counselor, and Kristy standing by to envy her loose friend for her carefree and vivacious ways and, of course, obsessing over how every other girl at camp views her. The author does a pretty thorough job of making you want to root for the stalkers or perhaps an oversized alligator from the lake with an overdeveloped appetite for self-obsessed teenage girls. That last part was just a suggestion, but I think it would have been worth a closer look.


Anyway, the boys begin turning up in the woods outside the cabins to stare and generally creep the girls out and one by one the three of them begin to unravel in their own little ways. This was the real fun of the story, comparing their different descents into paranoia and the measures they went to to protect themselves, none of which really helped. If they were even remotely likable people, I suppose at one point I might have started feeling bad for them, especially the sulky Kristi who seemed fit for a straight jacket pretty early on, but that never was the case here so it kept the fun simple for me. I could have done without the chronicles of Desiree and her boy toy, but I suppose it was a necessary piece of the whole unfortunate puzzle. You can't have a sex-crazed supporting character sit around eating ham sandwiches for the entire book…unless of course she's waiting to get her groove back or something.


Overall, if this book were made into a movie that stayed true to the original text, it would be rated R for sure, and not just because of the flashing scene toward the beginning. There is enough sex in this otherwise to make sure of that. But it's a good psychological thrill ride. There are some pretty tense moments. The writer has an absolute mastery of metaphor and the descriptions of everything from the scenery to the characters' expressions are chock full of vivid imagery. The plot is a mixture of clichés and overdone twists, but the end scene and the final plot twist are both fairly alarming. Bottom line is while I wouldn't make the mistake of suggesting this to any random teenager, I wouldn't call it a bad book for the rest of us. Give it a try when you're after a fast, mindless summer read and I'm pretty sure you won't be disappointed.


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