Kat Dancing

Signs you may be falling behind in your housework, #442: you have to evict a spider from your dishwasher.

Of course, the whole "can't see the counter for the dirty dishes" thing might have been a clue too. I'm such a slacker.

In other news, my book is kicking my ass. I had to give up on Novel in 90 because focusing on word count was just bringing me down: too many days when I could only get 250 good ones, too many other days -- like today -- when I had to use up precious writing time untangling a plot snarl. A few hundred words of brainstorming later, and I have a tentative plan. It's a scary plan, because it takes the book in a very different direction than I was expecting and I'm not sure I can fit everything I want into it and it basically has the potential of collapsing on me like a bad cake. A very fragile plan. But once I'd thought of it, it was pretty much either back away knowing I was chickening out on something that would make this a better story, or suck it up and ride the tiger.

Nice Mr. Tiger.... *sigh*

You know, this writing thing used to be easy. I was writing crap, of course. But I might still be writing crap, and I really, really miss the easy.

Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell

Agnes Shanklin has always lived her life for others: her overbearing mother, her beautiful sister, the children she teaches in her small Cleveland school. Then, in 1919, the influenza robs her of mother, sister, and job all in one stroke. Cut adrift, Agnes decides to take a cruise to Egypt with her dog Rosie. There she will be a witness to the Cairo Conference that changed the face of the Middle East and a friend to some of the most famous and infuential people of the time; she will meet a man who changes her spinster life forever; she will begin, at forty, to discover who she is.

In Dreamers Russell has taken on the ambitious project of telling a small story -- that of Agnes -- against the backdrop of giant ones. She does this largely by making the giants equally small; World War I, the influenza epidemic, the Cairo Conference, all are explained mostly as they affect the tiny and diffident figure of Agnes. The giant personalities that threaten to overshadow her -- Winston Churchill, Gertrude Bell, Lawrence of Arabia -- are likewise rendered in miniature: not Churchill's leadership, but his love of painting; not Lawrence's deeds but his nervous giggle. Greatness lurks behind in the shadows, coloring the edges of events and words, but is never allowed to take centre stage. The result is a book of heartbreaking poignancy and beauty.

There are flaws. Agnes, particularly in some early passages, shares with Dickens's Esther Summerson an unfortunate tendency to be too good while at the same time characterizing herself as a bad person, giving her an air of unbelievable martyrdom. And I found the final passage of the book less than satisfying. These flaws, however, speak less to the quality of the work than the immense challenge Russell takes on in portraying a small woman among greatness -- a balancing act that I have never before seen performed with such finesse and power. A brief glimpse of an oft-overlooked period of history, this is a book I will be chewing over for a long time to come.

I suppose one of the downsides of having a pet is watching them make great strides in rather different directions than you would wish. Alphie the parrot came to us able to say "step up" (his command for getting on a finger): now, six months later, he can also say "What's up?", "What's that?", "Stop it," "Alphie, no!" "dammit," "brat", and (today's accomplishment, still a bit wobbly around the r) "You're a twit". As well as doing an imitation of water gurgling and an imitation of my laugh that makes him sound like a mad science-bird.

Other people get their birds to say stuff like "Polly wanna cracker" and "pretty bird". I am a bad bird-momma, I am.

In other news, I'm doing Novel in 90 again, so progress reports are hereby removed from here to there. But there is progress again, for now.

And if it's neither too hot nor too cold tomorrow we may kill hogs. So that's all right.

Well, I at least managed to keep track of what books I read this year, even if I didn't review them all. Here's the list, with occasional commentary. [Read More!]