Chasing Ray

The New Site is Up

My new site, ChasingRay.com, is now up and I will no longer be updating here at blogger. Please head on over and let me know what you think!

posted by Colleen @ 10:22 PM 2 comments

Juan Francisco Manzano

I am letting go of my long aversion to books written in verse - after loving The Weight of the Sky and now having my mind blown by The Poet Slave of Cuba, I really need to accept that I was being an idiot about the whole thing. I can't imagine Juan Francisco Manzano's biography being written in a different form after reading the amazing things that Margarita Engle has done with her book. It is so amazing and so upsetting, it's like nothing I've ever read.

So first, as I've written before, I was raised in Florida but know beans about Cuba. I don't know if things have changed in the schools in the past twenty years but I was there during the big Marielito Boat Lift and we still didn't talk about Cuban history or politics or culture. We never got anything other than the Cuban Missile Crisis and forget about Guantanamo Bay - when I was teaching history in the late 1990s my college students asked how we had a military base on Cuba when we hated them. None of them learned about the Spanish Civil War in school so it was all a mystery.

But we are on the edge of our seats over Brad and Angelina's baby. It's all about the priorities people!

I requested a review copy of Poet Slave of Cuba from Henry Holt because I had never heard of Juan Manzano and I wanted to know more about the island's literary history. What I got was a biography written in a series of poems from not only Juan's perspective but also his parents, the two women who owned him and others who were involved in his life. It has to be one of the most dramatic and disturbing books I have read in ages. The boy - and later man - had a horrific life, a terrible life, but he never stopped seeing poetry all around him, he never stopped writing poetry in his head. Even though he was set free on the death of his first owner, and his freedom was purchased by his mother from his second owner, he had to run away from her (and her insanity) and raise money by selling poems to finally gain public freedom from the second owner. Even then he was later imprisoned and suspected of leading a slave uprising (an uprising that never existed).

He died in poverty, still struggling to survive.

Here is what Engle has to say about his childhood:

She takes me with her wherever she goes
I become the companion of my owner, noble ghost
no, not a companion, remember?
a poodle, her pet
with my curly dark hair
and small child's brown skin
suitable
for the theater
and parties

So I bark
on command
I learn to whine and howl
in verse
I'm known as the smart one who never
forgets
I can listen
then recite
every word

Listen, she says to her friends
and the priest
see how little Juanito can sing
see how I've trained him
watch him
perform

It's an amazing book, absolutely positively amazing and I can't recommend it enough. (Full review to follow later in Bookslut or Eclectica.)

posted by Colleen @ 1:13 PM 2 comments

Princes Amongst Men

My review of Princes Amongst Men is up at Moorish Girl. I'm still thinking about this book and all the history that I had no clue about. This kind of thing always makes me wonder what else I might be missing, which is the ultimate slippery slope for a reader.

Today's mail brought some grand titles: Big Coal, Secrets of the Savannah and Deogratias which looks like an amazing graphic novel about Rwanda. I love this kind of a book day, when all the books that arrive are books that I've been waiting for and eager to see and touch and think about - when all the books matter.

I keep coming back to that "matter" thing, don't I?

I'm hoping to interview the author of Big Coal and also maybe combine it with another book on the same subject. I'm still a little freaked out by the article I read on strip mining in Orion recently. This is one of those stories that the world should know about, but we don't - we don't know a thing.

More Sex and the City tonight, more dragons, more reading of Sir Neville Henderson (who is certainly confused about the whole WWII thing). I'm going to do an article on YA anthologies for Eclectica this summer so there's a boatload of short story reading in my future and that makes me happy. Good stories matter, good strong important stories matter.

posted by Colleen @ 11:11 PM 1 comments

Sex and Writing

No, it's not that kind of post.

I've been watching the first season of Sex and the City while I've been working on my novel and it's very odd to be watching a bunch of women discuss their dating escapades while writing about dragons and teenagers and WWI. But it's also a ton of fun and I don't have to worry about the television bleeding over into my story. (I could see tons of potential issues with Buffy on that score.)

I know this makes me a total girl (and I think there's supposed to be something wrong with that) but I love this show.

Lots of new reading this week - I started a first edition off the TBR pile that came from a garage sale ages ago. Failure of a Mission is by Neville Henderson (I think that's his last name - it's not by Neville Chamberlain), he was the British ambassador to Berlin prior to the Second World War. This just seems very timely all of a sudden, of course every fucking book on war seems timely all of a sudden, and it reads very well. Poor Neville - he really had a crappy job handed to him.

Also Whale Season by Nicole Kelby (love her, love the book), a novel in verse, The Poet Slave of Cuba. Also a stack of reviewing to write before I forget what half these books were about (just kidding) and so much work on the new website!!!!

I was in the local bookstore the other day and mentioned how hard it was to read all the books I wanted to read (actually impossible) and a lady said that's just the way it is, you will never catch up with the reading you want to do. I've been pretty determined at going through my TBR list and even though I've added to the pile a little this year, I think I am kicking it's butt. What struck me though after I left the store was that maybe I should have said something about being choosier about the books I plan to read. Lots of books sound good, but do you just read something that sounds good or purposely reach instead for the ones that have a subject matter that is significant to you or are by beloved authors. It doesn't mean you don't take chances, or read "fluff" but really, if you want to read what matters how much room do you have in your life for fluff? I've been thinking about this because I get so many publisher catalogs and so many books sent to me and while it can be a bit heady and fun sometimes I also know that if I want to read and review the book on coal mining then I need to give myself time to read it - at the detriment of other titles but shouldn't I give myself time to read a book like that, a book that matters in such an enormous way?

Is one more important than the other?

But then again, sometimes sex is just sex and not always this big freaking deal like your mother made it sound like when you were a teenager. ("It's making love every single time, dear, it's precious and beautiful and making loooooooooooove.") So is reading just reading sometimes? When you are in your thirties and treat books like food, can you just read trash for no other reason than a momentary diversion? Or do you look for something longer lasting? Do you look for the really good lay?

And yes, I am married. Consider this entry just Sarah Jessica Parker's influence.

posted by Colleen @ 12:42 AM 4 comments

Our Missing Airman

If you want a peek at my AK flying novel, take a look at the brand new issue of failbetter magazine. They are running a short story excerpt, "Our Missing Airman". Although it is certainly a fictional story, the parts chronicling what happened to pilot Russ Merrill in 1929 are all true - and really came word from word from newspapers at that time. He just disappeared one day, and no one ever knew for sure what happened to him.

Sometimes the world can just swallow somebody, airplane and all.

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think! (Keeping in mind that this is an excerpt of a story that itself is an excerpt of a novel!)

posted by Colleen @ 11:35 AM 3 comments

Davidson, Hodgson and Hearn

Sounds like the name of a law firm, doesn't it?

I read Jenny Davidson's Heredity over the past couple days and found it to be very compelling. It's not the kind of book you go all happy over (The protagonist has a few self destructive issues,) but that doesn't mean I wasn't quite impressed and more than happy to recommend it to people who like their literature of the smart sort. (It's like I can't say I enjoyed The Not Knowing or Generals Die in Bed either but still want to tell the world about them.) The overall story in Heredity is great but the parallel historical story that the main character slowly uncovers was especially engaging, for me anyway. I'm a sucker for a happy ending and Jenny didn't give me that (all I've got to say is that Elizabeth should never ever forgive her father), but she wrote something so deep and rich and utterly original that I'll forgive the happily every after. (And really, I knew there wasn't going to be a romantic happily ever ever after but that girl part of me does just kick in sometimes and I have no control - none - over it!)

Heredity deals with some fascinating issues of genetics and also quite a bit about medical history. It was the history part, the bits about surgeons stealing bodies in London, that brought to mind two other books I have read and enjoyed: Barbara Hodgson's The Sensualist and Julie Hearn's Sign of the Raven. I reviewed the Hearn book not too long ago and thought it was an outstanding YA historical fantasy. Body snatching is a very real problem in Hearn's book and the lengths to which the characters go to fulfil the last wish of a friend that he not be dissected (and exposed to strangers) is equal parts compassionate and terrifying. Reading Heredity and seeing how far people went to protect their loved ones - and how determined the surgeons were to disinter them regardless of their wishes - was enough to make me feel dirty all over. Yuck, just major yuck!

Hodgson is one of my favorite writers/designers and in The Sensualist she sends her protagonist Helen Martin on a search for a wayward husband that ends up becoming far more about the history of anatomical illustration and the work Andreas Vesalius then it does about marriage. Hodgson includes amazing pictures and artwork in all of her books as supplements to the story and she really did amazing things with The Sensualist. It was the bits in Jenny D's book about old surgical instruments and the various procedures (and injuries) she describes over the course of the narrative that brought Hodgson's book so strongly to mind. I wish Jenny could have had access to the same design wonders as Hodgson - I think Heredity would have been even more impressive with an illustrated component.

All in all though it was a very smart book that made me think - but made me think in a good way (not a toxic book!). I liked it a great deal and I certainly look forward to Dynamite No. 1.

posted by Colleen @ 3:58 PM 2 comments

Toxic Reading

I've been wondering lately if books can affect in you in the same bad way that some relationships can - they leave you so frustrated, angry and emotionally upset that you can't function like you should, or see the world (and your life) in a positive way. Ages ago Oprah had something on about how people in your life could be toxic - they weren't evil abusers or anything but because they were always ragging on you or putting you down or just because they weren't really positive people they could pretty much suck the life out of you by being around them.

I know, it sounds like touchy feely bullshit, but I'm thinking there might be something to it.

I've just thrown the last poorly written memoir in a row across the room and after reading three of them (not from start to finish but enough to know how bad they were) I am so frustrated and annoyed that it's hard for me to concentrate on anything. I'm not going through that mess of "why can they be published and not me" because I've been reading long enough to know that anything can be published (did we all learn nothing from James Frey?), but I do wonder how editors and authors can be so sloppy. And I wonder why we waste our time publishing such poorly written books or books that exist solely to rip on other people and organizations but accomplish nothing good.

I mean, telling me you were raped by your father and then going on about the rape of the forests by developers really only serves to disturb and confuse me. Is there a true correlation here? Are you angry at him, at them, at the gods - who? And what am I supposed to do? And why are you changing the subject like this in a the middle of a whole other discussion?

WTF?

In the midst of this mess I've also been reading Scott Russell Sanders's memoir A Private History of Awe and it is wonderfully done. I'm about halfway through it and he has written something truly heartfelt and sincere and most importantly, it makes sense. There are no sudden bits of dialog between people who were dead before the author was even born (it's a memoir - how can you write stuff you didn't witness?) and there are no strange conclusions or smacks in the face for the reader. He writes what he remembers, he reconsiders certain memories now as an adult - reaccesses and wonders if things were different than how he saw them as a child, and he looks at the present and the man he is now. It's just nice reading what he has written, and his book carries a certain wisdom that has been so glaringly absent in those other books that it blows my mind. How some books get published, why they get published, is really beyond me.

All I know is that I'm sick of reading crap and I'm going to be much choosier about what I open in the future.

Jenny D.'s book Heredity is quite good btw - I'm about halfway through and enjoying it a great deal. I'm also reading Andrei Codrescu's collection New Orleans, Mon Amour for the Voices site and it is as good as I expected, no complaints there. For YA world I'm reading an interesting title from a German author, Shooting Stars Everywhere - very quirky thirteen year old boy and a tiny mystery that has me stumped. I'm looking forward to how things turn out for him. So four books and not one of them toxic. Hopefully that means tomorrow will be a much much better day than today.

Because lord, it really needs to be.

posted by Colleen @ 1:04 AM 0 comments

Book Shopping

A few books arrived today that I paid for - it does happen, even for book reviewers! After watching My Family and Other Animals last week on Masterpiece Theater I fell in love with Gerald Durrell all over again. The movie was very true to the book I thought and I'm certainly going to get it on DVD so I can wallow in it everytime I get lonely for Corfu.

Powells had a used copy of Durrell's Amateur Naturalist. My son is only four so this is a bit ahead for him but he loves the pictures and the idea of it and he's always looking for bugs and what not like young Gerald, so I wanted to get a copy while I could. They also had on sale Birds, Beasts and Relatives so that couldn't be passed up either.

I'm a fan of Jenny D's blog in a big way and when I was wandering around the Soft Skull site a week or so ago I got a chance to read a great description of her first book, Heredity. The idea behind this story intrigues me a lot and I looked at Powells when I was ordering the Durrells and managed to get a used copy of it for such an amazing price - well - I won't even tell you. So Jenny I'll be reading your book soon! I'm looking forward to it.

Then today I had to head over to the local bookstore because they were holding an ARC for me from Unbridled Books. I picked up Song of the Crow which sounds like it has an unusual natural history angle to it and then got to the main reason for stopping by - an American Heritage Picture Dictionary for the little man. He wants to read and he has all the letter sounds pretty much figured out, so I thought I would go for this next (along with the basic story books). I remember my first dictionary and I loved it - all those words that finally made sense! So it was fun to buy this for him.

On the way out I was looking at the big display table they have at Watermark Books (it's an independent and you never know what you might find) and saw My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Buard Your Eyes!: Uncensored Iranian Voices. I was all over it - Marjane Satrapi, Azar Nafesi and Shohreh Aghdashloo (House of Sand and Fog) immediately jumped out at me. But mostly I just want to know more about that country. I am so frutrated by the insanity that their leaders and ours are willing to bring down on the rest of us just because of their arrogance and need for power. Sometimes I just wish they would all drop their pants, make their comparisons and be done with it.

No more senseless posturing, okay?

Anyway, the collection looks fascinating and there will be more on that later. Last night I read the YA biography Stompin' at the Savoy: The Story of Norma Miller and it left me with a smile on my face. Her childhood was amazing - her life has been amazing - and all because she loved to dance. How cool is that - a life spent in wild, happy dancing? That's the way to live, you know, dancing your heart out is the best way to live.

I'll be reviewing Savoy for Eclectica this summer, now back to working on the new website!

posted by Colleen @ 2:15 PM 1 comments

Friday Notes

I finished Martha Gellhorn's Travels with Myself and Another last night. I feel compelled to refer her as a "gal" in the best sense of the word. I knew nothing about Gellhorn until I read Michael Reynold's multi-volume biography of Hemingway years ago and honestly, I can't figure out how those two ever thought they would last. I can totally seen Hemingway and Gellhorn having a torrid affair, but married? She just wasn't the settling down getting dinner on the table kind of chickee, that's for sure.

Travels is about trips across China, Africa, the Caribbean and a nightmare in Moscow. It's very funny, especially when Gellhorn has had enough (this happened a lot in Moscow) and although it sometimes rubs up against the nasty line of racism, it's mostly just honest. It was interesting to read what Uganda and Kenya and other African countries were like prior to independence - the chaos that was already there, the chaos that was coming, the insanity of the missionaries, etc. All in all, it was nice to spend time with Martha separate from her ex-husband and I will look for more of her books in the future.

Gwenda made mention today of a title out from Unbridled Books: Mohr by Frederick Reuss. I like the premise here, that the photos are real and the story created around them is fictional. I have a thing for old photos - it always seems so sad to find them at garage sales or flea markets, just sitting there, forever unrecognized. When my father was dying we found a ton of photos in his house but while he knew what they were and who they were he was no longer able to put complete sentences together and tell us. After he died my aunts went through them with us and knew a lot of the people and locations but the pictures from when he was in the military, before he met my mother, are a mystery to everyone.

And there's this series of five photos of him and a beautiful girl taken in Spain that no one knows anything about. They are so happy in the pictures - clearly she was a girlfriend - but he wasn't able to tell us who she was.

So photos intrigue the hell out of me and I'm looking forward to reading Mohr and seeing what Reuss does with this idea.

And finally, Jenny D. raved about Sara Gran's books a while back and then Gwenda mentioned her blog the other day and now I see that Come Closer is due from Berkley in May and really I think I need to read this book. Recommended by both Jenny and Gwenda? Please - how can I resist?!

posted by Colleen @ 2:50 PM 2 comments

Cuba and Baseball

I read Sue Corbett's Free Baseball last night and realized that this book is about way more than a kid who loves the game. I originally requested it because there are a zillion sports books out there for kids but I have been looking for something different to review. Free Baseball is the story of eleven year old Felix who is a pretty good ballplayer but he also happens to be the son of a member of the Cuban National Team. Baseball in America is one thing - in Cuba it is a religion. Felix idolizes his father, or rather the person he assumes his father to be. He doesn't really know him though because Felix and his mother left Cuba when he was a year old, and his father had to stay behind.

Free Baseball is about one week in Felix's life - a week when he wins tickets to a minor league game and becomes a bat boy by mistake and most importantly, a week when he finally starts asking the tough questions about his father and mother and what happened in Cuba after he left. There's also a great dog, a Mom willing to admit she's made a mistake or two and some baseball with cool ballplayers - all in all a solid sports story that is about way more than baseball.

The one thing about this book that bothered me (and bothered is probably the wrong word) is that from the title and cover shot you would assume that it is all about baseball and less about Cuba and what happens after you get to Florida. Free Baseball is the type of book that actually would appeal to a far broader audience than ballplaying boys (or girls) and is maybe even more appropriate to an immigrant audience, particularly kids who know about Cuban or Caribbean immigrants, than anyone else. I hate to say that a book should be read by anyone specifically, because honestly a good book will just appeal to anyone who loves good books, but I hope that Free Baseball is making its way throughout the Florida school and public library systems. This is just a good book about Cuba for young adults and we don't have nearly enough of those. (So says the reviewer who grew up in Florida and learned crap about the country the entire time I lived there!)

I liked Free Baseball a lot - review to follow this summer.

posted by Colleen @ 2:38 PM 0 comments

Catalogging Random House Children's

The two big catalogs for RH and all its imprints showed up yesterday. These are the Summer 06 titles that I liked:

Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters by Lesley M.M. Blume - This is a middle grade novel, and what grabbed me was the description of Cornelia as a girl who "surrounds herself with dictionaries and other books to isolate herself from the outside world". I'm sure there are enough geeky girls out there like I was who need to know about this book. Plus, how do you resist a kid named Cornelia?

The Foreshadowing by Marcus Sedgwick - A WWI novel about a young girl who becomes a nurse and realizes that she has visions of when someone is going to die. When she starts to see the battlefields of the Somme and the face of her brother Thomas she goes behind front lines claiming to be a battlefield nurse in order to find and save him. As I've said before, many times, I have a thing for WWI novels and I wish that more good ones were written and read by people who somehow still believe in the concept of glorious war. Drowning in the mud of the trenches was not pretty nor heroic and it helped no one. I can't wait to see what Sedgwick does with this place and time and a girl named Sasha. (And the book's website if very cool!)

Leaving Jetty Road by Rebecca Burton - Three friends (two girls, one guy), the last year of high school and lots of big plans that might change their lives. It's a classic coming of age formula, but when a book like this is done well, it can be amazing. Plus, I like that the author "loves baking cakes, drinking endless cups of tea and eating broccoli." It's a bio that made me smile, here's hoping the book does the same.

Sparrow by Sherri L. Smith - I'll be reviewing this for the Voices of NOLA; it's the story of a young girl who is left without close family when her grandmother dies. She moves to New Orleans to live with an aunt and find answers to who she is and who her family is. In then end there are a lot of friends, a lot of music and a fresh start. It sounds like a pre-Katrina novel but regardless, I'd like to see what Smith does with a young girl alone in the city and there aren't enough YA books set in NOLA, so Sparrow will be welcome indeed.

Burning City by Ariel and Joaquin Dorfman - It's in NYC and its about a 16 year old bike messenger. I always flash back to the late lameneted Dark Angel when I think of bike messengers, although I'm sure this title is not about mutants. It sounds different and fun and shit - Ariel Dorfman writing for young adults. That's worth a look!

House of the Red Fish by Graham Salisbury. Somehow I missed the first book Salisbury wrote about Tomi surviving the Second World War in Hawaii. As a Japanese American it isn't easy and with part of his family under arrest and everyone waiting to see what will happen next, Tomi sets out in this novel to raise his father's fishing boat which was sunk by the Army after Pearl Harbor. I'm impressed that Salisbury is writing about Japanese Americans in Hawaii during the war and I'm really hoping this makes a good YA book for boys in particular that will pack a nice historical punch as well.

And finally, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. I should say first that I'm a huge Nick and Nora Charles fan and that the pop culture reference alone caught my attention. It was Leila's review at Bookshelves of Doom today that sealed the deal though - a "baby in the corner" reference! Oh My God! Must read this book!!!

I'm writing the review for Lost Thoughts of Soldiers tonight and looking forward to thinking ab it more about war. I'm writing in the post WWI journal of one of my characters these days and immersing myself in battlefield moments keeps me in the right frame of mind for my guy.

posted by Colleen @ 11:53 PM 0 comments

Catch-Up

First, the new site is coming along and after some bizarre glitches in posting over there it seems to be all worked out now. So I just have to build the archives for all my interviews and that junk and it will be up next week - hopefully. Just watch the blog and I'll let you know when we are ready for visitors!

Second - Art Slade sent me an email after reading my post yesterday and mentioned his new book that is due out this Fall - on WWI in Palestine. I am all over that and will certainly be getting a copy. The only books I've read about WWI in the Middle East are all by or about TE Lawrence; I'm interested to see what another author does with that place and time.

Third - I contacted a few authors about my desire to review their upcoming books from Harper and the note in the catalog that says I can't request specific books and I heard back from one who had immediately contacted an editorial assistant over there. The assistant let me know that of course I could fax a list of review requests and they would consider sending me some. Really - no problem!

Yeah right.

I will send off a fax, but it's a blind fax, not like you're emailing someone direct who might actually respond to you. It's just not the sort of system that has ever worked that well for me in the past. But I do have two of the books coming via the authors and hopefully will receive a couple of others. I still think this system isn't a very good one and as an author myself it has become very clear that there is a big difference between what some publishers do for their authors versus what other publishers do (For the record: Harcourt, Houghton Mifflin, Candlewick and FSG all rock! Plus Front Street, Annick Press and Serpent's Tail!! I'm sure there's more -)

Fourth - Congrats to Leila over at Moorish Girl who is going to Casablanca next year! How cool is that? She's going to run my review of Princes Amongst Men in the next week or so, the awesome book I read last month about the Roma people and music.

Fifth - Got the new Random House kid catalogs and will post on them shortly.

Sixth - You must buy the new issue of Vanity Fair - the green issue. Amazing articles on global warming, spectacular pictures and did you know that Patagonia makes jackets from recycled plastic bottles? We are buying our rain gear from Patagonia from now on! (And in the Pacific Northwest a good raincoat is essential.) There's a long story on coal mining and mountain top blasting in the magazine and it really depressed me. I have a book on coal mining coming to me from Houghton Mifflin and I'm hoping to interview the author.

Seventh - Reviewing a book for Booklist right now where the author is taking quotes out of context to support his message. I hate when authors do that - I hate when anyone does that. The book is still going to be reviewed by me and I can certainly recommend it but now I have to find a way to explain (in less than 200 words) that some of his message is tempered by his refusal to present a balanced view. Why do authors think they get their point across better when they only scream their side of the story? It sells to the people who already believe them but leaves everyone in the middle doubting if its all true.

Of course that seems to work fine for Ann Coulter and Michael Moore so I guess I can't fault this guy for doing the same thing. But it's exhausting reading.

Eight - To reward myself for getting through some tough books lately I'm reading Scott Russell Sanders's Private History of Awe next. I'm really looking forward to it.

posted by Colleen @ 12:15 PM 0 comments