So the plan is to hand out candy — assuming we get trick-or-treaters, which we haven’t so far, but it’s possible — and read vampire books.  Which I seem to be reading a lot of lately — and some very different vampire books at that.

After a conversation at lunch several weeks ago, my almost-brother-in-law loaned me the first two of Laurel K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake books (of which I’ve so far read one).  Hamilton knows how to spin a story and how to write action, so it’s a fast read.  She tries to keep it very dark and noir-ish — large quantities of world-weary sarcasm — which would start to weigh on you except that the book moves so quickly.  Her real strength is how she handles the basic premise: that vampires and other undead are not only accepted as real, but have been granted citizenship.  It’s a clever reason for a police liaison to be tangled up in vampire business, and she makes the legal detail move the plot forward.

I hadn’t really planned to, but I’ve also started reading Twilight after A. found my weakness by using the line “I’d be interested to hear what you think.”  (She was reading it because a friend at work was enjoying them, and was curious about what sort of vampire book it could be, given who the author is and who had recommended it to her.)  I’m almost 400 pages in and I’ve finally found something resembling a plot (of the “run, the baddies are chasing us!” variety).  Teen romance is not usually my cup of tea (and undoubtedly IS where this book should be shelved), and this is, I’m afraid, no exception.  Also, Meyer needed a better editor (as evidenced by 375 pages of plotlessness and flimsy character development).  I thought Little, Brown was a decent house, but now I wonder if I should get to work, because I could totally write this book.  And whatever talents I may hope to have, that’s not really a good thing.

To round out this assortment of books with fangs, my former roommate, C., and I are attempting to continue our long-distance book club by reading Dracula.  I’ve read it before via the DracuBlog, which isn’t actually running this year, but for the past several years a Drac fan has undertaken to blog the novel — which is written as letters, diary entries, etc.–chronologically.  Partly it’s just just fun, but it also really gives you a sense of the time in which things happen (you check the blog and–geez, is Jonathan Harker still in Transylvania?).  It’s interesting to me to read the book as Bram Stoker arranged it, though, because at least in one instance, the action isn’t chronological:  for the first four chapters all you get is Harker writing his diary in Transylvania.  After that, Stoker takes you back to England and you catch up on what other characters have been doing during his absense, and you really do get a sense of the world having opened up — a contrast between the isolation of rural Transylvania and the more cosmopolitan West.

Happy hauntings to you all!

Harry Potter is also aging, though — the first book came out in the States ten years ago this September.  To wring a few more rubles out of the franchise celebrate, Scholastic is issuing an anniversary edition with a new cover.

UK bookstore Waterstones has been putting together a book of stories so short, they can fit on a large index card.  Most entries, apparently were gathered through a competition, but they also invited entries from well-known authors — including J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Tom Stoppard, and Margaret Atwood.  The JKR card was a snippet of a story about James and Sirius.  As the original has now been sold (proceeds to charity) for massive amounts of money, you can read the text here.

Warner Bros. continues to be over-protective of HP.  Seriously, guys.

Another story with castles (but no wizards):  California man from the Netherlands builds his own.

This post is the one with the actual news.  The job search is actually yielding a few leads, for one.  I don’t want to say too much yet, but I had an interview on Thursday (at very short notice) that went all right, and I have one with other people on Monday, and I’ve got high hopes for that one, too.  So more on those next week, I hope.

The other ongoing project lumbers forward as well.  After some deliberation, I ordered a wedding dress last Tuesday, so that should wander into town in mid-October.  It is, of course, gorgeous, in an understated way.  :)  So now we’re making lists and plotting maps:  possible restaurants for the reception that would be close to the botanical garden where we’re having the wedding, possible hotels that would be close to the reception.  Things we might want to register for and stores at which we’d want to register for them.  What color dress to tell my long-suffering college roommate that she ought to buy.  Supposedly, I should have strong feelings about colors like sea foam or pale peach, but all I’m coming up with is “How about some nice blue or green or purple?”  (Sorry, hon…)

At any rate, things are moving forward.  Some friends gave me a guide to wedding planning published by the folks at TheKnot.com, which has been helpful because it has checklists and timelines and all sorts of details.  But I’ve also gotten a lot of sanity from a book called The Anti-Bride’s Guide, which has the refreshing attitude that perhaps you don’t care to wear a massive fairy-princess dress and do the chicken dance at the local country club.  Which means that I would be scandalously outcast among the characters of Somebody Is Going to Die if Lilly Beth Doesn’t Catch That Bouquet, a hilarious collection of anecdotes about  weddings in a particular part of the South — a birthday gift from the aforementioned long-suffering college roommate.

Speaking of books, this morning I finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (long titles seem to be the theme of the week) and enjoyed it immensely.  As Pug can tell you, when I started it, I made some faces and gave him some weird looks — the narrator is on the unconventional side, and cover blurbs that raved about the book did so by comparing it to books and authors I don’t care for.  But I’m happy to say that I kept reading, and in the end, I think the reviewer’s comparisons were misleading at best.  I haven’t read The Sound and the Fury specifically, but I think she merely meant that this book is written in a stream of consciousness style similar to what Faulkner used.  And I think she’s off the mark in invoking The Catcher in the Rye.  Yes, both books are first person accounts of teenage boys who feel isolated from society, but where Holden Caufield feels isolated because he’s a cynical, self-absorbed little prig, this narrator, Christopher, feel isolated because he’s… autistic, perhaps, or something like that — we’re never told, and I’m no expert.  But he’s brilliant, earnest, and observant; and life as he sees it is simultaneously fascinating and awkward.  In the end, it’s a book about discovery and self-empowerment.  What do the reviewers know, anyway?

Also recommended, in a lowbrow humor sort of way:  LOLBush at the Olympics.  LOLcat English sometimes makes me twitch, but it seems appropriate here.  Gotta love the Brits.

And if anyone needs a Serenity fix, I came across this a few days ago:  a brief interlude, comic-style, called “The Other Half.”

– Impressive, disturbing, and a dark sort of tribute to American capitalism:  we present the Wal-Mart virus.

– By this point, I think most of you have seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.  (And if not, it’s still available on iTunes; DVD to come out sometime soon.)  Shockingly, Pug and I thought it was fantastic, and still go about humming about freeze rays and Bad Horse.  Goodness knows it got a ton of media coverage, but I offer a couple of my favorites:  The Dr. Horrible oral history, because it amuses me, and the NPR piece, because I’m impressed that they picked it up.

– The fourth book in the Twilight series, which has been enjoying popularity among those inclined towards YA vampire-romances, came out this weekend to Potter-like midnight release parties.  I know that at least a couple of you have read the books and enjoyed them — and that at least a couple of you have read the books and offered your critiques on them.  I haven’t read any of them, but I thought this Salon article offered what seems to me like some particularly insightful commentary on them.  (And while we’re at Salon, the same writer had some worthwhile notes on Harry Potter 7.  Naturally, it’s an article from a year ago, but I just finished re-reading Deathly Hallows, so I enjoyed that one as well.  I think she’s pretty fair about Rowling’s strengths and weaknesses.)

– And Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (remember A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich ?) passed away this weekend.

Later: Woah!  They’re making a Gatchaman movie?  Carmen, did we know about this?  I don’t really expect this to be what you would call… good, but Cartoon Network ran a dubbed version called G-Force that my brothers and I enjoyed when I was nine or ten, so it might get a few nostalgia points.

Well, now that’s six unrelated topics.  Or five.  Oh well; the title sounds better as it is.

Moore, for note, is also one of the three wonderful author people who answered all my silly questions about author blogs last semester.

Now, the most obvious comparison is to Monty Python’s Life of Brian, but I’m not going to make it. I’ve seen Life of Brian, but at the time, it was late at night, we were trying to keep the volume down, and consequently I couldn’t hear very well. This only added to a common Python problem, which I will call “Wait, are you still playing the same character?”

Lamb is good fun, though. It’s definitely R rated, but Moore’s smartest decision in his portrayal of Jesus (called Joshua here. Think of Avenue Q: “Remember guys, Jesus was…Jewish”) is in giving him a wisecracking sidekick. Levi, called Biff, is our narrator and is not a bad sort of person, just deeply flawed. With Biff around to hold grudges, curse like a sailor, and chase skirts all over Asia, Joshua can be good without being boringly perfect. Moore gives him enough faults to make him interesting and human, which, as I understand it, is part of the point of Jesus, anyway. Being human.

In that spirit, Moore sets about telling a story that doesn’t leave large chronological gaps as the gospels — what did happen in those thirty-odd years between his birth and his ministry. (I remember encountering this problem at my church-run preschool and being very puzzled about such an inexplicable omission.) Here, Biff and Joshua spend their “gap years” traversing Asia to seek out and study from the three wise men…who teach him all about Eastern religions as he gradually builds his own theology and develops a knack for parables. In an afterword, Moore acknowledges the chronological problems in having Joshua learn about Buddhism at a monastery in China, but claims that the alluring question, “What if Jesus knew kung fu?” was too good to pass up.

When the pair return to Galilee and begin to gather followers, the disciples are often something of a peanut gallery, but it’s in keeping with the tone of the story: light-hearted, but not entirely without substance. Bartholomew won’t bathe, Thomas has an imaginary twin, and Lazarus is in denial about his leprosy, but by the end, this sometimes slapstick tale manages, through Joshua’s unwavering determination and Biff’s frantic, worried scheming, to become truly touching.

Events I’ve planned to blog about in the last month, but didn’t:
-The writer’s strike.
-The rally in Harvard Square for the writers’ strike, which I didn’t take time off work to go to, but my roommate did and got to meet Joss Whedon. Actually, I did too, briefly, because he was signing stuff at a little sci-fi bookstore after the rally and was still there when I got off work. It was pretty awesome.
-The Golden Compass and the brouhaha that the Christian right managed to create around it. I highly recommend the book, by the way, very highly. The movie is a pleasant enough way to spend a couple of hours but is not an acceptable substitute.
-Mitt Romney’s speech about why his religion shouldn’t matter to his presidential campaign. I didn’t see the speech, I just read about it and meant to read a transcript, but haven’t. If he continues to look like a contender, I’ll get around to it eventually. He worries me, and I can’t put my finger on why, except to be flip and say that he looks like the evil Mayor from season 3 of Buffy. (Source. Not my cleverness; though I think the whole list is hilarious.)
-Alex and the Ironic Gentleman by Adrienne Kress. A fun and funny YA adventure — and its author was one of three who were fantastically nice about letting me ask them questions for a paper I was writing on author blogs. Definitely another recommended read.

Enjoyable things that happened while I was home for Christmas:
-Two lovely Christmas dinners in one day.
-Going ice skating.
-Laughing at my brothers’ oddly decorated gingerbread cookies (One that stands out is a bell that B. frosted in white and spelled out “E.A. Poe” on the top in little chocolate sprinkles. (”Hear the sledges with the bells, silver bells, silver bells, what a world of merriment their melody foretells…” Yes, the poem gets darker; it is Poe.))
-Getting to hang out with Liz before her move and see Elf in the new digs.
-Teasing Mom for calling it a “white Christmas” when it hailed on Christmas morning.
-Beating my brothers at ping pong. Sometimes.
-Getting to show off my beautiful ring…did I mention that we got engaged?

	Ignore the brooding vampire in the foreground for a minute and check out the crosshatch-y bookcases at the left.
	Here’s a closer look.

I imagine this wouldn’t hold as many books as a conventional bookcase of the same dimensions, but it is visually appealing and seems like a good way to group books into small-ish categories.

This one’s ganked from E, but I’m changing the rules.

The list is the 106 books most often noted as unread by Library Thing users. Bold is for books you’ve read. Italics for books you’ve started but haven’t finished books you want to read, because this list is full of ‘em for me. Strikethrough is for books you found unreadable didn’t like. (Dude, you want unreadable, I’ll give you Swift’s frikkin’ Tale of a Tub. Or anything by Kant.)
…and I’m adding the underline for books that I own and want to read, but haven’t gotten to quite yet, haha.

* Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

* Anna Karenina

* Crime and Punishment

* Catch-22

* One Hundred Years of Solitude

* Wuthering Heights

* The Silmarillion

* Life of Pi : a novel

* The Name of the Rose

* Don Quixote

* Moby Dick (Somehow, I feel obliged to try…)

* Ulysses

* Madame Bovary (Started it. WILL finish.)

* The Odyssey

* Pride and Prejudice (LOVE.)

* Jane Eyre (LOVELOVELOVE.)

* A Tale of Two Cities

* The Brothers Karamazov

* Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies

* War and Peace

* Vanity Fair

* The Time Traveler’s Wife

* The Iliad

* Emma

* The Blind Assassin

* The Kite Runner

* Mrs. Dalloway

* Great Expectations

* American Gods

* A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

* Atlas Shrugged

* Reading Lolita in Tehran : a Memoir in Books

* Memoirs of a Geisha

* Middlesex

* Quicksilver

* Wicked : the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (LOVE)

* The Canterbury Tales

* The Historian : a Novel

* A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

* Love in the Time of Cholera

* Brave New World

* The Fountainhead

* Foucault’s Pendulum

* Middlemarch

* Frankenstein

* The Count of Monte Cristo

* Dracula

* A Clockwork Orange

* Anansi Boys

* The Once and Future King

* The Grapes of Wrath

* The Poisonwood Bible : a Novel (LOVE)

* 1984

* Angels & Demons

* The Inferno

* The Satanic Verses

* Sense and Sensibility (LOVE.)

* The Picture of Dorian Gray

* Mansfield Park

* One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

* To the Lighthouse

* Tess of the D’Urbervilles

* Oliver Twist

* Gulliver’s Travels

* Les Misérables

* The Corrections

* The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

* The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

* Dune

* The Prince

* The Sound and the Fury

* Angela’s Ashes : a memoir

* The God of Small Things

* A People’s History of the United States : 1492 - present

* Cryptonomicon

* Neverwhere

* A Confederacy of Dunces

* A Short History of Nearly Everything

* Dubliners

* The Unbearable Lightness of Being

* Beloved

* Slaughterhouse-Five (Pretty awesome.)

* The Scarlet Letter

* The Mists of Avalon

* Oryx and Crake : a novel

* Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed

* Cloud Atlas

* The Confusion

* Lolita

* Persuasion

* Northanger Abbey (LOVE)

* The Catcher in the Rye

* On the Road

* The Hunchback of Notre Dame

* Freakonomics

* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values

* The Aeneid

* Watership Down (LOVE)

* Gravity’s Rainbow

* The Hobbit

* In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences

* White Teeth

* Treasure Island

* David Copperfield

* The Three Musketeers

And laughed. And cheered. And loved every minute of it.

What a fantastic send-off for Harry Potter. I found Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows entirely satisfactory and continue to be completely in love with all my favorite characters. Ms. Rowling has my heartfelt respect.

But following this cut lies a discussion of the people and plot of Deathly Hallows. If you don’t want to be spoiled, read no further!
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

One of the amazing things about this book is that it is (in sci-fi terms) gadget-heavy without quite overwhelming the reader. There are seven Horcruxes to keep track of, but most of them are familiar: Riddle’s diary goes back to Book 2, while Book 6 introduced the Gaunt ring, Slytherin’s locket, and Hufflepuff’s cup. Nagini has been around since Book 4, leaving Ravenclaw’s tiara as the only new Horcrux (and we knew it was likely to be something of Ravenclaw’s). And even though the three Hallows are a totally new idea, each one turns out to be a previously mentioned object (Harry’s invisibility cloak, Dumbledore’s wand, and the ring again). Hermione’s beaded bag of holding helps to keep it real, too — we’re not forced to imagine our heroes fitting all their many gadgets, talismans, and belongings into backpacks.

The autumn during which Harry, Ron, and Hermione are camping all over Britain and (as often as not) griping at each other is one of the few spots in which the book drags — especially knowing that eventually they must surely go to exciting places like Hogwarts and Godric’s Hollow. And especially since their stay at Grimmauld Place yielded such interesting tidbits. The story of RAB and the locket, for one (As Pug pointed out, Crunch was right!), the fragment of Lily’s letter for another. Not to mention the transformation of Kreacher.

After years of SPEW and knitted hats, Hermione’s social conscience regarding house-elves is finally getting results. She points out to the others that wizard wars are less important to them than personal loyalties, making Harry realize that paying some respect to Regulus Black, as well as to Kreacher himself, will make all the difference. It’s beautiful, but I’m still curious as to whether a change is in the wind. After the final battle, the Hogwarts elves are mingling with the victorious wizards, the centaurs, and everyone else. Are we to assume that because the battle has been won by a diverse army, that the role of house-elves in general society is going to start changing? That the tensions between goblins and wizards or between centaurs and wizards will ease for the time being? Back when Harry and Ron decided that they might like to be Aurors when they grow up, Hermione made some comment about wanting to take SPEW further — I can see her involved in an organization dedicated to smoothing the tensions between the different magical races. The head of some magical non-profit, if you will. And I’m pleased that Ron seems to support her position…now that she sounds practical about it, rather than rabid.

Out of everybody, however, I think I might be most proud of Neville. The confidence and capability with which he steps into Harry’s place at Hogwarts (1) makes me wish I could read Neville Longbottom and the Hogwarts Guerrillas: Another Story of Year 7, and (2) brings me back to that darn prophecy. Until Voldemort attacked Harry, it could have referred to the Potters or the Longbottoms: Voldemort himself chose his nemesis. But very gradually, I think we have been shown that if Voldemort had chosen differently and the burden had fallen to Neville, he could have borne it, too. Although the evidence is scant at first, it’s been there ever since Dumbledore gave Neville those 10 points for standing up to his friends in Book 1.

And what about Neville’s gran? The lady beat up an Auror and was on the run — Rawr! I wouldn’t be surprised if she were good friends (or even sisters, dare I say it) with Minerva McGonagall, who has been a favorite of mine for a long time. I cheered (silently; it was pushing midnight) over her encounter with Amycus Carrow in Ravenclaw Tower and her duel with Snape.

And oh, Severus Snape… I enjoyed hating him all the way through, but I was so pleased to realize as soon as he started offering Harry his memories that he too was Dumbledore’s man through and through. Or rather, Lily’s. In Book 6, we were given an explanation for why Dumbledore trusted Snape (that he had renounced his evil ways and was sorry), and I found that pretty weak. However, believing Snape because of his love for Lily makes perfect sense: love has always been Dumbledore’s favorite motif. These past two years, I have been skeptical of those who suggested that Snape killed Dumbledore on Dumbledore’s orders, but the explanation of the cursed hand and its result (Dumbledore’s looming death) made it believable. A desperate fanwank becomes a heroic death — and Dumbledore deserves no less. Getting to see the little scenes between Snape and Dumbledore over was a real treat, too.

The effort in this book to bring Dumbledore down a notch and keep him human was, I thought, necessary and significant. I think one of the themes that JKR emphasizes throughout the series is that heroes are only human and that normal people can be heroes. Dumbledore is not a saint (as he has insisted before); his past holds mistakes and character flaws like anybody else’s. Harry has grown into a real hero, but his intolerances, anger, stubbornness, poor judgment, and other flaws are integral to his story. Neville belongs here too, of course, and to pick just one more example, I want to point out Ron on page 379 (US ed).

“You’ve sort of made up for [leaving] tonight,” said Harry. “Getting the sword. Finishing off the Horcrux. Saving my life.”

“That makes me sound a lot cooler than I was,” Ron mumbled.

“Stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was,” said Harry. “I’ve been trying to tell you that for years.”

So I suppose that Harry would tell us that his self-sacrifice, return from death, and final triumph over Voldemort all sound cooler than they really were, too, but I found them emotionally satisfactory nonetheless. The tears started coming after Fred’s death, I sobbed for Tonks and Lupin (I have a soft spot for Lupin, always have. I like underdogs.), and was bawling by the time I realized Harry had to die — something I knew was possible, but didn’t want to believe. (I hadn’t bought into the ‘Harry is the last Horcrux’ theory, though. Oops.) I loved that Harry passed on his quest to Neville (and that Neville was able to do his bit!), and the appearance of Lily, James, Sirius, and Lupin was a beautiful tug at the heartstrings.

But though Harry’s sudden appearance in the midst of the Death Eaters is cinematic, to say the least, I have to admit that my favorite part of Harry’s death is that it allows Dumbledore to give his traditional end-of-the-book explanation, even though he’s dead.

And how about that final battle. Harry Potter takes his stand and calls Voldemort by his true name, making him his equal: another orphaned boy who found a home at Hogwarts and has amazing abilities. But not only are they equals: Harry finally has the upper hand and can give the satisfying (if ill-advised according to the Overlord’s Handbook) catechism on everything Tom Riddle has done wrong, everything Tom Riddle doesn’t know, and why he has finally won his happy ending.

My dad and I had been planning to find a release party of some kind since I decided when I was going to come home this summer, so the only question (and not one we were quick to answer) was which bookstore to go to. We learned that B. Dalton in the mall would open at midnight only to sell the book; that all Books-a-Millionses were opening at 9p.m. with various festivities, etc. So we picked a Books-a-Million in town. At the last minute, Middle Brother decided he wanted to come too, and Youngest Brother suddenly caved in to peer pressure. We all caved a little more when my mother (who was not going) suggested that we should go in costume. I hadn’t been planning to, but we pulled out gowns from a couple of college graduations (mine and my cousin’s) and the accessories from a Harry Potter costume Mom made for one of the boys sometime in the last decade. We looked quite fetching.

Youngest Brother’s choice of headgear reflects his personality and the back of his shirt has a Dumbledore quote about how music is a magic greater than anything taught at Hogwarts.

Off we went. Books-a-Million was packed when we got there a little after 11 p.m. We were “sorted” when we came in the door (stuck our hands into a Sorting Hat full of house badges) — I was in Hufflepuff for the night — but after a few minutes, we realized that there was really not much going on besides a couple of massive, snake-like lines. We let ourselves be pushed into one by a Gestapo Kindergarten Teacher of a store manager who seemed to have created her own personal hell. We stood there in line in the middle of the romance section (of all places), not sure we really wanted to be there. When we realized (around 11:30) that the main line was for people who already had vouchers (others must wait in a different line to get a voucher at the cafe counter, then re-join the main line), we decided that we could do better. We swept out in our wizard’s robes and drove down the street to the mall.

There were maybe thirty people standing around the mall entrance. The boys found friends to talk to, as they had in B-a-M, and we had only fifteen or twenty minutes to wait until a pleasant, smiling security guard came to open the doors. Quick, easy, short line, no fuss. Brilliant. This was at B. Dalton, by the way. Can I plug B. Dalton a few more times? They’re part of Barnes & Noble and I’m not generally a huge fan of huge chains ’cause independent bookstores are cooler, but this week, I’m pretty happy with B. Dalton.

And then Dad read us the first chapter on the drive home. I have lots to say about the book, of course, but that’s for another post. Coming soon.