Forgive me, readers for two things.  One, for being absent for so long, and two, for being self-indulgent and explaining away my absence.  Humor me, it’s relevant (sort of).

Toward the end of the summer I took a new job and simultaneously, somehow, and totally on purpose, I found myself knocked up (no oops there, but I do wonder at my timing). So between the working, the throwing up, the commuting, the being exhausted and the studying for the MBA which suddenly seems much less important, I haven’t had time to crack a book for enjoyment since.

This, I have discovered, is a very unhealthy place for me to be.  My body is having a hard enough time keeping down food (like some women, I’ve lost weight in my first trimester).  This is no time for my soul also to be lacking in (literary) nourishment. 

This baby may not end up being a reader, though with what with nature (on both sides) and nurture (on all sides) I don’t see how that will be possible.  Regardless of how he or she turns out, it will not be from lack of steady diet of stories. 

Starting now.

It is fitting and perfect and glorious that Neil Gaiman’s Odd and The Frost Giants, about a boy named Odd and his adventures,  was the book that broke my reading fast.  He is the story-telling equivalent of Thanksgiving, but without the uncomfortable food coma.  His books are warm comfort food.  They are always satisfying and hearty, even if the volume is slim, as this one is.  His stories are tasty and spicy and savory.  And sometimes, as in this case, they finish sweetly, with everyone receiving just desserts. 

Mr. Gaiman’s stories seem so effortless and so perfect, I defy anyone not to adore them unequivocally.  It is always with sadness that I finish one of his books.  I read this one too quickly, on a train ride home; I was so unwilling to let it go that I was forced to read the author’s biography at the end.  Do I really need to do this?  No, I’ve read all his books; I know more about him than a little blurb in the back can tell me.  But I’m so glad I read it.

I have often said I would read a cereal box written by Mr. Gaiman and I laughed out loud at the following parenthetical messages left in this book’s biography – the majority of which was hilarious in its own right – thus proving that I am right to think he can make anything worth reading.

(Hello.)

(I bet you can win awards just by spelling Mythopoeic correctly.)

(Does anyone read these biographies?)

(Help, I am being held prisoner.)

So, I’m back in the world of reading, moreover of fantasy, that cure-all for real world burdens.  I can’t wait to read these books to my baby.  In fact, I’m not waiting, I only hope that she can hear me through some baby-mother channel.  We both need stories, and hope that a love of reading is something that gets passed down from both her parents.  Without a doubt, she’ll probably be the only kid quoting American Gods at daycare.

After 26 years (seriously, that is almost my entire life!) Reading Rainbow will be coming to a close.

Apparently funding is given for shows that teach kids how to read, not why to read.

Sad.  Very sad.

I avoided 1602 for years for no good reason. One of my biggest problems with the big serial mess of the superhero genre today is the “in crowd” exclusivity it seems to revel in, making for a literature of fandom rather than one of universal questions and challenges. Gaiman’s purpose to writing 1602 seemed, at first glance, to be nothing more than this; a “wouldn’t it be cool if” scenario where he gets to put familiar superhero characters in the unfamiliar setting of Elizabethan England and thereby allow himself to reference two of his favorite geeknesses: 1960s low art and 1600s high art. So I passed.

My prejudice wasn’t completely meritless. The first couple chapters are full of groaners, especially with the name-plays. See, in 1602 his name is Peter Parquagh – get it? It’s like Parker but archaic! And why does this boy have such an odd fascination with . . . spiders?! Hooo, I get that reference! Then there’s the muscled-up stranger from the New World who’s an unusually blonde and white captain-like Native American named Rogers . . . oops, I mean “Rohjaz.”

The rest of the set-up pages follow suit as we’re introduced to the cast and settings. Nick Fury is instead Sir Nicholas, and instead of a techy super spy he’s the Queen’s most trusted intelligence aide and protector. Dr. Strange, who normally lives in New York’s Greenwich Village, awkwardly states that he lives in “the village of Greenwich” to someone who already knows where he lives. The Fantastic Four are still a band of friends led by a scientist who gain powers in a freak accident, but here they travel to the New World in a ship called The Fantastick and are never heard from again except in legends of super-powered transformations and do-goodery. The “a-ha!” and “oh yeah!” moments are many and frequently grating.

But then I surprisingly found myself buried knee-deep in the middle of the book without pausing to take a note or breathe or eat a sandwich and I realized that the story is good despite itself. Or is it actually just good despite my knee-jerk presumptions of hokeyness?

Gaiman, as usual, has written a killer page-turner, setting up the stakes right away (the world is in indeterminate peril, Court intrigue threatens the life and leadership of the Queen, and a mysterious doomsday weapon is en route from the Holy Land and could fall into anyone’s hands) and giving us characters whom we instantly love for reasons that are hard to pin down; he just always does that with his magical writing mojo. Other players come into the mix to much less “I get it” eye-rolling, like Carlos Javier and the “Witchbreed” he is trying to protect from the Spanish Inquisition. The Witchbreed, of course, are the mutants we know as Charles Xavier’s X-Men, suffering persecution even in this long-ago and far-away reality, but suffering from the kind of persecution one would expect in such a reality. So as the story moves forward quick-like to the good stuff, Gaiman’s world-building starts to unfold far less clumsily and without your notice – you just want to find out what happens next, after all, and you’re really hoping that Sir Nicholas and Dr. Strange and Javier and the rest can figure out what is going down and put a stop to it.

Most of the fun, of course, is in the figuring out what’s going down. Watching the players move into place felt the same to me as reading the “real” comics growing up in the ’80s; the abject wonder at seeing Falcon fly through Harlem, or Daredevil dislocating a shoulder while scaling a wall to the Kingpin’s skyscraper office, or the Hulk holding up a mountain when it’s dropped on him and all the other superheroes. This is the book’s second surprise: Gaiman has changed the setting to give himself a challenge but in the end it’s still a superhero story, one that’s perhaps more distilled and pure than we’re used to. The heroes here are still performing remarkable feats like those I described above, only in their time, their situation, the point being that heroes must save the day, and they must do it against seemingly insurmountable odds, and they will do so regardless of where they are and what’s happening to them.

Gaiman has been exploring issues of fate and power in all of his work for decades, culminating (in my opinion) with Sandman: A Doll’s House which is literally about being controlled by forces larger than you and how ordinary people can rebel against them. In 1602 the ideas manifest in the personas of Strange, Fury, Captain America, and the resilient, imprisoned Mr. Fantastic, still affecting change deep within a lonely forgotten dungeon; all of these figures are working against political forces, societal forces, and even the physical makeup of the universe as their reality was created by a freak temporal accident and is now increasingly unstable. They do this because of who they are. Right is right after all, at least within the superhero genre.

And this is the last surprise of the book, the most satisfying one: this 1602 story counts. It’s real (or rather, “in continuity” to use the proper fan term). The Watcher, a character in our current recognizable Marvel Comics universe who passively watches and records important events from a celestial perch, uncharacteristically intervenes to help sort out a major anomaly that could threaten all of existence. As he puts it, heroes are appearing 400 years too early, and this must be set to rights very soon before everything goes all ’splodey. The existence of the Watcher sets this story firmly within an accepted fictional reality and creates an ontological awareness of that fiction within this other fiction. James Fleming wrote a brilliant and concise exploration of Gaiman’s use of postmodern storytelling in 1602 that describes this aspect of the story much better than I can, but for my purposes here as a reader (rather than a cultural critic) the ontological spot the story winds up in leaves us with the coolest of “oh cool!” moments. We are witnessing something of consequence, not a literary thought experiment or a joke or a puzzle. And through the threat of those consequences we see these heroes being heroic rather than simply blank protagonists in a battle against blank antagonists in an endless flood of monthly periodicals.

By the end of the book we see that the in-jokes have been completely abandoned for narrative sincerity. The best example is the aforementioned Mr. Parquagh who never quite has any run-ins with radioactive spiders (which would have excited many a comic-addicted fan) and who takes a back seat in the action until the very last scene. The promise of him as a new superhero within a somehow still-existing alternative reality long after the final page is turned leaves us with hope that this world will have its age of protectors, too, that the the days will continue to be saved, that no matter where (or when) the forces of oppression and greed appear, right will always be right in the end .

Jesse and I are very excited to announce that our friendly little blog has been nominated for three (yes three!!!!) BBAWs:

• Best General Review Blog
• Best Review
• Most Collaborative

We’re currently compiling our best blog posts to send to the nomination committee and jumping up and down with excitement!!!!!

“I love this book,” I said to Tim while attempting read in a moving car, something that, to my intense frustration, I have never quite managed to do without wanting to vomit (thankfully I can read on a moving train, which makes my long commute more bearable). 

 ”Listen to this,” I said, quoting page one (yes, page ONE!!).

Hours later, not long after the genesis of Francis Wells’ idea, the party would meet a premature death with a cloud of plaster dust covering the Gardner’s guests, as well as a dessert table graced with spun-sugar Giacomettis and the life-sized sculpture of Michelangelo’s David, whose penis had all evening been dripping syphilitically.

“And this!” I raved.

By ten p.m. there had been three slideshows – one of which, “Hop Art: A  Portfolio,” projected photos of Bunny’s own work onto the ballroom walls, interspersed with a  series of dinner courses as carefully presented and unsatisfying as Francis’ wife.

“I didn’t want to love it, but there it is, how could I not?”

“Don’t you want to love all books?” he asked, confused.

I pondered his question; certainly its a valid one.   When it comes to reading, as with the rest of life, I’m total cynic. I certainly don’t expect to love all books – an inordinate amount of what is published is trash, or boring, or overdone (or pleasant and inoffensive, but forgettable).   But there are those who allege that cynics are disappointed idealists.  Maybe.  If it were not true that a vast majority of published works are just plain mediocre, if we did live in an ideal world, would I really want to love every book I read? 

No, definitely not.  Just like I don’t want to love every person I meet.  Or every painting I see in a museum.  Or every song I hear.  I want to love only those works that speak to me.  I want to put them away in a special corner of my heart that’s reserved for them.   I want it to mean something.  It won’t mean that they’re better, only that they’re special - to me. 

Interesting then, that this conversation began about a book called How to Buy a Love of Reading in which the main character, Carley, loathes both books and words.  Her love cannot be bought (though her parents use their vast resources in a feeble and futile attempt) and she steadfastly refuses to love everything equally.  Which is not to say that her taste  – in books or in men – is impeccable.  She has given her heart to Hunter Cay, a beautiful disaster of a boy, who, despite his somewhat obsessive love of books, has never managed to live outside them.

This book is riddled with authors.  There are former college classmates Justin, a reclusive,  famous author (and billionaire) and poverty stricken Bree, a failed meta-fiction novelist, hired to create the work that  is expected to spark Carley’s love of reading.   Hunter hero worships Justin, carrying his journal everywhere and using drugs to soothe his own sense of mediocrity outside the pages.

There are also swarms of rich people.  Set in the fictional Fox Glen, Long Island, the story skewers both the wealthy elite and their faux intelligensia.  They admire Bree’s writing because they don’t understand it (when really, it’s totally crap) and they poke at her poverty like dying jellyfish on the beach – something mortally dangerous rendered temporarily incapacitated.  They embrace Justin as one of their own, when his contempt for them is barely contained.  He is more famous for having been shot by a crazed fan than for his actual writing. 

It’s hard to tell who this book is not taking shots at; there are so many witty barbs stabbing in every direction.  I have the sneaking suspicion even the reader is not exempt.  It’s all so gleefully sarcastic, I didn’t even care.

I take a bit of exception regarding a part in the end, which I don’t even want to discuss.  It was the only truly seriously bit of the whole thing, which made it feel unnecessarily heavy handed.

But that’s love right?  You take the bad with the good.

I don’t know why it took me two weeks to post something about the BBAW awards after learning of them from Ms. Stacked Blog, but I’m not known for my intelligence, after all. Regardless, what this means for you, lucky reader, is you can nominate your favorite blogs in a category list so voluminous and specific that there’s no chance of leaving out any of the bright spots on your RSS feed. Check out the gigantic honking button at the top left of this page — clicking there will bring you to a nomination form, sparkling and patiently awaiting your eager dirty fingers.

Of course, though I would love for you to nominate Yours Truly Humble Blog for anything, our content flow is admittedly spotty so I will point you to a few of those I nominated instead. (Actually, what am I talking about? Jessica posts witty, engaging stuff all the time. Nominate Jessica for awards! Go do it now!!) Any of the below blogs are highly recommended for both award nominations and general reading pleasure. And many gracious thanks in advance for any WWRN noms with which you deem to honor us.

COMICS BLOGS

• Jog the Blog: Joe’s comics criticism is almost thrilling in its scope and readability, and it’s funny, to boot. Though he mainly posts quick guides to what comics are releasing in a given week, when he gets to a lengthy analysis it’s worth pouring a beer, getting comfy, and taking it all in.
• The Kid’s Comic Book Reviews: Liam’s astute gut-reaction reviews are matched only by his freewheeling and fun plot synopses that beautifully capture the current state of comic book culture better than anyone else. Oh, also, he’s 8.
• Thought Balloonists: True literary criticism (read: more than just reviews) from two professors who are also comics lovers. The TB guys don’t post often but when they do it’s brilliant and worthwhile and reminds you of the kinds of discussions you would have with your college lit teachers on the way to class when you were both running late.

REAL BOOK BLOGS

• Stacked Blog: The aforementioned Stacked is so great I nominated it for several categories. Christina is hoping for a few specific awards she mentions in her BBAW post but I wound up throwing in a few others that just made perfect sense, like Marcelo’s searing and spot-on essay on the Harry Potter phenomenon. Anyway, Stacked makes books seem interesting and accessible and relevant to your life — hit ‘em up.
• Paper Cuts: I feel weird recommending a mainstream media blog as mainstreamy as the NY Times, but I can’t help it — I love Paper Cuts! Reading this blog is like hanging out with people I wish I knew at the greatest Sunday afternoon cafe bull session of my dreams. It’s about reading culture, not just reviews, and is worthwhile for anyone who loves reading about books as well as typography, vocabulary words, and what your favorite authors eat for breakfast.

And with that, happy nominating, and we now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

King Arthur may well be the ur-fantasy story.   The ur-hero story even.  This story has been told countless times, in many forms including, quite notably, Monty Python’s version (you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!), one of my personal favorites.  There is even much academic debate about whether a real Arthur or Merlin existed. While that is mildly interesting, and I have been known to read a treatise or two about what might have happened, I’d much rather read pages and pages (and pages and pages) of stories about what could have happened.

The Arthurian legends were certainly my first foray into “fantasy” and it’s the one story I never tire of, no matter what the medium.  I daresay I’ve read them “all” – The Mists of Avalon, the Sword in the Stone, The Once and Future King, even Tennyson’s Idylls of the King.  I have a grand copy of Le Morte d’Arthur, almost too beautiful to read (or at least that’s my current excuse for not reading it). 

I love this story (or should I say stories) so much that I took an entire class in college about King Arthur (me, a science major!), in which we read the older texts based on the oral legends (where Gawain was the hero, not some pretty French dude).  They aren’t as flowery as the Lancelot versions with their courtly love, chivalry and the round table, but it is those gritty older texts that, in my humble opinion, have spawned the best modern Arthurian works.  As my high school English teacher always told us “Arthur was a peer of Beowulf.”  Which means, though he likely carried a sword, his armor was made of leather instead of metal, and he probably didn’t joust.

Tackling the story of Arthur in one book is an impossible task, which explains the plethora of series books about him.  Most beloved (and in my mind still the best) are Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills and The Last Enchantment.  Primarily historical novels, they provide a framework that is vastly different than the romantic legends.  The characters are Britons, culturally influenced by the Roman invasion (and subsequent abandonment) of the British Isles.   Jack Whyte’s Camulod Chronicles follow in much the same way, though they are not nearly as well written. 

I place Lawhead version – Talisen & Merlin- in terms of quality, midway between Stewart (who really is untouchable) and Whyte (who created a good story, but told it poorly).  Lawhead’s Arthurian universe, like the ones created by Stewart and Whyte, is the Dark Ages in Wales.  There are  a lot of folks vying for power  on the British Isle  – Britons, Picts, Scots and even British born Romans.   Not content with the real cultural miasma, Lawhead adds in another, mythical one - the lost race of Atlantis – which in one fell swoop explains the “Fair Folk” of Avalon (where else would they settle in Britain but that magic island?).

The second book of the series (there are five),  is dedicated to Merlin.  He is a perfect mix of British and Atlantean;  he has the power of one race and the grandeur of another.  This is to be expected since his father was a peerless Welsh bard and his mother a ageless princess from Atlantis.  He’s a bard, a warrior, a wise adviser; he is everyman and  godlike at the same time.  The name Merlin evokes a collective image of a superhuman, all powerful, hoary old man in a pointed hat, but  in this version, like the other two mentioned, Merlin is solidly a man, and a young man at that.  He is wise beyond his years, given knowledge without experience.  I like this Merlin version better.  He is not omniscient or omnipotent.  He is human, though extraordinarily talented.

The one big turn off of Lawhead’s version is the prevalence of Christianity.  Surely there were Christians milling about in the Dark Ages.  I just have a hard time reconciling my very modern condescension for the Church with a story which, to me, is about the pagan religions.  Druids are much more romantic to someone who has been witness to the modern day Church scandals.  To be fair Lawhead gives his characters credibility.  Bishops hobnob with druids ,and individuals take what they can from both religions.  It’s certainly a much more tolerant society than today.  Further one could certainly argue that Jesus had his fair share of miracles and that the introduction of his followers to the story shouldn’t detract from the “fantasy.”   It could, for the right reader, even add to the atmosphere.  Unfortunately, I am not that reader.

Lawhead is cognizant that some of his ideas are different than what others have written.  He even has Merlin, who narrates book number two, muse about the “real” events being misunderstood, which made me chuckle.  Lawhead has covered his bases and certainly will not offend.  Though I don’t know if he’ll impress avid readers of Arthurian stories, or if, other than the introduction of Atlantis, he’s offering anything new.  The books are good though, a worthy journey back into the legend.

Well that’s finally finished, and what a birthday week it was. It feels slightly indulgent to take up so much blog space with something so silly, but then again, are 400th birthdays silly? They only come around once, after all!

I hope you enjoyed reading some of these reflections on the sonnets but more importantly, I hope you felt inspired to pick up an edition to peruse on your own, at your own pace, in the little nooks and crannies of your day.

In that spirit, I thought it would be fun to collect a select few images of the many thousands of editions that have been printed since 1609. Keep on the lookout for the one that grabs your eye.

“But thy eternal summer shall not fade.”

The little Love-god lying once asleep
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
Whilst many nymphs that vow’d chaste life to keep
Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand
The fairest votary took up that fire
Which many legions of true hearts had warm’d;
And so the general of hot desire
Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarm’d.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy
For men diseased; but I, my mistress’s thrall,
Came there for cure, and by that I prove,
Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

Am I the odd-one-out for liking the final two sonnets as much as I do? Yes, they’re little cute stories about Cupid and don’t involve any elaborate verbal trickery or even any complex ideas. And yes . . . well, I guess those are solid enough indictments about which I don’t have much to say.

But I can retort with this classic literary argument: come on, now!

While I don’t believe Shakespeare necessarily devised the order of the sonnets (the printer Thomas Thorpe seems to have had a lot of creative influence in how that first edition wound up) I can’t help but read this as a capstone to all the rest. Sure it’s allegorical, but there’s Will again (or, I should say, the poetic subject) in the story with the mythological beings, experiencing something close to a summation of everything he has been painstakingly describing thus far.

Cupid here is set up almost as a sleepy night watchman. He’s left his dangerous weapon untended while he takes a nap, and the forces of chastity are seizing the opportunity to cool this guy off permanent-like. I like the nymphs a lot, actually; here they seem to be trying to do a good deed in their way, taking the heat of love and passion and cooling it down so it can’t harm anyone else. But the opposite happens, Cupid’s arrow heating up the water and turning it into some kind of healthful restorative spring of eternity. Water cools not love, after all.

So much glorious contradiction. Love is a painful malady that needs curing. Yes! Love exists regardless of you, despite you, even. Yes! It’s restorative, lifting you up, curing not itself but quite possibly everything else. Of course. All of it, maddeningly, refreshingly yes. The end feels almost like relief from worry and thought. It’s a statement of fact that we can trust and rely on forever: love burns, heals, rejuvenates, and for better or for worse, no matter what that may mean to you at any given moment of your life, it’s bigger than you and it’s always there.

Always.

Shakespeare ends his deep collection of musings on immortality with a simple, arrow-straight story about always.

Thanks, Will! And happy 400th – you did it.

Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;
Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
And do not drop in for an after-loss:
Ah, do not, when my heart hath ’scaped this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquer’d woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purposed overthrow.
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite,
But in the onset come: so shall I taste
At first the very worst of fortune’s might,
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
Compared with loss of thee will not seem so.

I wonder how often most of us have felt something like this and been at a loss to explain it; much like all the other sonnets, I know. The confounding thing about these is how expertly they get at the little thoughts and feelings and worries, the tiny stabbing things that sound so silly when you say them out loud. “Don’t leave me when I’m happy,” isn’t something easily expressed to a friend. The best of the sonnets don’t explore the obvious, but the simple and invisible.

This one always makes me think of another of those alone-at-night thoughts I often have: this too shall pass. It’s that old fable or whatever it is, where the king receives a pendant from some wizard or whomever and on the back is inscribed those words of advice he should take to heart in good times and bad. Particularly in the good times, I have a hard time escaping the thought of, “Well that’s all well and good for now, but what about tomorrow?” Not that it’s anything melancholy, just amazed truth: in those days when everything has gone so well, so knocked-out-of-the-park, I know that that’s not it. The days of mistakes and missed opportunities and abject failures will follow, almost to a reassuring predictability.

With that in mind, there’s a kind of heartening folly to 90, with its assumption that if you pile all the sorrows into one afternoon you’ll be done with them, that you’ll have tasted the very worst of fortune’s might. Ha! Will, you know that’s not true — that’s why I love your ridiculous rhyming poems! No matter what you do, that leaving will sting and it won’t be any less painful by coming on the heels of all the other disasters of a day. It’s not that things won’t look up, but you will always come back to sorrow — it’s the cost of happiness, after all.

The beauty of the sentiment to me is in its delicacy. The beloved means so much that the vulnerability is almost unbearable, yet it’s only acknowledged. He doesn’t say, “Don’t leave me,” but, “Do what you will, just please be careful.” It’s not a promise, but at least a question: can we, after weathering the storm, be sure we’ve weathered the worst? Let’s at least hope.