Giving up is sort of but sometimes not really hard to do: a kind of review of Macbeth by Jo Nesbo as read by the awesome Euan Morton

I gave up on Jo Nesbo's Macbeth, a retelling of the Shakespeare tragedy set in the 70s.  I just couldn't keep going, knowing where everything was leading.  This was not like the humorous and generally completely inappropriate Christopher Moore book based on a Shakespeare tragedy (Fool based on King Lear) that made it into a comedy without actually changing anything that happened in the actual play, and I didn't have any twists and turns and different endings to look forward to as in Moore's other book kind-of-based on Shakespeare plays (Serpent of Venice). 

Basically the only thing to look forward to was increasing madness, paranoia, violence, regret, and the always amazing vocal performance of Euan Morton.  I guess I cannot just listen to anything he reads, which is unfortunate because he is a very fine audiobook reader. 

Maybe at another time, as a summer read while I basked in the sun for instance, I could have handled the level of tragedy inherent in a serious retelling of the story.  I admired some of the cleverness of setting and situation.  Some of the characters were intriguing, and I even liked some of them until they started self -and -other destructing.  I think the problem is similar to the problem I have always had when a Shakespeare play is presented in another setting to make it edgy or appealing to a different aesthetic: the illusion falls apart when the Elizabethan English and the unchangeable plot of the play start, and people's motivations just don't make sense anymore in a modern context.

Maybe if the author started off at the same place with the same basic characters and then let them do their own thing completely until we got to a totally different ending?  Or maybe even the same ending but a different way of getting there that made me hate characters I previously liked slightly less?  I didn't even make it very far past Act 1.

I don't know.  This autumn has felt very sudden and very gray, and I might just not be able to handle this added fictional sadness on top of the real life sadness and tragedy in the lives of those around me in my very real life.  It's probably not Nesbo; it's probably me.  It definitely isn't Morton.  I am already waiting (in 32nd place or so) for his most recent audiobook (sequel to one I listened to on a whim after my Moore excursion).  I can't wait to hear him bring more characters to life, so long as they are not destined to all kill each other and die horribly, crushed in the gears of a plot outside their control.

Audiobook Narrator Stalking Euan Morton on Free Library Apps

I'm kind of narrator stalking Euan Morton right now.  I first heard him in Jim Butcher's swashbuckling sci-fi The Aeronaut's Windlass, and he was fantastic.  He has this swoon-worthy baritone hero voice he uses for Benedict . . .  Then I found out he'd narrated a couple of Guy Gavriel Kay's historic fantasy books, one of which involved Troubadours (Song for Arbonne), and by I was hopelessly voice crushing.  He seems to have a tremendous amount of fun and talent, and his voices are generally distinct enough to recognize clearly. 

More recent listens were completely different.  They were comedies by Christopher Moore, and they were incredibly bawdy and full of inappropriate (and sometimes hilarious) humor. The first (Fool) was like an offstage comedy version of King Lear.  Moore made it work, really.  It's fascinating to see how he can twist things that didn't happen onstage until he has an extremely R-rated version that is not a tragedy (for the Fool, anyway) and ends up matching exactly.  I might actually finally read King Lear now that I will have this story happening in the background . . .   

For Moore next trick, he crashes the Fool character into The Serpent of Venice, a mashup of The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and a somewhat random short story that must have involved a sea serpent who (in this version) eats a number of the characters in the two Shakespeare plays that really should have been eaten in the originals but were not.  As that last sentence indicates, he did NOT adhere to the actual play this time.  Morton's best voices in this one (aside from the Fool) are the villainous Iago and the heroic but dumb Othello. The afterward about how Moore crammed it all together was fun, too.  And I apologize to the older lady at the physical therapy pool while I was listening to this one.  I suspect you think I am insane.  I hope you noticed the earpiece and didn't just think I was barking with random laughter.  A lot.  I think my favorite part was when Morton was playing Portia (a rich young lady) pretending to be an adolescent boy genius lawyer.  The Quality of Mercy speech is a totally different experience when the actor's voice keeps cracking HORRIBLY at the most serious parts.

After that, I decided to give a listen to Carry On, a YA novel by Rainbow Rowell.  It is, lets be honest, a Harry Potter x Draco Malfoy fanfiction, but do NOT let its derivative nature make you think it's not worth your time.  The final product is a completely different world and characters distinct enough to work for your Harry and Draco needs (if you had them) while still being their own strong characters.  The things this book says about loneliness, self-loathing, and feeling monstrous when we are teenagers/young adults are important and well done.  Harry Simon is a totally believable dork.  The mage is charismatic through voice alone.   Also, Draco Baz has this amazing baritone voice that goes from sneering to vulnerable with complete believability.  You want to give him a hug and hit Harry Simon on the head with a rolled up newspaper when he's an insensitive clod, even as you agonize about how sort-of evil he is (just not in the ways he hates himself for being evil).

Basically, if I ever write a book, and someone wants to make it an audiobook, I will want Euan Morton to read it.

Born Into Brothels: you have probably never seen the cycle of povery this clearly

This is a hard documentary to watch for a lot of reasons.  Sure, the subtitles are not always there, rendering much of the experience of watching difficult and the experience of comprehending impossible, but one of the hardest reasons is because it forces you to face the fact that some parents do not, in fact, want what is good for their children: they do not want their children's fortunes to improve, for their children to have better lives than they have had.  Some parents want their children to have the same lives they have had.  Some parents want their children to suffer as they have; some parents don't see a reason why their kids should have better lives than they have had to endure.  This is a very hard truth to be faced with. 

Maybe, to be fair, the truth is more that some parents think that what's good for their children is to have the same lives they've had, no matter how awful and crappy said lives are.  Maybe the truth is that the tradition, the repetition of the historical pattern is what they value, and that they think anything that seeks to change that is, in fact, bad.  Maybe, even though the caste system was abolished last century, its hold and its basic idea that people are born into their station and to desire anything else is wrong still grip the people hard.  Maybe this is one of those painful cultural differences not explained very well because it's not part of the story the creators are trying to tell. 

But after watching this documentary about a small group of kids born in brothels and how the intervention of a journalist with cameras changes (and doesn't change) their lives, I'm angry and more likely to be fired up by the former than the latter.  This is violent, brutal, tragic, powerful stuff well worth a watch if you haven't come from the kind of crushing, cyclical poverty it brings to life.  Do yourself a favor: slap yourself in the face by watching this; realize how hard life is for folks who live very different lives from yours, and then find some ways you can help make things better somehow.  (I recommend child sponsorship because it helps the whole community and usually doesn't involve sending kids away from their families.) 

Just keep a lot of tissues on hand if your compassion runs to the weepy variety (and if the subtitles work).

The ad copy talks about how inspiring and uplifting it is.  I can't say that's not true at all.  There is much to rejoice at: the way that kids can live terrible lives and still have an eye for beauty, still have curiosity, still have hope. There are even some who triumph and escape (at least temporarily).  But I was left haunted by the way many of these kids are trapped and prevented by their parents from finding freedom and better lives. 

Some folks got angry because they saw the film narrative as "westerner comes and tries to save the backwards non-westerners by taking their children away," but, frankly, I don't know how anyone could live in that environment and not get pulled under by it because of their love for their family.  Sometimes letting someone go is the only way for them to get the training they need to become a doctor or an engineer or a scientist or a photojournalist or a writer or some other career that requires a lot of concentrated work and in the end might allow a family to not have to resort to prostitution to keep itself afloat.  (I think here of folks like John Scalzi, who had to get a scholarship to a boarding school that let him get away from his crushing childhood poverty in order to help himself HAVE a future outside of it.)  Poverty exerts its own gravity,no matter what culture you live in, and sometimes extreme measures are the only way to escape it and do good in the end.

Basically, I don't recommend watching without your critical faculties engaged, because documentaries are carefully crafted pieces of creative nonfiction.  Some of the one and two star reviews on Amazon bring up some good points and make me want to go get some other perspectives, but what I managed to pull out of my viewing of this film stirred me to action, and I think that's not a bad thing.

If you've seen the film, what was your stronger reaction?

good tragedy

I love a good (fictional) tragedy.  I've even been accused of liking them too much.  But I've realized something recently about my insistence on following a tragedy through to the bitter end: the reason I love tragedy is because I love redemption.

Unless you spoil the book for yourself, if it's well-written, you don't necessarily know whether it's going to end in tragedy or whether there will be some sort of successful attempt at redemption.  Many times, there's a crappy and unsatisfying happy ending that has nothing to do with redemption.  Sometimes I don't care because I want the happy ending. 

Other times, I feel cheated.  Why did I emotionally invest in this story and its characters if their ending was fake and unearned? 

Sometimes if it's just the ending that fails at redemption, I still like the story because the ending is not everything in a story, but I usually need some time to recover from the let-down of the ending before I can again think happy thoughts about the journey to the ending.

I can't tell you how much I love a solid ending that feels real and true, where the redemption is earned by blood, sweat, and tears.  Some call these endings bittersweet, and I like that idea.  The bitterness of the tragedy doesn't just go away, but all the sweetness in life is not lost.  Of course, technically it's not a tragedy if there's any sweetness to the ending (at least not classically speaking), but I have to say I would rather read The Sparrow than Hamlet or Oedipus Rex. 

I wonder if this is enough to get me kicked out of the Unofficial Society of People Who Have Studied Literary Fiction.

That said, I do love a good tragedy, too.  The sweetness of redemption might be sweeter if it's known that the tragedy of failure was a real possibility and a definite reality for other characters in other stories.  Maybe grace is amazing not only because of redemption but because not everyone experiences it.

Any thoughts?

Red Tails movie

The preview for Red Tails was shown before The War Horse.  It's about the World War II Tuskegee Airmen.  After watching the episodes and documentaries in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles about a similar subject (the shameful treatment of the all-black units in World War I and after), I couldn't even watch the trailer without copious tears.  It's rated PG-13, so it probably won't get too gory, but I just don't think I could handle watching it.

If it's that hard to even think about the injustice, I cannot imagine what it would have been like to live with it.

To be proud to fight, get wounded, and even die for your country and for freedom and to be treated like that by your countrymen . . .  Thank you to all those who fought anyway for whatever reasons made you feel like it was worth it.  The people whose lives you saved lived as a testimony to your bravery and sacrifice.  Thank you.

Sad Songs of Hope

Once upon a time, a man's 5-year-old daughter died in an accident.  He was a singer and songwriter, so he wrote and sang songs as he continued to outlive his child and try to make sense of a world where such a thing could happen.

That's the kind of tragic story I'd cry through.  It makes for an album that requires tissues when reading its liner notes, hearing its songs, or even thinking about its liner notes or songs.

I won't lie: this is a painful story to listen to.  But it's also a painful story worth listening to.  Like the best literature, something worthy is there in the ashes.  There's grief and so much pain, but there is hope, too.  The rawness of the grief and pain make that hope feel true, not tacked on in fake, happy ending fashion. This is hope that has been through fire and been earned.

One very thorough review by divad23 said, 'What's an artist (or a listener, for that matter) to do when the harsh reality of life conflicts with the idyllic vision of it that most "sanctified" entertainment has provided for them?'

In a comment, Reg Schofield said, "One of my favorite pastors has said its his job to prepare his flock for death and suffering so that when it happens they will not fall apart . . . "

I suspect the story contained in this album can help do the same thing.

Sometimes you'll hear a song about grief, but it has to go through the whole process in 4 minutes and somehow end happily, or it will never get on the air.  Taking an entire album, hitting many different angles and stages, bringing the story to life chapter by chapter instead of just as a summary, doesn't let us escape the rawness of the pain, grief, and questions.  It forces us to face the fact that terrible things happen to everyone and that if our hope is in something true, it will survive whatever our stories take us through.

I picked this up during the last days of Borders.  It seems somehow appropriate.  I hope some beauty will rise from the ashes of that fiasco, especially in the lives of the decent employees who invested years of their lives into their stores and communities and now how to try to pick themselves up in the wake of their sudden loss of livelihood.  My prayers are with them.

True Grit: truly gritty

Lots of reviews I read about this movie talked about how family friendly it was and how faithfully it followed the book.  Now, I read the book in junior high.  (I'm pretty sure it was somehow related to that Louis L'Amour binge [Sacketts forever!].)  True Grit was a great book, but it was not family friendly.  Especially the ending, which I think the movie softened a bit.

The movie was like Shakespeare meets the old west.  It was beautiful; from the scenery to the music to the language, which was word-for-word at times, this movie was gorgeously composed.  (And, like seeing Shakespeare's works performed live, they can take a bit of getting used to.)

It was also ugly, often hideously so.  It was a filthy time period and a violent culture.  The reviews were right about the acid-black humor.  It yanked laughs out of me several times, and the laughs burned with shame.  Oh, my poor country, with your racism and oppression and lies and dreams . . .  Oh, my poor fallen world full of such sin and sadness and consequences.  No one else in the theater seemed to appreciate the good biblical allusion jokes in there?  (That dried bones one was priceless.)

I'll be honest: I have difficulty with realistic depictions of violence, and this movie made me quite sick to my stomach a couple of times.  It wasn't quite as bad as Dark Knight overall (which was incredibly brutal, always cutting off a microsecond before the R-rated violence actually began), but I wish they hadn't called True Grit PG-13, especially the cabin scene, which almost made me throw up.  (Seriously, how is that PG-13?!)  I know my limits, and I think they're firmly set at PG for violence henceforth.

(I'm so glad I can't visualize this stuff when I read, or I wouldn't be able to read most of the books I love.)

So, do I recommend it?  Yes.  If you have a tolerance for PG-13 violence, you should see this in a theater.  If you don't, maybe you should stick with the book (or the book on tape, if a good one exists).  It's an excellent revenge tragedy with a dark sense of humor and a lyricism brought to life by some great cinematography and performances by talented actors.

And remember, it's always best to let sleeping corpses lie.

Art, faith, and film: top 100

This is an interesting list of films folks put together to showcase what they thought were the best films in terms of art and faith.  What does that mean?  They talk about it a little at their site and have links to some longer explanations and discussions. 

I would be lying if I said I hadn't heard of half of them.  (More like 80+ percent since I was familiar with about 17.)  I've seen a grand total of 2 of them (Chariots of Fire and The Burmese Harp).  I forced a bunch of friends to watch Chariots with me.  They weren't very appreciative of the music in general, but I think they enjoyed its story and thought-provoking nature.

The Burmese Harp devastated me for weeks, and it was only #20.  I'm almost afraid to see any ranked higher.  I'm also very curious . . .

How many of them have you heard of and/or seen?  Can you make any recommendations?

(Also, the great library migration is mostly over, so I should be returning to my regular schedule of posting every Monday and Thursday.  See you then.)

When everything falls: Finding Beauty in a Broken World

It's a good think I put off reading Terry Tempest Williams' Finding Beauty in a Broken World until after I finished my thesis because she does what I was trying to do better than I could. She takes the idea of mosaic and weaves actual mosaic making and art into her story of trying to piece together something meaningful out of the fragments that are left of our lives when everything falls apart. As soon as I finish the memoir I'm reading right now, I will dive in to this, and I will have plenty of tissues.

When life shatters you, make a mosaic.  Good advice.  :)

Why the bad guys should win

I was watching a show recently where an antagonist challenged the protagonists by explaining to them why they would never win.  He said that since he was a child, he never got into superheroes or hero shows because they seemed so fake.  The good guys would always win just because they were the good guys when any logical person could see that the bad guys should have won.  The bad guys, he said, can do anything while the good guys are constrained by morality and such.  The bad guys should have won because they bad guys can do whatever they want.

I've had that cynical thought myself.  Maybe it's the time and culture we live in, but it's often difficult to look around and see evil triumphing all over the place because it has no scruples and still believe in the simple hero triumphing because of his or her virtue.

Have you ever struggled with this strain of cynicism?  What are your thoughts about it now?  When you read stories that contain conflicts set in the current world, do you need this imbalance acknowledged, or can you get into the spirit of good triumphing over evil even if it doesn't make sense?

More dead characters

So, continuing yesterday's morbid thoughts on character mortality . . . 

Some authors go out of their way to bring mortality into the story early.  It's part of the world they're building.  They want you to know that in their world bad things can suddenly happen to anybody, that sometimes people die by accident or for stupid reasons, that good things can be smashed and destroyed between eye blinks.  Brent Weeks mentioned that he learned from George R.R. Martin that killing off a main character early on shows you're serious and gets people to pay attention. 

Or, as my sister points out, it makes some people stop reading.  Her philosophy is that the world is dark and sad enough, thank you.  Why spend additional time reading depressing things?  She doesn't like to start watching epic shows unless they're over, so she can know who dies and who lives.  She wants to know who she can safely attach to. 

Don't we all.

However, in real life we have no guarantees.  We can't take anyone for granted because we could all die really at any moment.  To take it down a notch, we don't make friends only with those who we foreknow will stick with us through life.  I frequently strike out in this area.  I befriend people and enjoy their company immensely and think they enjoy mine just as much, but then they drop me and leave. 

It's true that I am more cautious about investing in people now, but I seem to have transferred that fearless befriending ability to characters in stories.  Shows where everyone dies in the end?  Bring it on (and bring the tissues).  Books where everyone pretty much dies in the first chapter?  Hit me.  Stories set in dark and horrible worlds full of unexpected mortality, cruelty, and the evils of humanity?  Yup. 

Sometimes experiencing works like this is like being spiritually pummelled.  It's like having your face ground into the broken fallenness of humanity.  Of course no one likes that!  That's not what I like about these works. 

What I like is hope.  I have become a bloodhound of hope.  I sniff out the faintest traces in the story, the smallest whiffs of grace and mercy and God, and when I find them, it's like He's whispering in my ear, "See what I can do?  I love you."

I think maybe most of us in American are too used to being comfortable and having things our way.  We like nice things.  We don't like to think about things that aren't nice.  We are self-deluding and blind, aren't we?  We like to imagine the world is a nicer place than it is, and so we try to only listen to stories that make us feel good and safe and happy.  We only want our children to know about nice, safe, happy things.  But is that what's best for them?  For us?  Is that's what's best for the world we live in?

It's not that I like pain.  I think maybe I love pain transformed.  I want to write stories like that.  I'm sad that I will lose a lot of readers who aren't willing to go through the grit and dirt and sludge to see just how amazing that hope is, shining like a diamond in a swamp. I wish more people would brave the swamp for the chance to see the beauty.

I wonder if this is part of my wishing for the last lines from the story "Aftermaths" from Bujold's Shards of Honor to be true: 

"Yes, he thought, the good face pain.  But the great--they embrace it."

How do you react to character mortality in stories?  Do you try to avoid the sad ones?  Do you try not to read anything too dark and gritty?  Too graphic?  Do you read just about anything?  What will make you stop reading a story, and why?

What do you do when a character dies?

If you reread books, what do you do when you're coming up on a character's death?  Some books I've read dozens of times, and when I know someone will be dying again soon, sometimes I start crying earlier in anticipation (The Warrior's Apprentice is especially rough if you read it again after reading Shards of Honor and Barrayar).  Every moment that character is "on-screen" seems more momentous and precious (or maybe just more valuable somehow) because I know the end is coming.

The recent spate of parallel novels has given me a new way to re-experience a character's death, and it can be pretty hard.  Ender's Shadow by Card had me reeling.  More recently, Zoe's Tale by Scalzi was really hard to get through.  A character who was peripheral in The Lost Colony became a main character because of the change in point-of-view for Zoe's Tale.  He turned out to be a really great character.  The more I got to know him, the more sad I felt, anticipating his tragic loss.   It was a bit like making friends with someone with a terminal illness.  Their time is strictly limited, and you have to be present every moment you have with them.

How do you prepare for or deal with a character's death on re-reading?  Does the foreknowledge of death make the next read-through more poignant for you, or does it just make you detach?