The Connie Willis . Net Blog

BOOKS AND MOVIES: DOUBLING YOUR PLEASURE

Okay, the world continues to go mad, with Covid-19, racism, and social injustice rampant. (Tonight, for instance, they’re tear-gassing people in D.C. again, coronavirus cases in Arizona are spiking, and two megachurch conmen are claiming they’ve invented a new air conditioning that kills 99.9 per cent of the virus. Note: They haven’t.)

I spend most of my days yelling and/or screaming at the TV and obsessing about how nuts everything is and how many things need to be fixed, and today’s no exception, but some of the time, just to keep a tenuous hold on our sanity, my family and I try to think about stuff that has nothing to do with the mayhem around us. To that end, my husband quilts, my daughter does the Getty Art Challenge, I read Agatha Christie mysteries, and together my daughter and I make up lists of favorite books and movies.

We thought you might need to take a mental break occasionally, too, so we’re sharing this, but I don’t want you to think that we’re not still VERY AWARE of how much is wrong and how much we need to do to rescue the world from its current messes.

So, in that spirit…

My daughter Cord and I had so much fun coming up with our lists of books that we reread over and over again, that we decided to put together another list, this one of movies and books that you should definitely read and/or watch.

People always talk like it’s a given that the book is better than the movie. There are certainly plenty of examples of that, from Ross Lockridge’s RAINTREE COUNTY and William Goldman’s THE PRINCESS BRIDE to Carrie Fisher’s POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE or any of the movie versions of Vladimir Nabokov’s LOLITA. But there are also some where the movie’s way better than the book, like, say, JAWS and NANNY MCPHEE. There are also some where both the book and the movie suck, like MOSQUITO COAST. (When I went to see the movie–mostly because Harrison Ford was in it–it was terrible, and I thought, “Well, that made no sense. I bet the book is better.” The book was NOT better.) And occasionally you may even get a weird outlier like MEAN GIRLS, which has a great plot despite being based on a nonfiction (albeit interesting) teen self-help book.

BUT there are also lots of books and movies which are both great. Here’s my top ten list (in no particular order of excellence):

1. BOOK: THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS by John Buchan
MOVIE: THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS (1935, with Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll)
& THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS (2008, with Rupert-Penry Jones and Lydia Leonard)

Most people today don’t know who John Buchan was, which is a pity, because he wrote lots of exciting adventure novels, like GREENMANTLE, PRESTER JOHN, and WITCHWOOD, but his most famous is THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS. It’s the story of an innocent man suddenly accused of murder and involved in a dangerous conspiracy, which is why Alfred Hitchcock was probably drawn to it. He made it into a movie in 1935 which is still edge-of-your-seat suspenseful, but also has a charming romantic comedy in it, and wonderful visuals. My favorite scene is the one at the end where a really moving death is counterpointed by a line of chipper, kicking showgirls. It’s Hitchcock at his best. I also love the 2008 version, done by the BBC, a darker and daring version set in World War I, which keeps the best of the Hitchcock movie while adding terrific touches of its own–including a completely unexpected ending.

2. BOOK: THE YEAR THE YANKEES LOST THE PENNANT by Douglass Wallop
MOVIE: DAMN YANKEES

I grew up rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers and hating the “damn Yankees,” who seemed to win every single World Series (because they did.) And nobody was more of a victim of the Yankees than the poor Washington Senators, so the book by Douglass Wallop was badly needed wish fulfillment, and it’s very good.
So is the movie that was made from it, DAMN YANKEES, partly because it has Gwen Verdon, and Ray Walston as the best Satan ever. (Warning: You may get “Those Were the Good Old Days,” with the line, “and cannibals munching a missionary luncheon” stuck in your head for weeks.) But it’s also because of “You’ve Gotta Have Heart” and “Two Lost Souls” and the ironic scene where Joe’s wife tries to help him and ruins everything. They’re both very enjoyable, and something to watch to get us through this sadly-missed baseball season.

3. BOOK: THE THIN MAN by Dashiell Hammett
MOVIE: THE THIN MAN (with William Powell and Myrna Loy)

The novel’s one of noir’s classics, along with THE MALTESE FALCON, which Hammett also wrote, and Raymond Chandler’s novels, and the movie’s a classic, too, and one of the very few films that shows
marriage as something that might actually be fun. From the very beginning, where Nora’s walking Asta, to Christmas morning, with Nick lying on the couch playing with the BB-gun he got for Christmas while Nora mixes martinis and looks gorgeous, it’s fun all the way through. And it’s full of gangsters, bookies, snitches, and society dames. As Nora says, “Oh, Nicky, you know such interesting people!” (Note: If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, you definitely should, if for no other reason than to find out who the thin man is. It’s not who you think it is.)

4. BOOK: A BEAUTIFUL MIND by Sylvia Nasar
MOVIE: A BEAUTIFUL MIND (with Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, and Jennifer Connelly)

The book covers all of genius John Nash’s troubled life, battle with mental illness, his scientific accomplishments, and his winning of the Nobel Prize, which is something the movie can’t do. That’s one thing in which books have the edge–they can convey lots more information and much more detail than movies. But the movie does something I didn’t think was possible–it takes us right inside John Nash’s mind and makes us see the world as his schizophrenia made him see it. And it has one of the most stunning reversals I’ve ever seen in a movie. I literally gasped.

5. BOOK: SENSE AND SENSIBILITY by Jane Austen
MOVIE: SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, and Hugh Grant)

It’s impossible to improve on Jane Austen, but Emma Thompson almost pulls it off in her brilliant script for the 1995 movie, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. She got rid of a bunch of extraneous characters and equally extraneous scenes and made the younger sister Margaret (a mere cipher in the novel) into a charming and fully-developed character who by the end was my favorite: “He’s kneeling down!”
Both the book and the movie are delightful, and if they don’t sate your appetite for SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, you can also read SENSE AND SENSIBILITY WITH SEA MONSTERS or watch the BBC miniseries with Hattie Morahan and Charity Wakefield. Or the modern-day adaptation set in East L.A. with two Latina sisters, FROM PRADA TO NADA.

6. BOOK: ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by L.M. Montgomery
MOVIE: ANNE OF GREEN GABLES (1985 miniseries with Megan Follows, Jonathan Crombie, and Colleen Dewhurst)

The 1934 movie version I saw wasn’t very good, but it did one good thing–it led me to L.M. Montgomery’s wonderful series about Anne of Green Gables. I didn’t think it was possible to make a movie that would be as good as the books, but then in 1985 Canadian television did it, with a wonderful mini-series that captured everything that was magic and humor of the book and had the additional joy of being filmed on Prince Edward Island, one of the most beautiful places in the world.

7. BOOK: DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP by Philip K. Dick
MOVIE: BLADE RUNNER (the Director’s Cut, with Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young)

Most of the movies I listed are here because they’re faithful to the books they were made from, but not in this case. BLADE RUNNER is completely different from DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? The book is thought-provoking and frightening, with great stuff like the artificial animals that replace the nature we’ve destroyed and the androids’ lack of a survival instinct, and BLADE RUNNER is, I think, the best science-fiction movie ever made. They’re both brilliant. (Note: Philip K. Dick is probably the greatest writer to ever write science fiction, and we here in Colorado get to claim Philip K. Dick as a Colorado writer, since he was born in Fort Morgan, only 50 miles from where I live, and buried there.)

8. BOOK: IN GOD WE TRUST, ALL OTHERS PAY CASH by Jean Shepherd
MOVIE: A CHRISTMAS STORY

I don’t need to say anything about A CHRISTMAS STORY. It’s become a Christmas classic, and rightly so. In our house we constantly quote it–“I triple dog dare you!” and “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid,” and “Flick? Flick who?” One of the best things about the movie for me was that it introduced me to Jean’s writing, which I hadn’t known about before. I love all his books and essays, especially “Ollie Hopnoodle and the Haven of Bliss,” which captures my childhood family vacations better than I thought possible.

9. BOOK: OUTWARD BOUND by Sutton Vane
MOVIE: BETWEEN TWO WORLDS (with Edmund Gwenn, Sydney Greenstreet, and John Garfield)

OUTWARD BOUND was a stage play and then a novel before it was a movie, and there are two versions, 1930’s OUTWARD BOUND and 1944’s BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. I recommend all of them, but especially BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. It’s about two lovers who find themselves aboard a ship headed for, they think, America during the war. The ship is running without lights, it doesn’t seem to have very many passengers, and there are other odd things about it. I first saw it on Academy Matinee when I was a kid and thought it was the creepiest and coolest Twilight Zone episode I’d ever seenThis pill must be stored at a room temperature which should be 15 from uk viagra to 30 degree. L-Arginine – It is an amino acid that helps boost nitric oxide in tadalafil 10mg uk the body. When your female free viagra india libido is having a plunge and your relationship have suffered an emotional and physical betrayal and modern studies suggest that this is on the rise. The affordable investment for the purchase of this tool is another purchase viagra from india factor that will attract you towards it. . It still is. Setting it during the war adds an additional dimension that makes it really special, but the book is terrific, too.

10. BOOK: THE SEARCHERS by Alan LeMay
MOVIE: THE SEARCHERS (with John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, and Natalie Wood)

Alan LeMay is my favorite Western writer of all time (with Larry McMurtry running a very close second), and his THE SEARCHERS is his best book, in my opinion, and the movie, THE SEARCHERS, is the best Western movie ever made. (If you’ve written it off as a John Wayne movie, you’ve obviously never seen a John Wayne movie. The stereotype of the prejudiced, violence-loving tough guy comes from Wayne’s later years, not from FORT APACHE, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, STAGECOACH, and THE SHOOTIST, which are all wonderful movies and far ahead of their times.) Wayne’s character in THE SEARCHERS hates Native Americans, but he is NOT the hero. The movie and the book are different, and they have different endings. I recommend them both.

Here’s my daughter’s list (again in no particular order):

1. BOOK: BLACK HAWK DOWN by Mark Bowden
MOVIE: BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001, with Josh Harnett, Eric Bana, Ewan McGregor, etc.)

I saw this movie in the theatre when I was visiting a friend, and the next day I bought the 470-page book in the airport bookstore and started devouring it on the plane. My friends back home planned to see the movie one week later, and I was determined to get the book finished before I saw the movie again, which meant I was standing in the theatre lobby reading the last few pages as the previews were showing (but I made it!) Both the movie and the book do an amazing job of telling the story of this real event, and they absolutely complement each other: the book goes into greater detail about the background whereas the movie helps you experience the sights and sounds of modern-day warfare directly. I highly recommend both!

2. BOOK: THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE by Paul Gallico
MOVIE: Irwin Allen’s THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972, with Shelley Winters, Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, etc.)

One of the earliest disaster films, my best friend Greta and I would regularly act out THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, with me as singer Nonnie, Greta as teenager Susan, and the two of us dividing up equally those characters who live and die. And did I mention we were 5-years-old when we were doing this? Not your typical favorite movie for little girls, but we loved it! When I was rewatching it on video years later, my mom mentioned it was based on a book, so naturally I had to read it. The book was much darker, but I loved it just as much. I prefer what happens to the young boy Robin in the book (because you never actually know what happened), but I prefer that in the movie you don’t see Linda get impaled!

3. BOOK: HIGH ROAD TO CHINA by John Cleary
MOVIE: HIGH ROAD TO CHINA (1983, with Tom Selleck and Bess Armstrong)

Being set in the 1920s and involving romance, adventure, and biplanes, this was my favorite movie in junior high! I even got my hair cut just like Bess Armstrong’s! A few years later I discovered the novel the film was based on…and I discovered the novel bore little resemblance to the movie (or perhaps I should say it the other way around). However, I really enjoyed the book, which I never would have read without the movie.

4. BOOK: HOMICIDE: A YEAR ON THE KILLING STREETS by David Simon
TV SERIES: HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET (particularly seasons 1 & 2 from 1993-4, with Yaphet Kotto, Andre Braugher, Richard Belzer, etc.)

Here’s another non-fiction book that was adapted for the screen, this time the small one. Journalist David Simon took a year-long leave from his police beat at the Baltimore Sun to follow around a shift of homicide detectives from the Baltimore Police Department. This book is so informative, it was required reading in my forensics law class (but I’d already read it twice before that!) NBC decided to turn the book into a cop show, with the original characters based loosely on the real-life detectives and the first 13 episodes involving many of the actual cases from the book. While the show was an extremely accurate portrayal of the tedium of detective work, the network worried that there wasn’t enough action (in one episode not a single character leaves the building during a night shift) so more drama was inserted into the show in later seasons. But both the book and the show demonstrate how exciting the drudgery of paperwork can be when it leads to catching a murderer. However, if you like closure, these may not be for you—one of the central cases in the book (and dramatized on the show) was never solved.

5. BOOK: LONESOME DOVE by Larry McMurtry
TV MINI-SERIES: LONESOME DOVE (1989, with Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall, Danny Glover, etc.)

I mentioned in our list of re-read books that I got into this novel via the mini series. The mini series has amazingly talented actors that perfectly embody their characters and will make you laugh and cry and feel like you’re actually on the trail with Gus and Call. It also has a great soundtrack, which I hear in my head when I’m re reading the book. The novel is long so it goes into more detail, and it’s so well written that you’ll want to read it more than once (or perhaps three times back to back!) I must admit that I prefer the TV ending, which uses an amazing montage of powerful moments to tie everything up (and makes me cry even as I type this!)

6. BOOK: ALICE’S ADVENTURE IN WONDERLAND & THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS by Lewis Caroll
ADAPTATIONS: Syfy’s ALICE (2009, with Andrew Lee Potts, Caterina Scorsone, & Matt Frewer)
& DREAMCHILD (1985, with Coral Browne, Sir Ian Holm, & Amelia Shankley)

I grew up obsessed with the ALICE books (and I played the caterpillar in our 4th grade musical), but I never felt any of the adaptations captured the creepiness of it all. The Syfy Channel created a mini series with a plot that is nothing like the original books…but it captures all the unease and wonder of what it would be like to suddenly find yourself in a Wonderland that is disturbing and unknown (plus it has Andrew Lee Potts as the sexiest Hatter ever!) And DREAMCHILD, which tells the background story of how ALICE IN WONDERLAND was written, is also a fave in our family, with my mom and me sobbing in the balcony of the movie theatre long after the credits were done! The scenes from ALICE that appear in DREAMCHILD–with characters performed by Jim Henson’s team with ST:TNG’s Gates McFadden choreographing the puppets!–are the only ones I’ve seen that truly capture the original books for me.

7. BOOK: A LITTLE PRINCESS by Frances Hodgson Burnett
BRITISH MINI-SERIES: A LITTLE PRINCESS (1986, with Amelia Shankley & Maureen Lipman)

I love Shirley Temple, but I always disliked her version of this book bp[-ecause it was way too cheerful. The British mini-series made in the 80s truly captures everything I loved about this book. You get to experience the true weight of what is happening to Sara Crewe as if you, too, were living this riches-to-rags story, and while it has a happy ending, it’s not the saccharin one added to the Shirley Temple version. Interestingly, we discovered this version because it stars the Alice from DREAMCHILD as Sara.

8. BOOK: LES MISERABLES by Victor Hugo
BRITISH STAGE MUSICAL: LES MISERABLES (1985, produced by Cameron McIntosh & music by Schoenberg)

I was introduced to this amazing work of literature through the musical. I remember my mother trying to give a “brief” synopsis of the 1232-page novel to me and my dad before going to see the touring company back in the 80s. I loved the show for years and had the entire British score memorized, so when the 25th Anniversary concert was aired in 2010, I realized that I was ready to read the book…and I’m so glad that I did! It was amazing to me that you don’t even meet Jean Valjean until p. 92, and many important book events are reduced to only a lyric or two in the show. But the visceral experience of watching the live stage show (or better yet, being in it!) brings this complicated, nuanced story to life, and any fan of one should definitely seek out the other. And while the 2012 movie tried hard with its “live singing” (and added in Gavroche’s elephant, which is my fave part of the book!), I don’t feel it truly captured the power that the stage show has.

9. BOOK: EMMA by Jane Austen
MOVIE: CLUELESS (1995, with Alicia Silverstone & Paul Rudd)

Believe it or not, I had never read a Jane Austen book when I saw CLUELESS. Therefore my mom had to point out that the plot of the movie was actually the plot of EMMA, and that’s when I started through all of Jane’s books. Many of the movie adaptations of Jane’s works are great–Colin Firth will always be Mr. Darcy, and I picture Mr. Kohli and his “No life without wife” in place of Mr. Collins–but I feel CLUELESS is the only EMMA adaptation that truly lets the audience experience the story in the way that Jane’s contemporaries would have, “as if’s” and all!

10. BOOK: THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
MOVIES: Peter Jackson’s trilogy THE LORD OF THE RINGS (2001-3 with Elijah Wood, Sir Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, etc.)

My mom read THE HOBBIT to me as a wee thing, and as soon as I was old enough, she pressured me to read LotR. I admit I started it, but I petered out during the Tom Bombadil section and never got past it. But that didn’t mean I didn’t know the plot—my mom had often told me stories about Merry and Pippin being eaten by Old Man Willow or Aragorn and Arwen’s star-crossed love. When the first of the Peter Jackson movies came out, my mom said, “I’m so glad you love the movie because I know you won’t be able to wait to find out what happens.” Taking this as a personal challenge against my own stubbornness, I did read the books…but only after each successive movie came out(which meant I had to wait till after the RETURN OF THE KING film to read the Shelob section of THE TWO TOWERS). But the books were amazing, just as my mom had always said. I agree with most of the changes made for the movies (such as cutting out Tom Bombadil and having Merry recognize Eowyn in her Dernhelm disguise); if you miss those parts, the original books will always be there for you to reread, poetry and all (though is it possible to read “Home is behind, the world ahead” now without hearing Billy Boyd’s lilting voice?)

—

As you can see, we had a lot of overlap in the books/movies we love, and it was fun fighting over who got ANNE OF GREEN GABLES and figuring out who got which Jane Austen.

As you can also see, we found many of these books through the movies and vice versa, and Cord and I highly recommend that method of discovering new works and authors. I discovered ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by reading the credit on the 1930s version of the movie I watched on Acadamy Matinee, and I found Mary Stewart (one of my favorite writers) the same way, by noting the “Based on the Book by Mary Stewart” in the credits of THE MOONSPINNERS.

Happy reading and watching!

Connie and Cordelia Willis

ON THE SURREAL SITUATION WE FIND OURSELVES IN

by Connie Willis

The first thing I thought of when I saw the horrific police murder of George Floyd was the Salem witch trials. Most people think the innocent victims of those monstrous trials were burned at the stake, but they weren’t–they were hanged. Mostly. Fourteen women, five men, and two dogs were executed by hanging. And one, an eighty-one-year-old farmer named Giles Corey, was pressed to death by putting a large flat stone on his chest and then piling more stones on top of it till they crushed the life out of him.

Basically the same thing happened to George FloydDried dates and nuts: viagra levitra Dried dates are very much beneficial for boosting up stamina and libido which help to enhance your erections. Pomegranates viagra soft are available September – January; otherwise, you can buy pomegranate juice year round. Must be careless, or delay in treatment time.Ulcer disease is often from the digestive system disorders, such as bloating, diarrhea or constipation sildenafil india and other conditions. Adverse health effectsIn September 2010 Canada was crowned first country to declare bisphenol A, better known as BPA, a from uk viagra toxic substance. . The policeman kneeling on his neck cut off his airway, and the other two holding him down pressed him flat against the ground so that his rib cage couldn’t inflate, and he suffocated to death.

The atrocities in Salem were precipitated by a belief that Evil was loose in their community.

It was, but it didn’t reside in the helpless slaves and old women and religious dissenters (and people who dared to speak out against what was happening) who were “tried” for witchcraft and executed.

The terrible irony of Salem is that the evil they were trying so hard to stamp out resided in the pious Christian town folk who accused them and the self-righteous judges who presided over their mock trials– “spectral evidence” was allowed, and they were pronounced guilty of crimes they had supposedly committed in the town even though they were locked up in jail at the time–and sentenced them to death.

The crimes brought to light by the death of George Floyd haven’t just been the murders of other African-Americans killed by the police, but other crimes the police have committed and are committing: the brutalizing of people exercising their First Amendment rights, the calling out of troops against the citizens they’re supposed to protect, and administration officials directing them to do so, calling for violence against their own people. Crimes by so-called law-abiding citizens and the officials they’ve put in office to “serve and protect” the public.

Law enforcement agencies sent out a tweet earlier this week asking for protesters to send them videos of people committing crimes at the protests.

People did.

The videos were all of the police as they engaged in savage attacks on protesters.

As one person tweeted, only half in jest, “The call’s coming from inside the house.”

It is, indeed, and for the last two weeks we’ve all watched in horror and disbelief as we witnessed things we never thought we’d ever see happen:

–a man being murdered ON TAPE by a police officer with his hand in his pocket
–police cars driving straight into a crowd of protesters, just like at Charlottesville, only this time it was the police doing it
–officers pushing a 75-year-old man down to the ground and leaving him there, bleeding from his ear, and then lying about what happened, claiming he had “tripped” (what really happened is right there on video)
–police dragging a couple from their car and tasing them
–an Indianapolis cop groping a female protester and beating her with a baton, and then, when she tried to get away from him, shouting to his fellow officers to “Hit her! Hit her!” and holding her as they shot her with pepper balls at close range
–National Guard troops unleashing tear gas and explosives on clergy and peaceful protesters to send them fleeing so the President could have his photo taken in front of a church
–troops knocking down journalists, arresting them, and shooting them with rubber bullets while they were trying to report on the protests
–barricades and fences going up around the White House (which actually belongs to us)
–military trucks and armored Humvees rolling down the streets of the nation’s capital
–helicopters buzzing protesters just like they did terrorists in Fallujah
–troops in riot gear standing three-deep in front of the Lincoln Memorial and looking exactly like stormtroopers
–the President of the United States threatening protesters with “ominous weapons” and “the most vicious dogs” (which immediately evoked memories of Civil Rights marchers in the Sixties being attacked by dogs and having fire hoses turned on them)

And in the middle of all this, Senator Rand Paul blocking the passage of an anti-lynching bill in the Senate.

Senator Paul said he was against the bill because the language was “too broad.”

Well, it needs to broad.

Broad enough to include:
–murdering someone by kneeling on their neck for eight minutes and forty seconds
–chasing down a jogger and shooting him ON FILM
–chaining a homeless black man to the back of a truck and dragging him behind it till he dies
–asking a motorist for his ID and then shooting him when he reaches for his wallet
–shooting a teenager walking home from the store where he’d bought Skittles and a Coke
–gunning down a deli worker for selling cigarettes on the street
–shooting a woman EIGHT TIMES as she lay in bed while searching for suspects who were already in jail
–shackling a man in the back of a police van and then driving around till his spine severed
–and shooting a black shopkeeper THREE DAYS AGO (the officers who did it–oops, accidentally had their body cameras turned off.)

I am, like all those protesters jamming the streets and all those athletes and movie stars and generals speaking out, beyond outrage at the rank injustice of what’s happening and the callous response of elected officials. And beyond fury at President Trump, who constantly fans the flames of the violence and cruelty we’re seeing, quoting a police chief who threatened Civil Rights marchers with shotguns and told them, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” warning governors that if they don’t “crack down” on the protesters, he’ll send in “thousands of heavily armed soldiers” and “solve their problem for them,” threatening to unleash “the unlimited power of the military” on us.

Oh, my God, they’re right.
The call’s coming from inside the house.

Just like it was in Salem.

Salem is now remembered as a terrifying and shameful example of what happens when societies abuse their power and give way to their fear and hatred.

And if we don’t all stand up and speak out now, we risk becoming just like Salem, a symbol of cruelty and madness and rampant injustice.

And evil.

#BlackLivesMatter

THE BOOKS WE RETURN TO AGAIN AND AGAIN

“If you cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again,
there is no use in reading it at all.”
Oscar Wilde

My daughter found a challenge on Facebook in which you were supposed to list the books which had most influenced you. What that meant was left up to the individual, and obviously there are a lot of ways to look at “influence.” Does it mean the books that were the most life-changing when you read them or the books that, looking back, influenced your behavior, or what? My daughter decided to interpret it as the books she’d read over and over, the ones she kept returning to again and again.

I loved her list and decided to come up with one of my own.
I’ve included both in this post.

Here’s my top ten list of books I keep returning to in times of trouble and stress–or just because I love re-reading them:

1. LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa May Alcott
I won an abridged version (with lots of illustrations) when I was in sixth grade and practically wore it out. In seventh grade I inherited a copy of the full novel (a beautiful book with pale green- and-pink flowers on the cover and silver lettering) and read the whole thing. I know whole scenes by heart and, in spite of really liking the movies (especially the Winona Ryder version), I still love reading the novel.

2. HAVE SPACE SUIT, WILL TRAVEL by Robert A. Heinlein
I know whole passages of this one, too. It was my first introduction to science fiction and my first love, and I’ve read it many, many times. I stumbled across it in the junior high school library and instantly fell in love with it. I love lots of Heinlein’s books, like THE DOOR INTO SUMMER and DOUBLE STAR and TIME FOR THE STARS, but this is my favorite.

3. ANNE OF GREEN GABLES
I loved this book so much in high school that I tried making my own copy of it, writing it all down in those black-and-white composition books (I made it through the first chapter, and that was the first time I realized how much work writing a book is.) I just reread the series for the umpteenth time just before the pandemic hit. (Note: Her other series, EMILY OF NEW MOON, is really good, too.)

4. LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
I stumbled across this one, too, while looking for something long to read on a cross-country flight–I was in college and flying out to the East Coast to break up with my boyfriend. I was in love with the hobbits and Gandalf from the very first page, and by the time I got to Newark, I was so involved in the story, I’d forgotten all about breaking up. (We’re celebrating our 53rd anniversary this summer.) The first time I read the book, I raced through it, skimming the Merry and Pippin sections in my anxiety to find out what had happened to Frodo and Sam, and then when I finished it, immediately went back and read it again–this time more slowly. Since then I’ve read it so many times its scenes are completely real to me: the inn at Bree, the falls at Rauros, the Marshes of the Dead, and most of all, the Shire, which I wish I could live in forever.

5. THREE MEN IN A BOAT by Jerome K. Jerome
My favorite comic novel, hands down. When I read HAVE SPACE SUIT, WILL TRAVEL, Kip’s Dad is quoting from the book in the first chapter, so when I’d finished it, I went straight to the library to find it. I’ve read it on planes (laughing uproariously), in a wretched B & B in London (ditto), at Hampton Court (because of the maze), and at the Royal Swannery (because of the part where Harris tells George and J that he “battled the swans and killed them all, and they paddled away to die,” one of my favorite lines in all of literature.

6. GAUDY NIGHT by Dorothy L. Sayers
This is the one crossover book for my daughter’s and my lists, and I’m happy to say I introduced the book to her when we went to Oxford for the first time. She apparently loved it as much as I did. I love all four Lord Peter Wimsey-Harriet Vane mysteries–STRONG POISON, HAVE HIS CARCASE, GAUDY NIGHT, and BUSMAN’S HONEYMOON–and I also love NINE TAILORS and MURDER MUST ADVERTISE. I’ve read all of them multiple times, but GAUDY NIGHT is my favorite because, to me, it not only represents Sayers but Oxford, and I adore Oxford.

7. ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL by James Herriot
I actually mean all four of the books in the series, but I’ve read the first of them more than the others, most memorably when my daughter was in the hospital at age eight, and I was frantically worried about her. Herriot not only took me out of myself, but made me laugh, and he still makes me laugh all these years later.

8. 4:50 FROM PADDINGTON by Agatha Christie
My husband can always tell when I’m under stress because I start rereading every Agatha Christie mystery I own, followed by every Mary Stewart novel, and finally (if I’m REALLY upset, like when I’m trying to finish a novel) all the Beany Malone books. I can’t really say I have a favorite Agatha Christie, but I picked 4:50 FROM PADDINGTON because it not only has Miss Marple and a wonderful heroine, but Christie’s playing a game with the reader as well, creating a minor mystery at the end which people have argued about for years. (Note: Other contenders were THE MOVING FINGER, THE ABC MURDERS, and THE MIRROR CRACK’D, which is singularly appropriate for this pandemic, since it’s all about asymptomatic carriers of disease.

9. THE MOONSPINNERS by Mary Stewart
Mary Stewart’s modern Gothic novels are the second stage in my stress comfort reading, and I usually rip through all of them, TOUCH NOT THE CAT, NINE COACHES WAITING, THE GABRIEL HOUNDS, WHAT ROUGH MAGIC, one after the other. I picked THE MOONSPINNERS because that was the first one I read, after seeing the Hayley Mills movie in high school. Reading the credits to see if the movie had been based on a book was–and is–one of my favorite ways of finding new things to read, and I was delighted to find that not only was THE MOONSPINNERS a book, but that there were a dozen others.

10. PICK A NEW DREAM by Lenora Mattingly Weber
But my true comfort reading has always been the Beany Malone books. I’ve read them when I was stuck on a story (they have great plotting), when I was sidelined with back surgery, and during this pandemic. Like the Mary Stewarts and the Agatha Christies, I read straight through them all, but I chose PICK A NEW DREAM because it was the one Lenora Mattingly Weber had just finished writing when she spoke at the Denver Pen Women’s meeting where I was lucky enough to meet her.

Here’s my daughter’s list:

1. INTO THE DREAM by William Sleator
This science fiction kids’ book involves prescient dreams, telekinesis, UFOs, and the most terrifying of all things: Ferris wheels! I ordered this book from the Scholastic Book Club in 5th or 6th grade, and I reread it every few years when I need some shivers down my spine!

2. LORETTA MASON POTTS by Mary Chase
This creepy book is by the author of the play HARVEY and involves a long-lost unremembered sister, a secret passage in a closet, a palace, and an enchanted bridge, and includes amazing illustrations. I loved this book and reread the library’s copy over and over as a kid, and years later a friend of mine found me a copy when I was lamenting that I didn’t own the book.

3It takes cheapest cialis in australia about 5 years before hoodia’s pale purple flowers appear and the cactus can be harvested. Most of the supplements are viagra sale mastercard helpful in prevention of type 2 diabetes. The tunica online generic cialis albuginea becomes trap door to keep the blood in corpora cavernosa to allow a sustained erection. Unhealthy eating habits Unhealthy eating buy female viagra habits cause many health problems including impotence and ED. . ALL-OF-A-KIND FAMILY UPTOWN by Sydney Taylor
I read a lot of series when I was a kid (including ANNE OF GREEN GABLES and the BETSY-TACY books), but I have reread the ALL-OF-A-KIND FAMILY books the most often. This series is about a Jewish family of 5 girls (thus “all-of-a-kind”) living in NYC in the 1910s. I loved all the details of old-time New York AND all the Jewish holidays that were celebrated. In college I found out my best friend loved the books too, so we reread them together. Later, when I taught for two years at the Tucson Hebrew Academy, I reread each appropriate holiday chapter as the holidays came up throughout the year.

4. ABOUT THE B’NAI BAGELS by E.L. Konigsburg
Best known for FROM THE MIXED UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER, E.L. Konigsburg wrote many kids’ books, though this is by far my favorite and the one I’ve reread the most. It’s a fun book about a boy studying for his Bar Mitzvah while dealing with his mom managing his Little League baseball team, but at its core it’s about the heartbreak of losing a best friend. “Great pains make great heroes, but toothaches just make lousy batting averages.”

5. DIED ON A RAINY SUNDAY by Joan Aiken
I first fell in love with Joan Aiken when I read her short story “Who Goes Down This Dark Road?” and went on to read many of her novels, including the oft-read THE SHADOW GUESTS. DIED ON A RAINY SUNDAY is a British thriller about a young mother dealing with creepy household help and lots of chilling rain. After checking it out from my school library, I left it lying around the house and came back to find my mom reading it and unwilling to put it down (note her love for Mary Stewart thrillers above.) We ended up sitting side by side on our floor heater, reading the page-turning finale together, and I’ve reread it many times since.

6. GAUDY NIGHT by Dorothy L. Sayers
True, my mom told me about Lord Peter and Harriet when we first visited the Bridge of Sighs, but it was the PBS Mystery version with Harriet Walter and Edward Petherbridge that got me to read the book. I was home for Thanksgiving and my parents were watching the middle episode of GAUDY NIGHT as it aired. Coming into the middle of a mystery is very confusing, so my mom loaned me the book to read on the overnight train back to college. Unfortunately, the winter travel caused me to catch the flu, so the first two days back at school all I could do was lay in bed and read. So while this book is primarily set in summer, I get the urge to reread it every November!

7. LONESOME DOVE by Larry McMurtry
My mom tried to get me to watch the miniseries but I simply couldn’t get into it. A few years later I stumbled upon the middle of the series and got totally addicted; starting in the middle seems to be a common theme. I got the book and ended up reading its 945 pages three times back to back…while living in London! I remember riding the tube home, sobbing as I read the final pages, and then flipping to the front and starting it again, something I’ve never done with any other book.

8. MAURICE by E.M. Forster
I love the movies of Forster’s A ROOM WITH A VIEW and HOWARD’S END, but my fave book of his is MAURICE. This story about homosexual love during Edwardian times wasn’t published until after Forster’s death, and the book demonstrates the pain of having to hide one’s true self from the world. “For during the long struggle he had forgotten what Love is, and sought not happiness…but repose.”

9. DRAMA! THE FOUR DOROTHYS by Paul Ruditis
This is the first in the series of four DRAMA! Books, all of which I recommend. Written nearly a century after MAURICE, the high school narrator in this series is gay, “But don’t worry. This isn’t one of those angst-filled books where I’m struggling to come to terms with what it all means. I’ve long since accepted it. I’m gay. I’m over it.” These books are a fun, snarky take on musical theatre, with a play as the title for every chapter and lots of musical references. These are the books I read when I’m doing a show and need a reminder that there’s always chaos backstage in every theatrical production.

10. MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET by Valentine Davies
My final most reread book was going to be Carrie Fisher’s POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE, but then it occurred to me that I don’t reread the entire book, I only reread the section, “Dysphoria,” (which I totally love and identify with.) So instead I decided to end this list with a Christmas story (since my mom is such a lover of Christmas!) This book also has the distinction of being the book I’ve reread ALOUD the most; this is because every year at Christmas my parents and I would take turns reading this novelization of the 1947 movie aloud at the dinner table. We’d start after Thanksgiving and read chapters every night in a race to finish it before Christmas Eve. Thanks to this and the fact that I read all of Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL aloud to my cousin after going to see THE MUPPETS’ CHRISTMAS CAROL movie, I always associate Christmas with reading aloud.

These are are lists.
I’m sure you all have your own lists, and it’s kind of fun to think about which books you’ve read again and again.

Connie Willis

(published on March 26 on Facebook)

Here’s what Trump has said about the coronavirus pandemic so far:

January 22–“We have it totally under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

February 2–“We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”

February 24–“Coronavirus is very much under control in USA…Stock market starting to look good to me.”
–“The situation is under control.”

February 25–“CDC and my administration doing a Great Job of handling coronavirus.”
–“I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away…in fact we’re very close to a vaccine.”
–“The risk to the American people remains very low.”

February 26–“We have contained this.”
–“The numbers of cases within a couple of days is going to be down close to zero.”
–“We’re going very substantially down, not up.”

February 27–“One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

February 28–“We’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”

February 29–“This is their (the Democrats’) new hoax.”

March 2–“A lot of things are happening a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”

March 4–“If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work–some of them go to work, but they got better.”

March 5–“I NEVER said people that are sick should go to work.”
–“A lot of people will have this, and it’s very mild.”

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March 6–“U.S. coronavirus cases are lower than just about everybody.”
–“Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there, and the tests are beautiful…the tests are all perfect…like the letter was perfect, right? This was
not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
–“I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it…Every one of them has said, “How do you know so much about this?”

March 9–“This blindsided the world.”

March 11–“We’re going to fix a problem that four weeks ago nobody ever thought would be a problem.”

March 12–“Testing will happen soon on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!”

March 13–“I take no responsibility at all (for the failure in testing). We’re doing a great job.”

March 15–“Try gettting it (masks and protective equipment and ventilators) yourselves–we are not a shipping clerk.”

March 17–“I’ve always known this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was a pandemic.”

March 23–“We’re near the end of our historic battle with COVID-19. We’re now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.”
–“We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself…we’re going to be opening up our country…”

March 24–“I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter…the churches will be packed.”

March 26–“We have to open up our country, I’m sorry.”
–“I think you’ll see a very fast turnaround.

On February 15, there were 15 cases in the United States and 0 deaths.
We have just passed Italy and China and are now Number One in the world in our number of active coronavirus cases.
As of today, there are now 83,144 cases of coronavirus in the U,.S.
There have been 1,20l deaths.
Thirteen people died in one hospital in New York City today.

New Orleans is experiencing a sharp spike in cases.
So is Atlanta.
There are new hot spots in Detroit and Chicago.
New York is rapidly running out of supplies. At one hospital, the doctors and nurses are wearing garbage bags instead of protective gowns.
And the TV screens are full of doctors and nurses who are at their wits’ end and begging for help. The word “dire” occurs constantly.

Stay well.
Stay inside.
Connie Willis

THOUGHTS ON THE CURRENT EPIDEMIC
by
Connie Willis

(originally posted March 16 on Facebook)

Back in the 1980s I wrote a novel called DOOMSDAY BOOK. It was about a time-traveler who went back to the Middle Ages and found herself caught in the middle of the Black Death. The book featured the bubonic plague, an influenza epidemic a lot like the Spanish flu epidemic, a future Oxford under quarantine, and a shortage of toilet paper.

And now. Thirty years later, here we are.

The Eiffel Tower’s closed.
So’s Broadway and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
And Disney World.
Rome and Venice and Times Square are deserted.
March Madness has been canceled
And the opening of the baseball season delayed.
Conferences and comic cons and conventions have been called off.

There’s no Purell to be found anywhere.
Or toilet paper.
Store shelves are empty.
Schools and libraries and state offices are shut.
And it’s starting to feel eerily like the end of the world.

It isn’t.
This isn’t the Black Death or the Spanish flu, thank God,
but there are definitely parallels:

1. People blaming everyone and everything they can think of for the disease. Trump’s calling it a “foreign virus” and blaming Obama. Secretary of State Pompeo is calling it “the Wuhan flu.” And Fox News is calling it “the Chinese virus.”

2. Fleeing it. I saw an article today about rich New Yorkers fleeing to the Hamptons and to Florida to escape it, and when Trump put a travel ban on Europe and the UK, thousands of people frantically tried to get home. This kind of action, of course, only spreads the disease farther and faster, as witness the nightmare photos of crowds at O’Hare, jammed together in customs and waiting to be tested for the coronavirus, trapped in beyond-close proximity and unable to escape.

The problem is that, although diseases mutate, human nature stays the same, hence the fight-or-flight response, the scapegoating, and the other fear responses, like panic buying of toilet paper and hoarding. My grandmother had a neighbor during World War II who hoarded so much sugar in her attic that the floor collapsed, showering her entire house in sugar.

People during epidemics also grasp at superstitions and crazy cures. Rubbing onions on the boils and drinking arsenic and mercury was supposed to cure the plague. (It did. Or at least they didn’t die from the plague.) In this epidemic, televangelist Jim Bakker is selling a solution of colloidal silver that’s supposed to cure COVID-19. (it doesn’t, but it does turn you permanently bluish-gray), and Alex Jones is hawking a “nano-silver” toothpaste which “kills the whole SARS-corona family at point-blank range.” (It doesn’t.)

Hopefully, there will be more positive parallels, too. Like working together. The Boy Scouts did yeoman work during the Spanish flu epidemic, delivering medicines and groceries to the sick, and countless nuns, priests, and monks sacrificed themselves to treat the sick during the Black Death. Several villages voluntarily quarantined themselves during the Black Death to keep from spreading it further, and in some cases, the whole village died.

Unfortunately, we can’t do many of the things we would normally do to help in times like these, like huddling together, holding each other close, and reaching out to aid friends and neighbors. Right now, those are the worst things we could do.

But there are some good things we can do:

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1. Reach out technologically to the people you love. Call, e-mail, FaceTime, and Skype them to make sure they’re okay and find out if they need anything.

2. Donate money to your local food bank. They’ll be swamped as people can’t go to work, and the needy will be hit first and hardest.

3. Countless community theater and musical groups have had to shut down (like the production of SISTER ACT my daughter was in.) This means they’re stuck with all the costs of putting on the production and none of the revenue, so make a donation to them or to your State Arts Council. They’re giving grants to these groups to help keep them afloat.

4. Give blood. (Contact the Red Cross for information.)

5. Donate to your local hospital or to groups that assist the sick and elderly.

6. You’re not supposed to go to restaurants, so they’re going to lose income, and local ones might go out of business, so buy gift cards from them. That’ll bring in income right now, and you’ll be able to use them later. (I put more money on my Starbucks card.)

7. Donate to politicians who you believe are doing a good job (or would do a good job.) If they’re running for office right now, they’ve been cut off from fundraisers and other money-making events. Help them out so they can help save your life the next time around. And vote.

8. Take care of yourself. Follow CDC guidelines. Wash your hands. Stay six feet away from other people. Don’t shake hands. Stay home. And if you’re sick, quarantine yourself. The point of all this is not just to keep you from catching the virus, but to keep you from SPREADING it, and by doing so to slow it down to the point that it doesn’t overwhelm the medical system, like it’s doing right now. There was a great tweet showing stripped grocery store shelves. It said, “This is what happens when everyone tries to buy groceries at once. Now imagine this is your hospital…”

And finally,

9. Remember people are amazing. They’re capable of rising to the most impossible of occasions in unexpected and wonderful ways. In Italy, where the people are living through a horror movie right now, they’re sitting on balconies and in windows, playing instruments and singing together. (If you haven’t seen the video, just google “Quarantined Italians singing.”)

Let’s follow their example!

Have courage.
Stay well.
My thoughts are with you.

Connie Willis