Thanks for being understanding, blogosphere. Happy Friday, everyone.

If you’ve read any Greek mythology, you know how it stays with you. The stories are everywhere in pop culture, the trappings apparent in everything–words, common metaphors, even fashion. I devoured Greek mythology–along with Roman, Norse, Egyptian, Chinese, and Japanese mythologies–as a child, then later, as a teen. Sometime in my early twenties, it fell by the wayside; I started reading less mythology and more analysis thereof. But the stories themselves remained with me, because mythology has a habit of doing that. It sneaks up on you at the most unexpected moment and whispers things like “Yes, that is a totally Oedipal subplot in the novel you’re reading, but I’ll bet no one actually ends up blind,” or “Hey girl, see how you’re jealous of your two best friends because they’re talking to that guy? That’s so Ill(iad) of you!”

And sometimes, when you’re stuck in a no sleep rut, lying in the dark save for your kid’s Twilight Turtle, with a too-amped-up to sleep kid, Mythology will come to the rescue. Sure, you could pick up an illustrated D’Aulaire’s and read it before bed.  But there’s something about telling myths, about sharing oral stories, that’s well-suited to the dark. And once you get past explaining the concept of gods and goddesses, the stories themselves are easy to tell–and rather enthralling, even for the least attentive of kids.

Mythology and Your Toddler: How to Get Started

Not all myths are kid appropriate. Aside from the obvious themes–chasing down unwilling women/nymphs, for example–some stories, like Echo & Narcissus, are too slow moving for small attention spans. But stories about things kids are used to, like the moon, the stars, and the sun, are always a hit. So are action stories, like the labors of Heracles and Thesus & the Minotaur (just gloss over the whole punishment, lying with a bull part). Most myths are easily shortened, or broken into sections, too, so you’re not recounting hours’ worth of lineage to a bored toddler in the dark.

Much like fairy tales, many stories contain something frightening–the Nemean Lion or Lernaean Hydra in the labors of Heracles, for instance. And that’s okay–with a little reassurance, these monsters or frightening aspects are a safe way to explore the dark, with Mummy or Daddy or both, nearby.

Explaining the concept of gods and goddesses, on the other hand, can be difficult. Given that most kids are comfortable with magic, though, it’s actually fairly easy to give them a reasonable explanation of the pantheon. Here’s my go to:

A long, long time ago, the Greek people believed in gods and goddesses. Gods and goddesses were like magic men and women, or magic boys and girls, who could make the rain and thunder and lightning come, or make magic hammers. Some of them helped animals, and others helped people. And because they were so strong and powerful, the Greeks would ask them for help–help growing their food, or fighting off something bad, or help getting better when they were sick.  

That’s the short version. Depending on the story, we explore which god or goddess is involved a little more; in the labors of Heracles, Athena, Artemis, and Apollo show up in a couple of the feats, so Mir knows a bit more about them. And he knows that Hera was mean, and made Heracles crazy so that he did something very bad. And therein lies the trick–using easier words, and simplifying the stories. As a writer, I often want to explore backstory and think about why, when, and how. But Mir, and other small children, don’t always need that. Their attention spans are short, and they can only handle one, possibly two, big ideas in a story at a time. Which means there’s no reason to discuss Hera’s jealousy, or Zeus and Alcmenae, or anything other than the straight out labors when I’m telling him about Heracles.

How To Choose A Myth

• Start small. Tell a story that can easily be broken into parts, or one that takes less than ten minutes. (See the list of myths that work well below for ideas.)
• Skip unnecessary family histories. Heracles is the son of Zeus. Zeus’ wife Hera doesn’t like him because she’s mean. That’s enough to start with.
• Start with action stories, where the hero or heroine has to go on a quest (which can be shortened if necessary), or fight something.
• Look for myths that tie into the natural world, or something your toddler is particularly interested in (in our case, the stars).

Taking Your Stories A Little Farther

One of the things I love about stories, and mythology in particular, is that they open up a discourse. It’s easy to explore an idea–just one, mind–behind a story during the telling. Last night, since I told Mir about Heracles and the Garden of Hesperides again (can you tell he loves Heracles? Come dark, it’s “Heracles, mummy! Heracles!”), we talked for a moment about how stories can change over time, or how can there can be more than one version of something. Why? Because I’ve read two versions of that story.

Similarly, when telling Mir a story about the natural world, we take a moment to talk about what stars are, and how they’re always there, even when we can’t see them (this is incredibly reassuring to the kidlet). Or how sometimes, people try to make history fit the story they know, even when it doesn’t always work.  If you were talking about Theseus and the Minotaur, you could spend a moment or two on how Ariadne thinks about the problem of the maze; in Daedalus and Icarus, you could talk about the sun and the wax, or how Daedalus’ design is supposed to work.

Myths That Work Well

•  All the labors of Heracles
• Theseus and the Minotaur
• Perseus and Andromeda
• The Pleaides
• Orion and the scorpion
• Parts of the Odyssey
• Parts of Jason and the Argonauts
• Kronos and Titans; how Zeus came to rule over the gods
• The story of Atalanta

Things To Remember

Jules talks books

Have you ever noticed how people living in TV Land rarely read? (Note that for the purposes of this post, I’m talking about reading books, as opposed to blogs, papers, and other short span media, and that I’m referring to fictive shows only.)

Take Cougartown¹ for example: In this week’s episode, Jules (Courtney Cox) openly stated that she’s not really a reader.

And then there’s Glee², and New Girl and House, Doctor Who and How I Met Your Mother. Again, no one reads.

Does anyone on TV read? Sometimes, fathers read newspapers and mothers read magazines. Very occasionally, someone on Gossip Girl reads a book (though mostly they just talk about writing them, in very unrealistic terms). Castle shows people reading, but generally only Castle’s book. In fact, the only show I can think of that has a few readers, and shows at least one person reading every other episode or so, is Star Trek: The Next Generation³. And it depicts a balance of e-reading and print reading.

If we consider television as a reasonable depiction of society (and I’ll admit, I’m not sure we can), it’s saddening to think that so few people read.

Some People Have Never Read A Book

According to a 2008 article in the BBC Online, some people claim to have never read a book. And,

40% of people admit to lying about having read certain books, according to a study published last year by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. And half read the classics just because we think it makes us look more intelligent.

Would a run of TV episodes showing characters reading encourage more people to read? Could we treat reading as a product, and use books as product placement? Generally speaking, publishers can’t afford to drop enough cashola for a single title to appear on any given show; I don’t expect them to pay out to get folks reading, either. But statistics on high school reading are rather alarming. According to a 2009 report from the National High School Center (PDF):

• The percentage of high school seniors performing at or above the basic level in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) decreased from 80% in 1992 to 73% in 2005 (NCES, 2007).
• Over the same period, the percentage of high school seniors performing at or above the proficient level decreased from 40% to 35% (NCES, 2007).
• About 70% of high school students need some form of remediation; the most common problem is that students cannot comprehend the words they read—not that they cannot read them (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004).

Reading product placement certainly isn’t a quick fix–it won’t remedy the dearth of teachers, the overpacked classrooms, or bridge the economic divide. But a study in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility suggests there is a strong correlation “between a child’s academic achievement and the number of books his or her parents own. It’s even more important than whether the parents went to college or hold white-collar jobs.”

Can Product Placement Effect Positive Change?

There’s evidence that product placement can effect change. A study in the Archive of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, researchers found,

…that depictions of smoking in movies are more psychologically powerful than cigarette advertisements and have a greater impact on children’s attitudes and behaviours regarding smoking. The research looked at 51 studies and found that media exposure to tobacco use increases the odds of youth taking up smoking almost threefold.

On television and in film, reading is so often relegated to the nerd and geek classes. It’s the province of the kids who don’t have, or can’t get, friends. If smoking–which is widely known to cause cancer, among other deleterious effects–gets a positive spin in the youth market from product placement (as do soft drinks and other junk foods), why shouldn’t reading?

SAG Members Already Support Reading

Is this whole idea founded on my own naievete and wishful thinking? Perhaps. Would it be difficult to get the television and film industry to start putting books in actors’ hands? Probably. But some actors are already actively promoting literacy–Storyline Online, an initiative of the Screen Actors’ Guild Foundation, children can watch SAG members read some of their favorite books aloud. As of this writing, the front page selections include: The Rainbow Fish, with Ernest Borgnine; Harry The Dirty Dog, with Betty White; To Be A Drum, with James Earl Jones; and Romeo & Drooliet, with Haylie Duff.

StoryLine Online, an initiative of the Screen Actors Guild,  provides bedtime stories on demand to children around the world, 24/7

BookPALS (Performing Artists for Literacy in Schools), another SAG initiative, encourages reading by getting actors into schools. According to their website, BookPALS is,

one of the fastest growing literacy programs in the country. Our volunteer actors read aloud to children at public elementary schools, museums, hospitals, fairs, online and on the phone helping to introduce them to the wonderful world of reading and literacy.

If we pause to reflect a moment, it’s not surprising actors are interested in reading and books. After all, the film industry is inextricably linked to reading. Consider–of the top 10 films of 2010-2011, five were based on books; six if you count Iron Man 2.

• Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
• Alice in Wonderland
• The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
• Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
• The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1

In short: TV land people, please–pick up a book and get reading.

Can you think of any other shows with dedicated readers? How do you feel about reading as product placement?

¹I know, it’s not rocket science. But the characters are mostly sweet, and they almost always have happy endings.
²Although I know it’s probably overkill, I try to watch teen shows and dramas because they’re an excellent way to keep up with the zeitgeist and channel age appropriate dialogue. That said, I do find myself paying more and more attention to my knitting of late…
³Yes, I am a nerd. I know a lot about Star Trek–probably far more than any one person not associated with the show should. But much of it is in the interests of research for my current project. That, and I like the first two series. (I’m iffy on the latter ones.)

taken at Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, Mass.

I have been treading on leaves all day until I am autumn tired…

They spoke to the fugitive in my heart as if it were leaf to leaf.
They tapped at my eyelids and touched my lips with an invitation to grief.
But it was no reason I had to go because they had to go.
Now up, my knee, to keep on top of another year of snow.

~ Robert Frost, The Leaf Treader

Robert Frost was my first American poet. The first time I read this poem, many years ago, it returned me to Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Perhaps a staggered re-reading of the pair, author and poet together, is in order.

@Edencityoflit’s gorgeous paper sculpture, via Anna @ Anna-Not-Karenina

For those who didn’t catch it on GalleyCat or in The Guardian, a remarkable, new-slash-mixed-media artist has been leaving some rather stunning paper sculptures at libraries and other cultural institutions around Scotland.

The sculptures–usually addressed to the recipient’s Twitter account–are astonishing, tiny marvels of fantastic bookishness. It is particularly dorky, I know, but this one actually made me tear up a little.

There’s been a bit of discussion about who the artist is, with several folks suggesting Su Blackwell, though one commenter on the original post says it’s definitely not Blackwell’s work. Much as I’d like to know, though, I love that these gifts are anonymous tokens of bookish love. Hopefully, they’ll still be on display when I eventually get to visit the Scotland (my mum is from Glasgow, and yet I’ve never been…).

So far, gifts have been made to:

• the Scottish Poetry Library, @byleaveswelive (I love this handle)
• the National Library of Scotland, @natlibscot
• the Filmhouse (home of the Edinburgh international film festival), @filmhouse
• the Scottish Storytelling Centre, @scotstorycentre
• the Edinburgh international book festival, @edbookfest
• UNESCO Edinburgh City of Literature, @edencityoflit (my favorite)
• the Central Lending Library on George IV bridge, @Edinburgh_CC

See them all, with photos by Chrisdonia, here, then pass them on. Also, a few fun pics with the tree sculpture and Ian Rankin @ Anna-Not-Karenina’s post on the Edinburgh Book Festival.

At 11:46:

Did the back to school rush wipe out B&N’s stock? Or is it just inventory error? And since when are the Eragon series, James Patterson, and Stephen King shelved next to Catcher?

Strangely enough, a second search revealed a more reassuring result:

At 12:08:

B&N also has my other fave Salinger, Franny and Zooey, in stock, so props for carrying the lesser known of the two.

Interestingly, I had the same error when I searched for Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Has this happened to anyone else?

A few weeks ago, I ran into a friend at a coffee shop, someone I don’t see often enough. And while we were chatting, I had an epiphany.

Having children hollows you  It scoops out all the dross and guts and congealed ideas until you’re left with yourself at your most basic. Luxuries–showers, full bottles of tabasco sauce, unattached, unassigned time–give way to necessities. Necessities like emptying the diaper pail, rushing out for diapers in the middle of the night¹, or always having an applesauce pouch tucked about my person.

Somehow, over a blurred series of sleepless nights, I’ve grown from a tabasco-loving neurotic into a relatively calm mum, the kind who laughs and uses words like kiddo and is almost always covered in goop, or paint, or stickers.

Yesterday, I found a yellow crane sticker on my shoulder. I’m not sure how long it was there, but since I’m in a cast (broken hand) and couldn’t reach (despite thirty minutes of trying), it had to wait until I saw Joe six hours later. Even then, I’d've probably forgotten if the dratted thing hadn’t itched.

I do not know how this happened, where the calm, or the patience, or the normalcy has come from.

For the most part, I don’t mind the hollowness–the extra space can always be filled with chocolate. And I like being described as patient, and easy-going, like having people give me credit for my child’s awesomeness, even though I’m pretty sure his even temperament and propensity toward sharing are less Peta and more dumb luck. And I still have neurotic days, though, in some ways, having a broken hand is a blessing. After all, it’s hard to be overworked and neurotic when:

a. I can’t wash dishes;

b. I can’t open jars;

c. I can’t carry large, heavy grocery bags;

d. The kidlet is drawing butterflies on my cast.

¹Also, an upside down kimono shirt and a crapload of cotton wool work well in a pinch. Or a snowstorm. Or any night the walk to the all-night Shaw’s seems interminably long…

This post was first published in March 2010, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. As I wind up the first draft of a new project–I’m in that mad, almost love-drunk rush that comes with knowing the end is nigh–I keep drifting back to these three questions:

1. Can I wrap this up without leaving a tangled mess of loose ends?

2. Have I revealed enough for the end to work, or is it just a poorly fashioned deus ex machina?

3. Am I forcing my leads into roles they don’t want?

And these three, in turn keep bringing me back to the ultimate two: Will my book be satisfying? And is it engaging?

ETA: the original Catching Fire image was having issues, so I’ve replaced it with these German covers instead. I like this much better, anyway.

* * *

See my follow-up, “What Makes a Book Satisfying?” here.

Reading is quite the investment. Not just in terms of monetary cost, but in terms of time spent reading the story, digesting the story, and, if it’s a very good book (or if you’re a deep reader), thinking about the story afterward. Some books are clearly worth the investment (Pride & Prejudice anyone? Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle? L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time?), while others are a win-some-lose-some deal. And then there are the books we give our hearts to freely, only to have the world’s most unsatisfying ending snatch them away.

Unsatisfying Books

So what makes a book satisfying? It’s hard to pin down, partially because it’s easier to work out what’s unsatisfying.
This month, I’ve read four books, two of which (Suzanne Collins’ Catching Fire and Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey) had supremely unsatisfying endings. The latter hurt my heart/brain/squeeglesquawk so much that it kept me up the better part of last night.

Picking over the bones of these stories, and a few others I’ve found unsatisfying over the past year or two, I’ve found that the majority of unsatisfying books are those that don’t wrap up properly. At the end of the book, it’s hard to say exactly what it’s about, why we loved/hated it because we don’t really know it. For me, these books are like a song I only kinda-sorta know–the chorus gets stuck in my head, but I can’t recall the singer/band, or resolve the melody without depending on an annoying Hey Jude like fade.

Although it may seem unfair to count Catching Fire as a book I found unsatisfying because it’s part of a series, I think a series book with a frustrating wrap-up is actually worse than a stand-alone book with a frustrating end. Series are all about trust. Trust that–

• the story is going somewhere

• the story is not just a dream, and will not end “and then I woke up”

• the author will reveal key facts as we need to know them, instead of hoarding the answers for a Columbo-esque reveal at the end

• the characters won’t be forced into a happily-ever-after/crappily-ever-after

• the storyline will resolve

Even with series books, there should be a resolution, because while a series has one long arc, the books have smaller arcs that feed into one another. In the first book of The Hunger Games, the main goal is for Katniss and Peeta to survive. Whether or not they achieve their goal doesn’t matter (well, it does, but we’re talking technical stuff here), as long as the issue is decided one way or another, and we have a clear answer–and a resolution of the smaller arc. And the cliffhanger ending? In the best series books, the cliffhanger opens a new arc, but doesn’t journey along too far, for three reasons:

the reader should be able to pick up the second book without re-reading the first one
a new reader should be able to pick up the second book and make sense of the story
if the new arc continues too far, the lack of resolution becomes frustrating rather than a reason to read the next book

Reasons a book may be unsatisfying after that very last page turn:

• Storyline doesn’t resolve

• Romantic entanglements don’t resolve

• Subplot(s) are forgotten about/don’t resolve (notice the trend, yet?)

• The characters are pulled out of the paper bag rather than finding their own way out (deus ex machina)

• In fantasy/science fiction, the world is never fully realized

• There’s a forced happily-ever-after/crappily-ever-after

Happily–or Crappily–Ever After

While I’m not against happily ever afters, books where the story wraps up too neatly and everyone gets kisses and cake are unsatisfying because they’re oh-so-sweet and unrealistic. One way to tell if a story’s happily ever after is too neat? Try imagining the characters’ lives after that last page turn. Can you see them continuing on, getting involved in new stories? Or are you stuck at the riding off into the sunset point?

But where neat, happy wrap ups are somewhat unsatisfying, forced unhappy wrap ups cross into pitch-the-book-across-the-room territory. This isn’t to say all stories need happy endings–they don’t. Some stories, like Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, or, in YA, Wendy Mass’ A Mango-Shaped Space are better for their sad, tear-jerker endings. (To be fair, Mass’ book did make me cry in a couple of spots, but it does have a generally happy end.) Sometimes, though–particularly in fantasy and science fiction–an author’s need to make a point or echo their world’s bleakness results in a forced, overwrought crappily ever after. In these stories, the author piles on difficulties and throws obstacle into the characters’ paths in the last few chapters without giving them the chance to overcome. Sometimes, a technicality–one mentioned only in passing–prevents the happy ending; other times, a subplot comes to back to bite the reader, wrenching the happily-ever-after away for no real gain.

So what makes a book satisfying? I’m still working that out–but I’ll have a post about it on Tuesday.

What have you read lately? Was any of it unsatisfying? Why?

“Housework can kill you if done right.” ~ Erma Bombeck

I am drowning in other people’s stuff.

Since having Mir, I have been downsizing–giving away clothes, books, toys. But most of what I’ve cleared is my own: My books, my clothes, a few stuffed toys & trinkets. I am down to around two weeks’ worth of regular wear clothes; I’m buying mostly ebooks; and I’m curating my collections with a careful eye, weighing every possession by the seasoned mover’s metric, “Is this worth paying to move?”

And still, I am drowning–in toys, and books, and other people’s clothes. Yet these things are not my issue, but rather an (annoying) symptom. My time is scarce, and I feel as if I am fighting to write, to read, to run, doubling up on my commitments so that now I read as I run, lest I not have time to touch a book the rest of the day. I write as I shower, or tidy, or walk the kidlet in his stroller, keeping copious mental notes, scribbling memory-joggers when I’m tired in pigeon scrawl that is barely recognizable as my own.

I bring this on myself. Taking care of a toddler (mostly) on my own while attempting to work is a special breed of insanity. But much as I love husband and kidlet, they are not enough. I can’t function without writing or reading–it’s like my mind goes into a quiet, desperate kind of sensory deprivation when I do nothing, and I feel like I will explode.

I am being slowly subsumed by my husband and child, like they are eating me from the inside out and soon there will be nothing left but dust and bones. And it is my fault, because I am letting them, but I do not know how to keep them from taking everything I am while still being a good person, a sane person, a person who is there for them when they need me, but still in some semblance of charge of her own life.

Somehow–and I really, truly do not understand how–I am failing at mothering, and wifing, and bad wifing, and bad mothering, because I cannot seem to decide on which I want to be. Instead, I flit between needing to scream and wanting to plunge headfirst into a basin of water to do it so no one can hear me, and thinking I am the luckiest woman in the world because I have two people whom I love so much I feel like my heart will tear from the sheer effort of it. There is no middle ground; I seem only able to do extremes, and extremes are exhausting.

But this is the price of mothering–and writing. Being a stay-at-home mum, a homemaker, or a “domestic engineer,” a term I despise almost as much as overripe mangoes and movies with mawkish soundtracks, is an underrated living. Tack on writer in the dawning of a new age of self-publishing, and you are left with a double whammy of somewhat frowned upon and illegitimate positions, particularly in an area where there are more universities than chocolate shops. I need a road map, and I do not know where to find one.

Drowning in other people’s stuff, though, helps me appreciate the small things: The solitary shower I had this morning, surrounded by bath toys, but with no trains or buses wending their way inexorably closer to my exposed (and sensitive) feet; the quietude of a cup of tea, knowing I don’t have to share it with small fingers (Mir loves herbal tea);  turning off the air conditioner and being able to sit with just one blanket rather than two, or three, or four. It’s also given me a greater appreciation of the bathroom because, in a small, one bedroom apartment, a bathroom is a full room, a room with outlets for a computer and a seat that’s not too uncomfortable if you bring a cushion. A room that has a door, a lock, and, with earplugs, some small semblance of privacy. Add a cup of coffee and a slice of cake, and it’s better than a trip to Starbucks.

Image Credit: Housework, by Becky F, via Flickr