Sue's 5 Favourite Books of 2015

Facts: Books are my meals.
They sustain me, they keep me healthy.

I've been on a reading jag and I know you like to read, so I'll share the best of my meals with you. I sifted through a few piles from last year, the tastiest morsels. I want to feed you with them if you are still hungry from that last book you read; if you can't stand the common fair of the Big Mac Book variety; if twaddle such as Twilight and 50 Shades bore your taste buds as much as they bore mine; if you care to sample the words that would be gods if they were so inclined.

Here is a Hand-Picked-From-The-Apple-Tree-of-Eden alphabetical list of my 5 favourites from what I read last year (Behold! This year isn't over yet!). I started out with 15, then whittled it to 10, and then decided 5 would do for blog reading. I even put them in alphabetical order for you.

1. The Glass Teat, by Harlan Ellison
Essays and criticisms of television that are in turn maddening and hilarious, eye-opening and infuriating, but mostly just terribly sad. These essays are depressing in the way only non-fiction can be depressing: when it tells us the awful and inconvenient truth about ourselves. The saddest part? Nearly 50 years after it was written we television addicts, we glass teat suckers, still have not learned our lesson. It reminds me a bit of Billie Holiday's 1939 version of "Strange Fruit." She was singing it and no one was listening, and Baltimore and Chicago (and now Dallas) continue to riot and rage. So pay attention.

2. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
The easiest way to get the hungry masses to eat a meal of their own self-loathing is to write an expose about them in impossible terms. Most don't realise science fiction is about us, just removed enough from our reality to set us thinking without revolting against what we've just consumed. If LeGuin had set her equality-bent story of feminism and brotherly--yes, brotherly--love in a place we all knew and had taken for granted, she would've been tarred and feathered by Billy Joe Cleetus somewhere (who still flies his Confederate flag), never mind the flavourful poetry of her words. The world is not safe with LeGuin writing, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

3. Legion, by Brandon Sanderson
Okay, this is a short story, but if Sherlock Holmes had been a schizophrenic, wouldn't you want to read about him and his strange intellect even more?
(A friend of mine wondered how true to schizophrenic experience it was and he asked me to read it. I can say (and did say) that it comes very, very close... if only I was enough of a genius to compartmentalize my knowledge and voices in this way.)

4. Tonio Kroeger, by Thomas Mann
This is indeed the "plastic irony of the writer's craft," as Mann himself put it. It's a fictional account of how one can criticise a culture and still remain a participant in it. A story of how an artist can manipulate his creation, and is a living example of doing so at the same time. I wish my words could maintain this kind of clarity while still retaining their poetry.

5. Resurrection Man, by Sean Stewart
I first read Resurrection Man in my early college years, and it is one of my favourites (not just of Stewart's, but of many many pieces). I reread it (again) last year--out loud, to a friend--and the re-visitation reminded me why Sean Stewart is one of the few I lovingly collect for my shelves. Like Ellison (mentioned above), Stewart skips over genres like a flat stone over water. The fantasy of it is a lot like John Crowley's Little, Big, but is perhaps a few shades darker. If you like John Crowley or Charles DeLint, or just urban fantasy in general, check this guy out. The wit and the atmosphere will captivate you.

Enjoy your reading (whatever you read)!
If you have suggestions for me too, I'd love to hear them in the comments.

A Ramble About SomethingOrOther

My always divided attention has turned to books. 

Even though my last post landed in this verdant little internet hillside over a year ago, poems and short fictions have bled from my pen as well. (I've been sharpening the nib to catch the most of its dark reserve and I'm finding bits of me along the way like clumps in the salve, like flies in the ointment. I've put a handful of them into a small collection (which may be soon, but it may be late), and there will be more on that later.)

Where was my much divided attention again? Oh yes! On books. 

Much of what I read goes unattended on this blog--most of it is fluff. I do enjoy good literature and some precariously balanced poetry, but most of what I get lost in are fantastical bits of Never Could Happen. You know, the wonderful, whimsical nonsense that is an easy pleasure to devour. (Neil Gaiman, I'm looking at you.)

A few weeks ago, I ventured to the local used bookstore with a friend from Austin. I usually beeline to the science fiction and fantasy aisles. (And I have an uncanny knack for finding them, though that's gotten easier these days with its resurgence in popular culture. Neil Gaiman, I'm still looking at you.) But my pal steers me into an alcove just before I hit my target. He tugs at my sleeve, leading the way, until we are in the middle of the music shelves. 

My friend is a musician. He plays the drums. 

If you know any musicians, you know that music colours their whole world, as if its patina of rhythm softens the blow of their reality. My friend is like that. It makes up most of our conversations, and he's the only reason I know of bands like "Folk Uke" and "The Hold Steady". So he reaches for a book and hands it to me. I look at the cover, and The Soloist, by Steve Lopez looks back. "Wondered what you'd think of that," he says. His eyebrows raise. I read the back cover, which informs me it is a true story about a schizophrenic and his journey through "the redemptive power of music" (or somesuch). My interest is piqued, and I take it home and read it.

I have to congratulate Steve Lopez on sticking to the point in his narrative (because I can't), even though his point is self-aggrandizing and misguided. It's not really a book about healing through music. It's about the author "rescuing" a man who did not ask to be rescued...with some music thrown in. Mr. Lopez doesn't take much time to question his friend with schizophrenia about what he really wants, or what would make him happy. He just plows over whatever is actually making his friend happy and substitutes those things with what Mr. Lopez ASSUMES everyone must surely want: a house, friends, money. You know, The American Dream. What he does ask himself about his friend's situation revolves around how Mr. Lopez can make himself feel better about this planet Earth we live on, where mental illness and poverty are rampant. The book is a long-winded and irritating pat on the back from the author, to the author.

See, the book claims to be about Mr. Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, a musical prodigy whose life at Julliard was interrupted by the onset of a severe mental illness. But no. The book is all about Mr. Steve Lopez, The Man Who Saved  Someone At Great Cost To Himself.

And don't worry about that last part getting by you. He reminds the reader at least once a chapter that his investment in Nathaniel Ayers has put oh so many strains on his home and business life. Here's the problem: he is the one who approaches Nathaniel Ayers; he is the one with an unhealthy need to "fix" Mr. Ayers's situation; he is the one who lets himself get upset when things don't go his way.  Sure, the mentally ill are stigmatized and thrown out of society, with the added burden of carrying around a separate reality no one can relate to, but does it really help--in light of accepting that this reality is very different--to pigeonhole others into what we believe is best for them without asking, or pausing to consider that not everyone needs that "Normal" label?

I have schizophrenia, and I can tell you for damn certain that the things that make me happiest are not considered "Normal", or even "Sane". Happiness is specific to each person, and who are we to judge?

Nathaniel Anthony Ayers loved living outside, with no walls to contain him. He enjoyed possessing nothing anyone would consider taking from him. He just wanted to play music, out in the open air, but not for you or me or us or Mr. Lopez. He wanted that patina of rhythm that softens the blow of reality, and he wanted it only for himself.

If you choose to read this Steaming Pile of Steve Lopez, please do, but ask yourself just who he thinks he is to enforce his idea of happy onto someone else. Ask yourself who you think you are. Ask why we (Americans, mostly) feel everyone should conform to our consensus reality of what makes Happy in the first place.

And then ask yourself what makes you happy.
And then follow that.