A broken plate, an almighty bang.

It's a good thing that I'm a sound sleeper. I wasn't roused when an earthquake in southern Illinois apparently sent tremors as far north as this region, but had I been I would have given up reading for good. I happened to be deep into Simon Winchester's Krakatoa at the time, and the possibility that perhaps I'm getting a bit too involved in my reading material immediately crossed my mind. Life imitating literature would, in this case at least, be a bit too much, even for me.

My edginess stemmed from the depiction Winchester gives the catastrophic eruption of the Indonesian island of Krakatoa in 1883. At the time that it occurred, the islands of modern day Indonesia were under the colonial rule of the Dutch, centered at Batavia (today's Jakarta), on the island of Java. At the very center of the Dutch holdings was Krakatoa, straddling the very busy shipping lanes between the west coast of Java and the eastern point of Sumatra. Unbeknownst to the Dutch masters or the Javanese population, Krakatoa was also at the very center of a tectonic plate boundary, and a very active one at that. The volcano had belched minor eruptions in the past, but on the morning of August 23, 1883, an eruption occurred that vaporized Krakatoa, triggered an immense tsunami, chilled world temperatures for years and was directly responsible for the deaths of at least 30,000 people, as well as coining a new word for a cataclysm.

As Winchester would have it, the eruption also had a lasting impact on global communications, and possibly sparked the growing global Islamic fundamentalist movement. To be certain, Krakatoa's spectacular demise did have global implications (the declining world temperatures on the negative side, the fantastic sunsets that inspired poets and artists to create some fabulous artwork). But even though Krakatoa's eruption occurred at the dawn of the communication age, and Indonesia experienced a surge in sectarian violence, the connection seems more than a little tenuous to me. The lack of much in the way of sources in this portion of the book is telling.

But, thankfully, most of the book focuses on Winchester's strength: the depiction of why and how Krakatoa so completely blew its top. A trained geologist, Winchester describes in loving detail the science behind plate tectonics, as well as the different biological and geological boundaries that led to the acceptance of the theory--too late for the 1883 explosion, but oh so beneficial in predicting upcoming events. The geological details are couched in the history of the region, culminating in a vivid depiction of Java and Batavia in the days leading up to and during Krakatoa's final days.

When I say details, I do really mean details: Winchester is fond of footnotes explaining perhaps too much about certain points, and they're almost all tangential to the main narrative and in some cases, reiterates points made earlier in the text. He's also prone to polysyllabic indulgences, a trait perhaps not so surprising for a man who wrote two histories of the Oxford English Dictionary, but do we really need to say 'ambuscade' when 'ambush' would do? And some readers may find Winchester's humorous asides to be too glib, detracting from an otherwise straightforward narrative.

For all its faults, Krakatoa not only makes some difficult concepts accessible, but entertaining. Illustrated with historical and contemporary images, the book never fails to give a vivid image of the horrendous toll that the volcano wrought on the entire planet. Written in 2003, Krakatoa was published before the massive earthquake and tsunami originating on the northern coast of Sumatra (occurring along the same plate boundary that Krakatoa rests on), but reading it in retrospect it only continues to underscore how interconnected we are when it comes to the Earth's life cycles.

Sour notes.

Bel Canto is one of those novels that just seem to keep popping up in reviews, 'best' lists and conversations about literary fiction. Since its publication in 2001, the winner of the PEN/Faulkner, Orange and National Book Critics Circle awards kept reappearing on my list of books that I needed to read, so transcendent was its beauty, its themes haunting and its story meaningful on so many levels. Plus, there was the added benefit of opera as one of its subjects--a topic near to my heart.

So I've read it, and try as I might, I cannot say that I especially liked the book. I agree that Patchett's writing is beautiful: her exploration of art and its bonding essence in a microcosm that has all the beauty and fragility of the sheen on a bubble. But the centerpiece of all this beauty, the catalyst really, never struck me as genuine. Maybe it's something of a disingenuous argument to say that this art is built on sometime that can only be called an artifice. But when the entire premise of the book is to suggest that art, the creation of human beings, can suspend and overcome the divisions so pervascent in humanity, to build the entire plot on a rather unbelievable human character undermines the whole endeavor.

The central character that I'm talking about is Roxanne Coss, world-renowned soprano. She is at the vice presidental mansion of a nameless South American nation for the lavish party of a Mr. Hosokawa, opera lover and wealthy businessman. Wooed to the country in hopes that he will help jumpstart the economy, the wealthy and powerful gather to celebrate the man who almost no one knows, or, aside from his money, particularly cares for. When a radical group storms the house and takes the guests captive, both captors and hostages alike are entranced by Coss' ethereal voice. Soon, the vice president is tending to the cleaning of the house, the rebel generals are meeting for chess in the study, and more than one hostage is getting to know their captors quite well.



There's only one possible ending to all of this, and when it comes, it's still a remarkable moment. But it would be more so if I could really connect with the characters. Patchett is a great writer, but I think Bel Canto could really have been masterpiece with more attention paid to the main character. In the end, Bel Canto had its moments (the story of Mr. Hosokawa's translator being the best), but I couldn't help but feel some disappointment in its closing passages.

Love for the ages.

A shortish post today, fitting for its subject: The Professor's Daughter, at a scant 64 pages, is slender even by graphic novel standards. I think it took me all of half an hour to breeze through it, and that included a trip to the kitchen to toast a bagel. It's a simple enough story of forbidden love, two people from alien cultures struggling to overcoming thousands of years of history and the bonds of society to somehow start a life together.

It sounds melodramatic, and I think it's fair to say it's over the top. But Joann Sfar's story has the nice twist that the particular culture gap is more like a culture canyon--our Romeo is the dashing mummy Imhotep IV, his paramor, Lillian Bowell, the daughter of Britian's leading Egyptologist. Together, they wander through a sepia London curiously comfortable with daily sightings of active mummies. Still, the world is fraught with danger for the two lovers, from a cup of tea which has nearly devestating effects on Imhotep, to the fathers of the lovers, both of whom will go to (or in Imhotep's case, resist) the grave to in order to keep the lovers apart. A little kooky, but whatever. The real reason for the story is to give artist Emmanuel Guibert an opportunity to show off his brilliant depiction of nineteenth century London and its penchant for antiquities. Working mostly in watercolors, the panels have the muted warmth of old photographs. Interior scenes, especially, glow with the flickering of gaslight or a solitary candle. The damp gloom of the Tower of London or the London docks is immediately established by a blue cast or an eerie green. Guibert mostly sticks to a standard six panel page, but when he opts for larger scenes (too rarely, in my opinion), the perspectives are creative and expansive.

I read The Professor's Daughter in First Second's fine 'collector's edition,' which includes some sketches Guibert made in researching the book. His images of the British Museum and London scenes are beautiful in their own right, considerably different from the panels. Judging by the other works by Guibert, The Professor's Daughter might be a bit of a departure. Originally published in France in 1997, the translation here by Alexis Siegel only just appeared last year. Enjoy the pictures, don't expect too much from the story, and hope that Guibert does more of this type of graphic novel in the future.

Don't be a cow.

In general, I don't read (or 'read' depending on your definition of reading) books on CD, mostly because I have an attention span that can be measured in nanoseconds, but also because audiobooks are most effective on long-distance hauls, and I tend to use those occasions to sing/shriek along to Joni Mitchell and Neko Case. But I stuck with Catherine Gilbert Murdock's young adult novel Dairy Queen, and I don't regret a moment of lost belting time. As read by actress Natalie Moore, Murdock's fresh coming of age novel sparkles with earthy humor and a genuinely believable protagonist in D. J. Schwenk.

At first glance, D. J.'s story may seem a bit of a stretch: she's a high school sophomore who practically runs her family's Wisconsin dairy farm on her own after her father is laid up with a hip injury. The only daughter in a football mad family, she also struggles in a family with serious communication issues: her younger brother hardly speaks, her father is a demanding figure short on sympathy for his overextended daughter, and her mother fiercely maintains a facade of normalcy over all the damage underneath. D. J.'s also struggling through school, and constantly has to tend to her one (and only) friend Amber. And that's only the status quo at the start of the book. The action actually begins when D. J. is recruited to help get a rival football team's quarterback into shape over the summer. Incredulous, D. J. puts Brian to work hauling hay bays and running sprints, all the while seething over his privileged background and wimpy attitude. But as she starts to work out with him, she finds out that she's slowly falling in love--with football.

Well, there's other stuff going on with Brian, but D. J. is such a well realized character that some formulaic touches are forgivable. Even though she has so much going wrong in her life (and there's more major issues than the ones I've discussed here), D. J. comes across as a thoroughly normal sort of teenager--she handles her responsibility as best as she can, she doesn't get hung up on herself and she doesn't react to the changes in her life with over-the-top actions. She's the right mix of child on the cusp of adulthood, a character that you can imagine meeting at the local high school. And after a year schlepping manure and rising at dawn to milk, D. J. has decided she doesn't want to go through life blindly obedient like a cow.

D. J. decides to try out for the high school (male) football team as a running back, which brings the expected tension of solitary girl in a male dominated sphere--not to mention playing against Brian. My complaint here is that Murdock does tend to fall into the expected scenario of the two facing off against each other on the field. But she doesn't tie up some of the other loose ends as well, for D. J.'s experiences will continue in The Off Season. D. J. is a character worth rooting for, both on and off the football field.