ANARCHY AND RELIGION, THE BEAT GOES ON

I can announce now with great pleasure that I AM still capable of reading a grown-up book.  And a very fine one it is, too.  Titled Spectacular Happiness, it is set in my former stomping grounds of Cape Cod, and is most wonderfully a tale of exactly a form of anarchy I have long practiced in my heart and mind:  the destruction of the monster houses built by people with more money than soul along the beachfront, or on narrow strips of dune. The author is Peter D. Kramer, and I'll have more to say when I've finished the book.  I'm not very far into it yet, but am entirely in love with this man's writing. 

I am actually reading another book as well, but I've been working on this one for some time:  Killing the Buddha, by Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlett, the guys responsible for the website of the same name as the book.  Jacket copy says "...a many-colored, positively riveting look at the facets of true belief.  Together these curious minds tell the strange, funny, sad and true story of religion in America for the spiritual seeker in all of us:  A Heretic's Bible."  As I say, I began the book some time ago, and set it down to read some trashy fiction, I'm sure.  Now, however, I am most interested in becoming more acquainted with religion in America, the phenom that seems to be credited with winning the election for Bush.  This is a phenomenon that needs to be understood if we are to ever get this country back on any true moral footing.  I can't believe we have come to the place where people's private sexuality and decisions about their own bodies are the only manifestation of morality that the public cares about.  Religion, morality, spirituality, obsession, fanaticism, realms that seem to have interwoven in a strange and scary way. 

IF YOU ARE AMONG THE VERY YOUNG, AT HEART

Mmm hmm, another three week hiatus in book journaling.  I can tell you that the election knocked me for a big loop, and that I've been somewhat shellshocked ever since.  Although I knew, of course, there was a good chance the Junta would be reelected, there was always a fiercely burning spark of hope deep in my heart for this not to happen.  Hope, and even perhaps, belief.  It seemed so evident to me that the guy who told the worst lies really didn't deserve to win. 

Anyway, it's been hard to concentrate on reading fiction.  Though it's infinitely preferable to fact.  I've been trying to read The Red Queen, by Margaret Drabble, but think I'm going to give up.  Just somehow can't pay attention to it.  I have read two very good books for young people, and this may be my reading level for the present time.  One was Gregor the Overlander, by Suzanne Collins, the other Gifts, by Ursula K. LeGuin.  Both are fantasy novels - and yes, that's right, young people's fantasy fiction.  I'm there.  Only somewhat apologetically.  Gregor is the first of what promises to be a series, at any rate there is a second already published, though my library system doesn't yet have it.  Gregor is a boy who lives in NYC with his mom and baby sister, his father having disappeared without a trace two years previously.  One day, while taking care of Boots (baby sister), Gregory falls through a ventilation grate in the laundromat into what turns out to be a huge underground world.  This world is "peopled" by animals, insects and humans, all of whom interact, fight, speak the same language, love, die, win, lose.  The humans have an ancient prophecy inscribed in a stone, and all signs seem to point to Gregor being an inherent part of that prophecy.  More than this I cannot say, it's an adventure, and it's one I couldn't put down until I finished it.  Kids in the 9 to 12 age range will enjoy this book - it has a boy hero, but he's a New Man in many ways, a gentle soul who does laundry for his mom and loves his little sister.

I read anything and everything that LeGuin writes: adult or young people's fiction, essays, poetry.  She maybe my very absolute favorite writer.  Her heart and soul are much older and wiser than her chronological age, I'm sure she's been here before.  Or been somewhere before, maybe some place better than this planet.  This little book is about a land where strange "gifts" run in bloodlines, passed down through the generations through either the mother or the father.  The main characters are..."a blind boy and a grim girl, sixteen years old, stuck in the superstition and squalor of the desolate hill farms that we so grandly called our domains..."  These two, Orrec and Gry, have inherited (or perhaps not) gifts that terrify and/or distress them - and the tale lies in their growing, through deep pain and sad experience, to become who they were meant to be all along.  It is a growing-up fable, yes, but most of all it is a story.  Stories and story-telling play a large part in this book. In a society where only Orrec's mother could read and taught her son the ability to do so, where books are unknown, but stories cherished, Orrec's real gift in the end comes from his mother - a "Lowlander" who was no part of the Upland world of fearsome "gifts" that brought grief more often than not.  This is a lovely story for 12 to 15 year olds, and certainly for adults.  I may put it on my gift list for younger family members this winter.