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Category: Books

Posts about books. I used to write about every book I read, but I realized I read too many.

Books from the Summer Bucket: Murder on the Orient Express

June 5, 2007 • • 5 Comments

Back in February, I had the opportunity to purchase a ton of books for my classroom. Well, okay, not a ton, but it did take two Old Navy shopping carts to get out of Barnes & Noble and I’m not just talking any old navy shopping carts, I’m talking the kind that could withstand a barrage of cannon.

I got a lot of books is all I’m saying.

I tried to pick ones that my kids would want to read so I got an eclectic mix of young adult, genre, poetry, and classics many of which I had never read, especially the YA and some of the genre stuff. The books were a hit and silent reading days suddenly became quite popular. Often the kids would want to talk about what they read, but I was too often clueless and so this summer I took home a large bucket full of the books that were especially popular.

My wife and I are blazing through that bucket and finding the joys of young adult fiction. My wife was even able to brag that she read five books on Saturday. Five whole books, I swear to God, five books. Since I’m also writing a book, I’m moving a bit slower on the reading, but I did just finish my first book from the Summer Bucket: Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.

I’ve never read any other of Christie’s novels (or any detective novel for that matter other than Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel), but it was fun. It’s about Hercule Poirot, apparently Chritie’s recurring detective who finds himself snowbound on the Orient Express with a murder to solve. It’s a clever story with a surprising ending. It’s an easy quick read also, which is why, I think, several of the kids found it so appealing.

I’ll probably read a few more Agatha Christie novels (including Evil Under the Sun, which is on my Lost list) simply to see if this was typical or a particularly unique work. Either way, Murder on the Orient Express had me turning the pages and looking forward to spending a little time each day on that fabled luxury train of the mid-30’s, trying and failing to stay one step ahead on Monsieur Poirot.

Unfinished Tales

May 30, 2007 • • Leave a comment

There’s something deliciously perverse about reading JRR Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. Perhaps it’s the secret glimpses into a writer’s process, or maybe it’s because I now know more about the royalty of Númenor than I do about the royalty of England (although the relevance is about the same). Either way, it’s an odd read.

There are really only three unfinished tales here: “Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin,” “Narn I Hîn Húrin,” and “Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner’s Wife.” All three stories take place thousands of years prior to Lord of the Rings, and all three are imminently enjoyable despite their unfinished state. Of course, “Narn I Hîn Húrin” aka The Children of Húrin (see my post on The Children of Húrin) was recently published as a stand alone novel after the discovery of the rest of the manuscript.

Most of the rest of the book reads more like history than fiction, and there are two kinds of history at work here. The first is the history of Númenor and Middle-earth, and the second is a history of Tolkiens’s process. Regarding the former, it’s fascinating to learn more about Middle-earth even if it is in essays about the Istari (wizards), palantíri (seeing stones), the founding of Rohan, and the geography of Númenor (the Atlantis-like island from whose ancient kings Aragorn is descended). It’s all interesting stuff for those of us who can’t get enough of Middle-earth.

For fans of Tolkien’s better known works, there are some interesting pieces here. “The Disaster of the Gladden Fields” tells how Isildur lost the One Ring (this tale was part of the prelude to Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring) as well as two sections narrated by Gandalf. In “The Quest of Erebor,” Gandalf explains his reasoning behind sending Bilbo on the journey with the Dwarves recounted in The Hobbit. “The Hunt for the Ring” has Gandalf telling of what transpired between Aragorn, Gollum, Gandalf and Saruman in the years between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring.

Equally interesting are editor and compiler Christopher Tolkien’s notes and commentary on the texts. It is here that we see the depth of JRR Tolkien’s creation. Here we learn that everything in Middle-earth has a history. Every word in the languages, the names of all the rivers and mountains. It wasn’t enough for Tolkien to just stick some syllables together to make up a word for something or slap a name on his map. All those places, all those words the characters speak, all their names had to mean something. They all have linguistic history and lore associated with them, and Tolkien spent much time working all of that out.

I don’t know if he intended for all of these notes and histories, essays, and explanations to be published, but they are fascinating nonetheless and they provide insight into the discovery of – for it does seem as if Tolkien was discovering rather than inventing – the most fully realized imaginary world ever created.

Inititially, I expected to enjoy the Lord of the Rings related sections the most, but it was the older tales that really hooked me. Perhaps beacuse they were new stories that added yet more depth to a world I have already come to know and love.

Through the Looking Glass – The Lost Season Three Finale: Theories & The Lost Books

May 24, 2007 • • 12 Comments

Note: If you haven’t yet seen the Season 3 finale of Lost (“Through the Looking Glass”) you might not want to read this – major spoilers…

Season 3 of Lost ended with last night’s “Through the Looking Glass” and as the producers promised, it changed everything. As predicted, it left viewers wondering how the show can continue for its remaining three seasons considering that the castaways appear to have gotten off the island.

I’ve been saying for about a year (ever since I started studying the Lost books) that we were dealing with some kind of alternate or parallel timestream. Books like A Wrinkle in Time, Alice in Wonderland, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” The Wizard of Oz, and The Third Policeman all point that way. Some of this season’s books – A Brief History of Time, On Writing, and Through the Looking Glass (all links go to my posts on the books) – only reinforced that notion. And that’s just the books; I’m not even going near all the other alternate time references.

After “Through the Looking Glass,” I’m convinced that Lost is a time travel show. I started to see it about half way through last night’s episode when I began to suspect that the flashback wasn’t what it appeared to be. It was neither a flashback nor a flash-forward. In fact, the scenes on the island were the flashbacks and the stuff with Jack as a bearded drug-addled nut were the “present.” Surely Jack will start reading some Philip K Dick in Season 4.

The problem for Jack is that somehow he seems to understand that he didn’t come back to the same world he left. He is in a world where Christian Shepard is still alive (“Go up and get my dad, if I’m more drunk than him you can fire me” or something like that) and Kate is driving a nice car, apparently not a fugitive. It’s the world that Naomi and her rescue ship came from looking for Desmond. The world in which Oceanic 815 was found along with all the dead bodies.

Here’s how. The island exists between timestreams or parallel dimensions/universes (“snow globe, brotha”). The only way on or off the island is to go through the looking glass station (or possibly also along a very precise set of coordinates which would explain the Dharma food drops and Michael and Walt’s escape last season).

We know this because Charlie talked to Penny Widmore in the looking glass station – the link to the original timestream – and Penny had never heard of Naomi. I actually believe Ben is telling the truth when he says that Naomi isn’t who they think she is. Ben knows she didn’t come through the looking glass station and therefore can’t be from the universe/dimension/timestream that the survivors came from before being sucked onto the island when Desmond let the counter run down in the Swan Hatch as revealed at the end of Season 2.

Somehow Future Jack knows this. This is why he so desperately wants to get back to the island. He knows that he didn’t return to the world he left and his life is a shambles – or more of a shambles than it was – as a result. The only survivors whose stories we can glimpse at this point are his and Kate’s, and Kate seems to have it better than when she left Australia in handcuffs bound for the US under the watchful eye of that federal marshal who died in Season 1. Like Marty McFly in Back to the Future, this new timestream must look pretty good to Kate. I wonder if we won’t see Ben washing her fancy new car for her next season.

So who was in that coffin? Whose death would have such a terrible impact on Jack that he would lose all hope and come to the verge of suicide? I say it was Ben.

Ben left the island because he couldn’t stay. Everything blew up in his face (or rather the faces of The Others sent to steal the pregnant women) and with Locke still alive, The Others would know that Locke can communicate with Jacob now. They would also probably be pretty annoyed about the fact that Ben’s plans wound up killing so many of The Others. Ben’s only hope would be to leave the island and take his chances in the ‘real’ world. Probably by pretending to be John Locke, who probably doesn’t need that name anymore now that he can be the Wizard of O(ther)z.

Once Jack realizes the he has not returned to the world he left, I think Jack would understand that Ben was right about leaving and he has probably come to regard Ben as his only hope in getting back to the island so that they can escape correctly – back through the looking glass – and into their own timestream.

With Ben’s death – unmourned by the other survivors – Jack is on his own. So where does Lost go from here? Jack’s still lost, but not on an island. He’s a castaway in time and in order to save himself, he needs to get back to the island. But first, he’ll need to figure out a better plan than riding around in planes getting drunk and hoping they’ll crash. Fixing time itself seems the perfect thing for the man who always needs something to fix. There are certainly three seasons worth of stories there. At least.

I suspect that much of Season 4 will take place off the island, and we’ll get to see our survivors trying to decide if they like their new lives or their old ones better. We’ll see Jack trying to find information about Dharma, Widmore and Hanso. We’ll also see who stayed on the island. I’m betting Locke, Rousseau, Carl, Danielle, Rose, and Bernard stayed.

There are still many mysteries to solve. Why hasn’t Alpert aged? What was Libby doing in the mental hospital (perhaps that’s where they put people who claim to have come from another dimension)? What is the smoke monster? What about the four-toed statue? Jacob? The temple?

This show isn’t over by a long shot, but it’s following in the footsteps of Battlestar Galactica’s third season when the whole show took a radical change of course, if only for a while. The rest of Lost will be about some of the survivors getting back to the island. And perhaps, The Others trying to prevent that from happening. Or, maybe the returnees will team up with The Others to keep the outside world off the island.

This was a brilliant episode. In fact the last two months or so of Lost have been the best television I’ve ever seen. It’s depressing to think it won’t be on again until February 2008, but I still have some books to tide me over:

  • From Season 1, there’s The Mysterious Island
  • From Season 2, I still get to meet Our Mutual Friend and Island
  • From Season 3, I’ll be wading into The Moon Pool, The Fountainhead, Evil under the Sun and, of course, rereading Through the Looking Glass.

I’ll read these between now and February, but I’ll probably hold my posts until then and do a kind of lead-up to the season premiere.

Here’s the link to the index of my Lost book posts.

For more good analysis of “Through the Looking Glass”, and predictions about Lost‘s future, please see:

The Lost Book Club: On Writing

May 23, 2007 • • 2 Comments

I saved Stephen King’s On Writing, which was referenced in the Lost episode “Every Man for Himself” for the end of the season. When school gets out, I’ll start plugging away more seriously on my next novel, and I figured that perhaps King might offer some inspiration if not a swift kick in the proverbial pants.

King begins with a series of snapshots of his childhood and young adulthood leading up to the publication of Carrie. This is the memoir section of the book wherein King relates the tales of his wonder years interspersed with commentary about how these things led him to becoming the writer he became. From there, he shares advice and wisdom gleaned from a lifetime of writing. Some of it useful, some of it entertaining.

The most vivid portion is the end. This is the project he was working on when he was hit by a van while walking along a Maine highway back in 1999. He was very nearly killed and spent months in and out of surgery and in rehab learning to walk again. The end of the book, fittingly titled “On Living,” describes how getting back into writing helped him through that event. It’s powerfully written and terrifying in the way that reality often is.

On the whole, I can’t say I learned much that I didn’t know about the craft – that section of the book is thin and frequently not much more than an arrow pointing to Strunk & White – but what I got was a wide open sense of anything being possible. That kick in the pants to get me going this summer when I will have the time (starting next week) to finish the next book. Indeed, King himself describes the book as a permission slip:

…you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.

Drink and be filled up.

King’s unabashed belief in the literal magic of writing is a sentiment that I share, and probably the one thing, that more than anything else keeps me banging out these words despite the fact that so few wind up reading them. It is still worthwhile and as much my work as the things that pay the bills.

The optimism and inspiration are the best parts of On Writing.

This magic is also where On Writing connects to Lost when King explains what writng is.

Telepathy, of course.

He explains that the writer sends his thoughts out across time and space to readers scattered around the world and existing in different times. King points out that he is writing in 1999, but that the book won’t be released until 2000 so all readers are at least a few years down the timestream from him. Here king gets at the permanence of writing and suggests the great dialogs that have gone on in print for thousands of years much like (I think) Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose who described libararies as great silent conversations.

To illustrate his point, King sets up a little thought experiment and this is where King’s telepathic powers manifest themselves on Lost island:

Look, here’s a table covered with a red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot stub which it is constantly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8.

Do we see the same thing? We’d have to get together and compare notes to make absolutely sure, but I think we do.

He then argues that most readers of that paragraph will fixate on the ‘8’ on the rabbit’s back, and it’s this thought that creates the telepathy. It’s this image that the writer has projected into the reader’s mind. I agree; it’s what jumps out and creates the sense of mystery that will keep me wanting more. Aside from the fact that it’s one of the numbers, I want to know why it’s there.

I’m sure Sawyer did too.

In “Every Man for Himself” – an episode that also references Of Mice and Men (“Tell me about the rabbits, George”) much more explicitly than it does On Writing – Ben has Sawyer strapped to a table. He appears to have just come out of surgery. Ben shows him a rabbit in a cage and proceeds to give the cage the kind of shaking that kills babies. The rabbit dies. Ben tells Sawyer that the rabbit had a pacemaker just like the one he’s had implanted in Sawyer, which will explode if Sawyer’s heart rate goes too high as it might if he were to try to escape or sleep with Kate. It’s a clever scene, but what stands out is the blue ‘8’ stenciled on the rabbit’s back. Later, Ben tells Sawyer about the rabbits, or at least rabbit-8 when he confides that there were no pacemakers; instead, it was an elaborate con designed to break Sawyer’s will.

Referencing King’s thoughts about writing and telepathy appears at first to be a clever and subtle reminder of the apparent, though unexplained, role of telepathy on the show. More interesting, though, is the way it begins to lay the groundwork for seeing Lost as a show about time travel, which I think it is. I’m not sure we’ll see characters time traveling as in Back to the Future, but I think we will see (and have already seen) their consciences and thoughts projected through the timestream, which is really what King was talking about so I’m chalking On Writing up to being yet another literary hint about alternate or parallel or shifted timestreams on Lost.

There’s something else, too, aside from the fact that this bit of On Writing is another rabbitcentric literary reference joining Of Mice and Men, Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, and Watership Down (all of which makes me wonder when Donnie Darko, a time travel film laden with rabbit symbolism will show up on Lost) and that’s The Stand.

I’ve never read The Stand, and it hasn’t shown up on Lost, but I do know that the show’s creators have said that it is an influence on the show. This is interesting because in On Writing, King devotes some time to describing the problems he had in completing that novel. He said there were too many characters, too many storylines. In the end the solution was to blow a bunch of them up.

Sound familiar? That would resolve many of the storylines and propel the other ones towards conclusion. As season 3 of Lost closes out in tonight’s “Through the Looking Glass” with the survivors hoarding dynamite and making plans to “blow the Others to hell,” I can’t but think that this sounds an awful lot like King’s recollection of how he moved The Stand to conclusion.

I suspect some storylines will end tonight and what remains will be the situation that propels Lost to its ultimate conclusion in 2010. Hell, I’m predicting mass doom.

Be sure to check out:

  • Pearls Before Swan for more thoughts about On Writing. (h/t as well since this is how I learned that rabbit-8 was referencing On Writing)
  • Mark at Scribes & Scoundrels also has a theory about the season finale: mass doom… or mass rescue?

Click here for my Lost Book Club index page.

Ain’t Nobody Doing No Influencing Here. No Ma’am.

May 15, 2007 • • 5 Comments

This is amazing. It’s from an interview with writer Shiela Kohler (who?) about the apparently dying institution of print book reviews and the emergence of lit blogs via Critical Mass (h/t to Conversational Reading for the link):

Q. Does your work get reviewed/discussed much on literary blogs? If so, how do those reviews compare with print reviews of your books?

A.Occasionally someone may mention my books in a blog. I believe the dangers of this indiscriminate reporting on books is that people who have no knowledge of literature can air their views as though they were of value and may influence readers. Critics may not always be right, of course, but at least they have read and studied literature, the great books, and have some outside knowledge to refer to when critiquing our work.

Sometimes a writer’s own words and arrogance will turn me off their work faster than any bad review of their work in print or – perish the thought – on some dirty blog rising from the fever swamps (like so much poison gas) to taint the discourse of the learned and influence the unwashed masses with his irrelevant and dangerous opinions. Sheesh.

The Children of Húrin

May 15, 2007 • • 1 Comment

Venturing deeper than The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings into JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth is to enter into one of the greatest literary achievements ever: a fully complete world with history, mythology, scholarship, languages and legend. It is utterly breathtaking to read the great tales of the first age in The Silmarillion – stories of ancient battles and great heroes that were thousands of years old when Lord of the Rings begins. Indeed it is this vast work of myth hiding underneath Lord of the Rings that creates the illusion of depth and history that makes Tolkien’s world feel so much richer than most other fantasy worlds.

The rabbit hole goes deeper for those inclined to read the verse versions of some of the tales in The Lays of Beleriand or the earliest imaginings in The Book of Lost Tales. I have those two, but haven’t yet gotten to them. I’m working on Unfinished Tales now, but it’s the most finished of those unfinished tales that has recently gotten me interested in going deeper than The Silmarillion with The Children of Húrin, until now known only as one of the unfinished “great tales.”

Apparently after many years of studying his father’s papers and unfinished and unpublished manuscripts, Christopher Tolkien has managed to put together a complete version of this great tale of the First Age without having to do any editorial invention or interventions save for the occasional transition.

The Children of Húrin takes place in the First Age of Middle-earth, nearly 6500 years before Lord of the Rings and recounts the tragedy of the great warrior Húrin, who after being defeated in battle by the Dark Lord Morgoth is forced to watch as his children- primarily his son, Túrin Turambar – live their lives and battle against the curse of Morgoth that has been placed upon them.

Tolkien’s Túrin, son of a great man, raised by Elves and filled with both wrath and pity, reminds me of a darker version of Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. Unlike Aragorn, though, Túrin’s life is cursed. He leaves the Elves after a misunderstanding leads to violence and lives among outlaws where his adventures bring him heartbreak in increasing measure until he must finally face the dragon Glaurung whose torments have fallen heavily on Túrin.

The cool thing about The Children of Húrin is its accessibility. It’s intended as much for the hard core fan who already knows the story (from its peicemeal presentations in The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The Lays of Beleriand and The Book of Lost Tales) as for the casual reader who has read Lord of the Rings but nothing else of Tolkien’s work. Despite the fact that the story has been around for decades and that many people are already familiar with the saga of Túrin Turambar, it is nice to have the work presented as a consistent whole and makes a wonderful addition to the Tolkien canon.

As interesting as the story is, I found myself equally enjoying the appendices in which Christopher Tolkien explains the process of putting the story together as well as how this completed version differs from the other unfinished versions.

The book itself is a handsome hardback with black-and-white illustrations by Alan Lee with occasionaly full-page glossy color paintings of key scenes. Reading it made me wish more books were so beautifully presented, but then Tolkien books are special.

The Lost Book Club: The Wizard of Oz, Watership Down, and Carrie Revisited

May 14, 2007 • • Leave a comment

Some of the books on Lost are more significant than others. The books that are actually shown are the most significant. If they’re shown and discussed they’re probably of greatest importance. Of lesser importance, but still relevant are those that are referenced by characters, referenced as the titles of certain episodes, and those that are referenced by certain events within the show.

When a book makes multiple appearances, it’s certainly worth thinking about a bit more. This post will take a look at three books that have reappeared in recent weeks.

Carrie

Carrie is a third season addition to the Lost book list. It was the subject of Juliet’s book group meeting in the first episode of season 3 (“A Tale of Two Cities”). Because Juliet wanted to read it and it was mentioned that Ben didn’t, it gave the first hint of dissension in the ranks of the Others, although at the time we didn’t know that Juliet was an Other or that Ben was “Henry Gale’s” real name.

We learned later that Carrie is Juliet’ s favorite book and it made several appearances in the most recent Juliet episode “One of Us.” After reading Carrie, I suggested that this implies that Juliet, like Carrie, does not belong anywhere, and – ever the outsider – she will exact her revenge on those who have tormented her, likely the Others. Likely Ben, especially if siding with the survivors might be her best shot at getting off the island, something that must surely seem more possible to her with the arrival of Naomi the Parachutist. Juliet isn’t on the Others’ side, nor is she really on the surviviors’ side.

She’s on her own and like Carrie killing the promgoers, Juliet will happily exact a terrible revenge on Ben if given the chance, though she may have to get in line behind Locke when it comes time to hand Ben his ass.

Watership Down

I think Watership Down has made more appearances and had more references than any other book on the show. It may even be the first literary work to appear, making its debut in “White Rabbit.” Sawyer found it in the crash; it had been Boone’s book, and when Boone saw Sawyer reading it in “Confidence Man” it was “proof” that Sawyer might be sitting on Shannon’s asthma medication, a turn of events that eventually got him “tortured by a real live Iraqi and a spinal surgeon.”

I wrote about Watership Down and some of the many parallels between it an Lost a few months ago, but seeing Sawyer rereading it again in “Left Behind” brought something else to the fore.

In Watership Down, the female rabbits die on the way to the new settlement leaving the rabbits of Watership Down with no way to reproduce and continue their colony. Sound like the Others? The good rabbits stage a raid on another warren, a totalitarian state, to liberate the female bunnies from the forces of the evil General Woundwart and his authoritarian regime. Not unlike what seems about to happen on Lost, except that the Others are the totalitarian society, at least as long as Ben is in charge.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

While The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has not actually been shown, it was referenced in Ben’s alias and alibi from last season: ‘Henry Gale’ who crashed his hot air balloon on the island.

We got another reference in the title of last week’s episode: “The Man Behind the Curtain.” In it Locke accuses Ben of being “the man behind the curtain” while arguing that there is no all powerful, all knowing “Jacob” from whom Ben take orders.

Last summer, I read and wrote about The Wizard of Oz:

The journey down the Yellow Brick Road ultimately becomes one of self discovery similar to what the characters on Lost experience during their adventures on the island. They too have what they thought they lacked ultimately allowing them the ability to change themselves and find redemption. The Wizard of Oz is about reaching one’s potential, a concept we see time and again on Lost, and also an apparent goal of the Hanso Foundation.

The example that springs to mind first is that of John Locke who finds within himself the strength, the ability to lead, and the conviction that he never knew he had. It’s worth remembering that Henry claimed to be coming for John because he was “one of the good ones.”

It is in this most recent episode that Locke’s trip down the Yellow Brick Road finally lands him before the Wizard. For the first time in his life, he is filled with self-confidence and conviction. Over the past few episodes we’ve seen Locke finally transform into what he has wanted to be all his life: a leader of men.

Naturally, this scares the hell out of out charlatan wizard, Ben. Despite the Norman-Bates-arguing-with-Mother feel of the Jacob scene in “The Man Behind the Curtain,” it’s clear that Ben believed there is a Jacob, and I’m thinking he’s not crazy. There is a Jacob, and my wacko theory is that Jacob is John Locke. Locke doesn’t know it yet, nor does Ben; it’s a future Locke that Ben knows as Jacob.

I’ve always been fond of the alternate reality/alternate timestream theory of the island, and I like the timestream aspect of it lately. Of course it means that Locke has to survive the gunshot wound he received from Ben who fears that Locke is about to become the new leader (dare I say savior?) of the Others, a role that I can’t help but think would have been Mr Eko’s if the actor hadn’t wanted to leave the show.

Another Wizard issue (as I mentioned last summer) is that The Wizard of Oz also suggests the lost continent-Atlantis-Lemuria theory:

The Wizard of Oz also brings us to the Lost Continent Theories in which we are meant to wonder if the survivors are actually on the remains of Lemuria, a Pacific Ocean version of Atlantis. This is implied by the four-toed statue that Sayid sees in the season two finale and by the fact that psychic Edgar Cayce (worth looking into since so many of his ideas correspond to what we see in Lost) “confirmed” the existence of Lemuria (and Atlantis).

Cayce believed that the citizens of Lemuria had psychic abilities and were both technologically and spiritually advanced. He also referred to Lemuria as Oz.

Adding in the many Alice in Wonderland references throughout the show, including in “The Man Behind the Curtain,” and that the title of the season three finale is “Through the Looking Glass,” the alternate time/reality aspect of the island is looking more and more plausible.

As to Locke’s return, it reminds me of The Shining (by Stephen King, who has two books on the Lost list so far.) Imagine Locke standing in a men’s room. Someone who has been on the island for an eternity without aging (Alpert?) informing Locke that he is Jacob, the island’s caretaker:

“You’re the caretaker, Mr Locke. You’ve always been the caretaker.”

And while we’re at it, let’s not forget that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Sound like Jack Shepard?

And what about Walt? Oh, yeah, that’s right… “Walt isn’t here right now, Mrs. Torrance.”

Okay. I’m getting carried away here.

For some good reading and more ‘serious’ and in-depth (and less book-oriented) analysis of “The Man Behind the Curtain” visit:

Click here for the index of my Lost book posts.

Cellar Door

May 10, 2007 • • 2 Comments

Last night when we were re-watching Donnie Darko, I was struck by a scene in which Donnie’s English teacher tells the class that a famous linguist once described ‘cellar door’ as the most beautiful combination of words in the English language.

What struck me is that one of the two books I’m currently reading (Stephen King’s On Writing) has a picture of a cellar door on its cover. It’s a nice picture, bright and sunny, all fresh paint and flowers, probably meant to suggest the secrets of the craft that he meditates upon in the book or perhaps the way in which writers draw upon the contents of their own personal cellars in their writing. Either way, a cellar door.

In the introduction to the book, King relates a story about a conversation with Amy Tan in which she says no one ever asks her about the language in author Q & A’s. It made me wonder if the cover isn’t a nod to that famous linguist’s notion about the most beautiful combination of words in English. I’m only a few pages in, so maybe he makes the choice of cover image clear later on, but I can’t help but wonder if this is a nod to that famous linguist.

But who is this linguist? Was it a made up bit for Donnie Darko or is it an actual claim? According to Wikipedia, the linguist is none other than JRR Tolkein. This is interesting because the other book I’m reading now is Tolkein’s Unfinished Tales.

This kind of synchronicity occurs frequently with the books I read and the movies I see. I often feel that I’m reading certain books at the right time, the moment in my life in which they’ll have the greatest impact on me. Sometimes I get a yen to read some book that’s sat on my shelf for years and it always seems good that I didn’t read it earlier or later.

Whatever it is, it never ceases to fascinate me, and I find it interesting that there should be these layers of connections between the two books I’m reading and the movie I saw last night.

I’m waiting for my ipod to play something from Miles’ Cellar Door Sessions before the day is out.

As to the most beautiful combination of English words? I don’t know what I’d choose. I never thought about it until today, but something keeps creeping into my head when I think of it: Ever since my first astronomy classes I’ve loved event horizon which evokes feelings of secrets and darkness, mystery and light, distance and time, and the terrible beauty of nature. At least for me.

They Spoke

May 4, 2007 • • 1 Comment

One of the things many of us teachers wrestle with is how to bring technology into the classroom in a way that is meaningful, useful and relevant.

Here in Texas some of the state standards require us to have students use technology to communicate with writers outside the classroom. I can’t really do that one since I teach in a correctional facility, but I think it’s important for kids to be aware of social media and how to use it well and in ways that won’t embarrass them later.

I learned today that Mr. Powell at St George’s Technical High School in Delaware required his English classes to read and comment on web sites that reviewed the novel his students are currently reading: Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, which I reviewed back in February. One of the sites he asked his students to look at was mine. From his students, I received 83 comments at last count, making my Speak post the most commented post on this blog. By a long shot.

I haven’t yet read all of them (I had to work at work, you know), but I will. The ones I’ve read so far are honest, polite and direct. Everything a good blog comment should be.

Cheers to you and your students, Mr. Powell, and thanks for helping to get young people interested in both books and social media. It looks like your assignment worked pretty well. I’m enjoying the comments, so thanks to your students also for taking the time to write interesting things. Perhaps over the weekend, I’ll be able to respond to a few of them.

The Lost Book Club: Laughter in the Dark

May 3, 2007 • • 9 Comments

Continuing my trek through the Lost books…Vladimir Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark makes its appearance on Lost in the season three episode “Flashes Before Your Eyes.” Hurley and Charlie find it while ransacking the missing Sawyer’s stash of goods found in the wreckage of Oceanic 815.

Ever since I read Lolita many years ago, I’ve wanted to read more Nabokov, but I never got around to it. Fortunately, the island has a magic box that gives you what you want (despite Ben’s revelation in last night’s episode “The Brig” that the magic box is just a metaphor) and I was served up an author I wanted.

Laughter in the Dark is thematically similar to Lolita – middle-aged man seduced by a wicked young girl ruins his own life – though in Laughter, the girl is eighteen thereby making the middle-aged man merely a tragic fool rather than a felon.

Nabokov tells the whole story in the first two paragraphs:

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.

This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling…

Eventually Albinus is blinded in an accident and his young lover – Margot – invites her lover, Rex, to live with them, unbeknownst to Albinus. The invisible man in Albinus’ world subjects him to all forms of mockery and humiliation as he and Margot rob Albinus blind (har-har, couldn’t resist).

How right he is that there is pleasure and profit in the telling and the reading. Nabokov’s writing here is thrilling. This is a writer who seems to love his work and this time, his work is to tell the tale of some really rotten people (not unlike on Lost).

While the story is grim and often depressing, Nabokov’s style keeps things light and humorous most of the time. Give Lost another point for introducing me to a cool book that I wouldn’t otherwise have read.

Speaking of Lost…

The novel shows up in “Flashes Before Your Eyes” one of the more unusual episodes in the series’ history. It’s a Desmond episode and it’s one in which the flashbacks appear to be more than just memories. Desmond seems able to interact with his flashbacks, giving the viewer the sense that Desmond might have some ability to change the past, in a sort of dreaming time travel. We know he can see flashes of the future as well.

Many of Lost’s storylines revolve around cons, and not just those perpetrated by such con artists as Sawyer and Anthony Cooper. Laughter in the Dark is a con story as well. One in which the con works because the victim – Albinus – can’t see. In a way Desmond’s view of the future and potential parallel time streams is much like Albinus’ limited perception of the world around him.

This is not unlike the situation on the island where the Others have so much more knowledge of the survivors than the survivors have of the Others. (It also makes me wonder if there is an Other in the survivor’s midst, one that the survivors aren’t yet aware of.)

Another potential connection is Albinus’ blindness and the fact that he constantly mistakes the intentions of the other characters, most notably Margot’s. Mistaken intentions is a recurring theme on Lost and in the Lost books. Like Albinus, our survivors are definitely in the dark, able only to listen to the strange sounds of the Others that sometimes echo in the jungle, knowing only what the others want them to know.

The closest parallel between Laughter and Lost comes in the similarities between Albinus and Desmond. They are both cowards, afraid and unable to find the strength to change the course of their lives when they have the opportunity to do so. Desmond, though, is not as far gone as Albinus and it seems he has the capacity – and desire – to change the course of fate, beginning in the lucid dream of his flashbacks. We see Desmond attempting to defy fate and prove the idea of free will.

Laughter in the Dark also reminds the viewer of Desmond’s experience of spending years in the Dharma hatch prior to the Oceanic 815 crash. For years, he entered the numbers and pushed the button. Like Albinus, Desmond was unaware that he was being observed from the Pearl Station the whole time.

I often wonder how much the Others know about Desmond since he wasn’t on the plane, but then Laughter reminds me that the Others at least know of him and have probably been watching him, making me wonder how many of Desmond’s experiences could be the result of an Other con.

Thinking about Laughter in the Dark and “Flashes Before Your Eyes” has led me towards my very own Lost theory…

Last night’s episode which included Anthony Cooper’s assertion that they were in Hell (“It’s awful hot for Heaven”) along with last week’s revelation from Naomi the parachutist that everyone on 815 had died (of course Cooper may have been delusional and Naomi may be lying) adds fuel to the (hell)fire that they are all dead. This had been hinted at with several of the other Lost books, most notably The Third Policeman and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” but the creators have allegedly debunked the theory.

I’m still bunking it though, because when you factor in the alternate time stream theory (reinforced by A Brief History of Time, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and A Wrinkle in Time) you’re left with the notion that in one time stream Oceanic 815 did crash and everyone did die, but when Desmond let the numbers in the hatch run down (revealed in the season two finale) somehow Oceanic 815 was pulled into another time stream (possibly accelerated) in which they crashed on the island. In their original world, they all died, but in the newly created timeline, they are alive.

“Flashes Before Your Eyes” further points in this direction, thus opening the possibility that the happy ending for the series would be for the survivors to reconcile the two time streams and get home alive. I suspect that Desmond is the key to this somehow, since he seems able to alter the various streams. In this way we see a free will/fate battle emerging (another recurring theme on the show). If free will wins, the time streams reconcile and the survivors get of the island. If fate wins, then they’re all dead. Of course I wonder if each survivor would get to choose his own path.

Regardless of what happens, the sound of “real” time will be as nothing more than the ghostly echo of laughter in the dark.

For more thoughts about last night’s “The Brig” check out…

Next up on my Lost reading list is Stephen King’s On Writing.

Check out the rest of my Lost book posts here.