Quality Time Weekly We have fun so you don't have to

This week I'm slogging through the Magician King, by Lew Grossman, the sequel to the Magicians, while also getting ready for school to start on Tuesday. I needed a break from the book, and Cullen needed a break from me hollering at the protagonist, so we took a break and watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, starring Michael Cera and Kat Dennings. We were a little concerned because, let’s face it, Michael Cera may be adorable but he tends to play juiceboxes. Could we tolerate another jerk when I was taking a break from reading about a jerk? It was a terrible risk but I'm brave so I chanced it.

As the film begins Nick (Michael Cera) is making the millionth mix cd in a series of a bazillion, which he is going to give to the girl who dumped him and broke his heart. There are two things we notice on his bedroom walls; scores of photos of a beautiful girl and some stuff about his favorite band Where's Fluffy. Nick's playlists aren't getting him very far. Tris (Alexis Dziena), his ex, tosses them into the garbage, where they’re promptly retrieved by Norah (Kat Dennings), who has developed a crush on him based on his music choices. If a song speaks to us then we must have something in common with other people it speaks to, right?

Nick plays bass in a queercore band called the Jerk Offs. He's got a gig that night but he's feeling so blue he doesn’t want to go, until his bandmates convince him to come play and then they'll go and look for the secret location of a ninja performance of Where's Fluffy. Meanwhile Norah, her friend Caroline (Ari Graynor) and Caroline's friend, the awful Tris, go to the club to see the Jerk Offs play. Tris is there with her new boyfriend and is pretty obviously there to try and make Nick even more depressed, which works really well. He's so, so hung up on her.

Tris isn't just mean to Nick, she's also obnoxious to Norah, taunting for her for not having a boyfriend. Norah responds that she does have a boyfriend and walks up to Nick, who is now offstage, asking him to be her boyfriend for five minutes. Then she kisses him, totally confusing Tris, who can't figure out how they could know each other without her knowing about it. And so begins a night of confusion, drinking, bickering and looking for Where's Fluffy and love.

Caroline gets incredibly drunk, so drunk that Norah tries to take her home, only to be shanghaied by Nick's bandmates, who loathe Tris and would love to see Nick with a new love interest. They say they'll take Caroline home, but unfortunately she rouses from her drunken stupor at exactly the wrong time, thinks they are up to no good and makes her escape. Now Norah isn't just looking for Where's Fluffy; she's also looking Caroline.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is about love and music, but it's also about the elasticity of time. How sometimes one special night can stretch out for such an enchanted time that you can change into a brand new version of yourself. Anything is possible and it seems like anything is likely. This movie is a lot of fun, but be warned, there are some disgusting scenes, including one that involves the drunken Caroline that made me gag. Be prepared to cover your eyes, or be ready to check in for a mind wipe.

Bonus Treat:
This week's bonus treat is from Vera Brosgol, an artist whose work I adore, who has written a heartbreaking story called What were you raised by Wolves? A little boy is camping with his family when he meets a feral girl who tries to help him. They squabble and he meets a pretty nasty fate, at which point she ends up being adopted and civilized by the grieving family. But can she accept everything wrong she sees with our often cruel society? This shortish comic is poignant and lovely. http://verabee.com/wolf/

Where do I start? This book was possibly the most maddening novel I've encountered over the past few years. It's a book that came highly recommended to me, listed as one of the best books of the year by people I trust, so I got it for my middle son for Christmas, who tossed it next to me when he finished it and demanded I read it. This usually means he loves a story but in this case it was because he had the heebie jeebies and wanted to share the experience, kind of like when you ask someone else if they smell something bad.

The Magicians is basically Narnia fan fiction, as written by Brett Easton Ellis. Written by Lew Grossman, who is apparently famous for posting Amazon reviews for his own books, it's the story of an obnoxious little shit called Quentin, who is utterly miserable and whiny, for no real reason I could figure out. Maybe he suffers from depression or something, but mostly he seems to suffer from a massive sense of entitlement. He's such a cliché character that he made me super grouchy. He's the smartest of the smart, unable to make any real friends, in love with his buddy's girlfriend – who of course doesn't have reciprocating feelings, etc. etc. etc. He's also mopey and is constantly looking for more than what he has. He's sure there's something out there on the horizon, like maybe the magical land of Fillory he's been reading about since he was very young. He's disdainful of everyone who lives a normal life and is convinced that they are drones eking out a miserable existence until their lives mercifully end. He reminds me of a guy I used to know who wanted to be a pilot, was rejected because of his eyesight and spent the rest of life being completely aimless with no goals, personal or career wise.

Luckily for Quentin he doesn't have to join all the rest of the peons as his entrance interview for Princeton doesn't go as planned. Instead of being interviewed he discovers a dead body and is given a file, with a cover note that promptly blows away. He gives chase and ends up at a mysterious school where he takes an intense entrance exam, which of course he aces. (Was there ever any doubt?) He's admitted to a magic university, where he spends the next few years being miserable and wishing there was more to his enchanted life. Quentin spends a lot of his time mooning over the fact that the one thing in life he wants is still out of his reach; a fantastic land called Fillory, which is essentially Narnia, with a sprinkling of the Land of Oz.
It doesn’t matter how well things go for him, he constantly thinks his life would be perfect if only he could get to Fillory.

Quentin becomes friends with a group of students, including Alice, with whom he falls in love, and Eliot, a young man that Quentin both admires and despises. He also befriends a punk rocker called Penny, but ends up thinking some pretty scathing things about him, and freezing him out of their study group.

The narrative skips around, like a record with a bad needle. We dip into Quentin's life and see little vignettes that are scattered through his time at the school and after but it's never any more satisfying for the reader than it is for Quentin. Just as he longs for Fillory we long for a character that isn't a complete juicebox. Reading about him left me feeling kind of dirty, like I'd been leaning against a filthy concrete wall in a dreary, semi-abandoned subway station.

He isn't just above it all; he's also extremely creepy when interacting with any women at all. Quentin sexualizes and objectifies every woman he meets, including teachers twice his age, paramedics trying to resuscitate dead men and his friend and best friend's girlfriend Julia. He constantly talks about their breasts, calling one woman's breasts gropeable, when talking about her perspective, which makes his sleaziness even creepier. It's amazing that he sees half of the world's population as objects for his desire. It must be exhausting to spend so much energy reducing people to nothing more than their breasts and the possibility of using them for sexual gratification.

It's entirely possible to write unlikable characters who are obsessed with sex and still make them interesting and vulnerable. The character of Harold from Stephen King's the Stand comes to mind. It's unfortunate that Mr. Grossman took a premise that could have been amazing and made it into an art project that is a chore to read.

After all that I'm still going to say you might want to read the Magicians because there is plenty in it that is worth reading. I wouldn't put it at the top of my to be read pile or anything but I guess I'm glad I saw what all the fuss was about. I have two final thoughts. One is that I keep seeing this book described as a book for adults, with the implication that it's far too grown up/dark for the YA crowd, but I had the opposite reaction. I thought it was a YA book (for one thing the protagonist is a teen) and I didn't read anything that changed my mind. I suspect whoever thinks it's far too dark and dangerous for teen minds doesn’t know any actual teens. They certainly don't seem to know that the YA genre covers some pretty serious and dark topics. Meth addiction, rape, suicide, hate crimes and genocide are all topics of YA books I've read in the last couple of years.

And finally don't read a single word about the sequel, the Magician King. I'm deadly serious about this. Every review or blurb I've seen about the sequel, which I also bought for Cullen for the Christmas season, starts off with massive spoilers. Literally the first few words spoil the very ending of the Magicians. So close your ears and eyes to talk of the sequel until you finish the first book.

Bonus Treat:
This week's bonus treat is from Kate Craig, who wrote a beautiful, terrifying comic about a wendigo. (When I was a little girl I got Winnebagos and Wendigos mixed up and couldn’t figure out why anyone would want a vehicle named after a super scary monster.) Called Heart of Ice, this comic is drawn in colors of the cold; blues and whites that look like they're straight out of an iceberg. The story begins with a plane crash and things go downhill from there.
http://www.katecraig.ca/heartofice.html

New Year's Eve can be an exciting time spent hanging out with friends or strangers, watching fireworks or a band, getting sloshed or staying bone sober, but the aftermath of New Year's Day can be a bit taxing. Sometimes it's best to stay in bed until it's time for Hopping John and a hair of the dog that bit you.

On the other hand, New Year's Day can be the single best time to go and do things at places that are ordinarily very crowded. When I was a little girl growing up in southern California a friend of the family used to take us to Disneyland on the day of the Rose bowl parade, when everyone was busy at that event, and on New Year's Day. There's a peculiar hushed quality about Disneyland when nobody is there and these days I'm guessing it could even make you worry that the zombie apocalypse has happened. As the day wears on the place fills up with people trying not to talk too loudly, so if you go, go early and get the most out of your visit.

There are plenty of other places to go on the big day; pretty much anywhere you usually find crowds, but keep in mind that many attractions like museums and zoos are closed two days of the year: Christmas and New Year's Day. Be sure to check hours before you head out. On the other hand just walking around when everyone else is asleep can be an interesting experience so your mileage may vary. You might just enjoy getting out and seeing your local sights in the crisp winter air.

In other news I have some follow-up regarding ExerBeat, the video game I discussed back in July. http://qualitytimeweekly.com/content/exerbeat-%E2%80%93-great-game-disab... I started exercising using this game on June 23rd and I haven't missed a day since. I've now burned more than a hundred thousand calories according to the game stats and have been around the world eight times. My fasting blood sugar dropped by about twenty points, which is great news as far as I'm concerned.

Now that I have unlocked most of the games/exercises I can use a feature of the game that I previously ignored, which allows me to choose a specified period of continuous exercise via the personal trainer mode. I'm currently doing these in thirty minute chunks, plus the daily challenges and whatever else I feel I need to do to make sure my workout is well rounded. You can choose your exercises by objective, category, problem area, and random. Under objective your choices are maintain health, relax, burn fat, relieve stress and shape up. If you don't like the exercises chosen by the computer you can rechoose. I often use the random but find it can be too heavy on one type of exercise, with fifteen minutes of stretching and not enough aerobics, in which case I ask it to pick again. (I think it's kind of cute that stress relief mostly involves boxing. I guess you're supposed to imagine that you are punching whatever or whoever is stressing you out.)

There are two big advantages that I see with using the personal trainer mode. First you get to continue exercising for a set amount of time with no need to stop and pick your next routine. Secondly you can save all the walking around the world until you're finished with your exercises. While I enjoyed the facts that you get as you reach each new destination, I was disappointed to find there are only two facts for each area, which gets pretty repetitive after a couple of trips around the world. Now I sometimes read a book while clicking my way through the around the world segment of the game. In my ideal world there would be frequent updates with new information. I'm sure that anyone with access to a Guinness Book of World Records and an encyclopedia could come up with enough facts to keep even the most dedicated ExerBeat player happy.

I'm still quite pleased with this game and the routines are varied enough that even after six months of daily use I'm not bored with the exercises. This was definitely my best purchase of 2011.

Bonus Treat:
This week's bonus treat is from Kate Beaton, who gave us the greatest Christmas gift of all – hunks! She posted some holiday sketches for her Hark! A vagrant comic that include the hunks comic and, my favorite, a problem arising between Clara and the Nutcracker. Like all of Ms. Beaton's work these comics are delightful. Her comic style looks artless but is sophisticated and the wonky eyed look of many of her characters adds a great deal of fun to her work. http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=330

I actually preordered Ashes by Ilsa Bick, only to have my youngest son steal it away from me when it finally arrived. This week it resurfaced under the couch in the living room, the natural resting place of all missing objects, and I read it in two days, staying up until five in the morning reading the first night.

Ashes is the story of Alex, a teenager who goes to the wilderness on an important pilgrimage. While she's there an extraordinary event happens, which changes the world and virtually everyone in it. In a flash a huge percentage of the population dies and the remaining people change. Alex is only aware of her tiny speck of the world. Birds and wildlife go mad around her and the companions she met on the trail either die or suffer from the same gushing nosebleed and terrible headache she does.

When she recovers a little she is left with a retired military dog and a young girl who is traumatized by first the death of her soldier father and now her caretaker grandfather. Ellie is eight years old and was extremely angry and recalcitrant before her grandfather passes away; after she is practically a textbook example of oppositional disorder. She throws a fit when Alex insists they start hiking towards a ranger station and refuses to leave, opting to stay with her grandfather's body. Alex argues, but eventually gives up and moves on, leaving the young girl and the dog behind.

Alex doesn't get far before a frantic Ellie joins her, without the dog, and inadvertently causes the loss of most of the supplies. As the two girls begin their journey together they don't just face cold weather and lack of food and water, they also have to watch out for feral dogs and survivors of the bizarre event, who are now undergoing a chilling transformation.

Alex is going through a transformation of her own. She isn't attacking and devouring other people like her contemporaries are but she has regained her lost sense of smell with a vengeance. Her sense of smell is more like a canine than a human. She quickly realizes that she can not only differentiate people by their odors but she can also tell what they're feeling and when they're lying, a very handy skill in a world gone mad and cannibalistic.

Ellie and Alex are soon in a terrible situation, which is when they meet Tom, a young soldier who joins their little group, and whose skills augment Alex's. The three of them together are much stronger than alone but are up against so many dangers that their chances of survival are slim.

This story was bound to remind me of other books I have read and I did see some strong similarities, mostly between Stephen King's Cell and Robert McCammon's Swan Song. Much like in Cell, the population is badly damaged and then changed by a mysterious pulse, in this case an EMP, and as in all three books the state of the survivors is a bit of a mystery. Are the flesheaters dead? Alive? In between? Are they cursed or ill? It's these questions that made these books such a compelling read. Sure, books that treat zombies as mere targets or predators can be interesting and suspenseful, but when we give our monsters a nice dose of humanity we have ambivalence towards them and this conflict is the source of real tension and intrigue.

I enjoyed this story very much but I'm sorry to say I didn't love it. For some reason I couldn't turn off my internal editor and kept getting pulled out of the story. Often it was for little things, like referring to a brain tumor as the size of a tennis ball, something never encountered in my eleven years working in the medical field. Tumors, especially tumors in women, are almost always referred to in terms of fruit. A brain tumor could be the size of a grapefruit or an orange. (The reproductive organs are really fruitcentric, with the ovaries the size of plums, the uterus the size of a pear and the pregnant uterus the size of a watermelon.) I think maybe if I weren't such a know it all I would have been able to really revel in Ashes and be looking forward breathlessly to the next book in the series. Since I couldn't, I give Ashes an A-.

You can read an excerpt here: http://io9.com/5835875/read-the-first-100-pages-of-a-dystopian-young-adu...

Bonus Treat:
This week's bonus treat is from Dylan Meconis. It's a comic called Outfoxed and it's both gorgeous and charming. It's about a laundress who is minding her own business when a group of hunters appear. A fox jumps into her laundry basket and hides out from the hunters, who question the laundress, then leave her. The fox isn't so ready to go. It's a talking fox, which then transforms into a young man and tries to woo the laundress, who isn't about to taken in by a shapeshifting fast talker. I loved this story and the drawings are beautiful.
http://www.dylanmeconis.com/outfoxed/

Finals ended this week, which means I finally got to sit down, read a little and write a quick column. Hopefully next semester won't be as tough as this last one and I'll be back to my regular schedule.

I'm a little intimidated by Pulitzer Prizewinning books, although I periodically try to read a selected few, sometimes enjoying them and sometimes treating them like the Brussels sprouts of reading - I need to get through them so I can get to the stuff I really like. I had heard good things about Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad but when it won the Pulitzer I wasn't sure if it was going to be a fun read. And fun was what I wanted, after a grueling semester and a six week bout of the flu.

A Visit From the Goon Squad is ostensibly about time, or more accurately the ravages of time, and spans a period from the punk rock 80's to some time in the future when lawns no longer exist. I would say it's more about relationships - all kinds, not just romantic relationships - and the mistakes we make, or the situations we get into that we don't know how to handle.

The book is not a traditional novel, instead it features a series of braided stories with recurring characters. In the opening story we meet Sasha, who works in the music industry, is a kleptomaniac and is kind of working on her issues. She works for Bennie, who is the lead in the next story and a peripheral character in the third.

While I enjoyed the first two stories it was the third that really connected with me. Set in San Francisco in the punk rock world of the 80's it's told from the perspective of a confused, lovesick teen girl. She and her friends, some of whom are in a band, are seeing the same bands and visiting the same clubs that I went to when I was that age, in that same scene, at that time. They're asking the same questions, dreaming the same dreams and making the same mistakes that many of us did, or do, which makes it extra easy to identify with them.

My favorite stories are all told by teens, which my favorite presented in an unusual format; a series of slides. The young lady telling this tale is telling it from our future, a not very distant future, and her concerns are timely for us. She loves her dad and her brother very much, fights with her mother, tries to show her brother and father how to be better communicators and generally spends a lot of energy on relationship dynamics. She's feeling her way through different roles, trying them on for size. She's also the only one the book who isn't sort of awestruck/half in love with her mother, which makes the whole chapter/story that much funnier/endearing.

Another chapter I particularly enjoyed is also set in the future, when very young children, called pointers, rule ecommerce, setting trends in music and everything else. A young man is asked to hire friends to be parrots; people paid to advocate a particular product without anyone knowing they're spokespeople. This is an action that is highly unethical in the time of the story and is summed up by the catchphrase "Someone's getting paid." If you followed the debacle recently when the story broke that the woman behind the twitter hash tag fridayreads is getting paid to promote books, this catchphrase will definitely resonate. (If you're unfamiliar with this story or want to learn more about it you may wish to read Jennifer Weiner's insightful take: http://jenniferweiner.blogspot.com/2011/11/by-now-people-who-follow-publ....)

There is a story/chapter about a photo safari to Africa that involves lust, desperation and a lion attack. It's an evocative story that left me feeling as though I'd actually seen the whole thing, with visions of dusty sunsets, sunburnt tourists and weary guides.

Another story that was quite visual is about a woman who was the best at her job and now has fallen out of favor and is clinging to her former lifestyle by a thread. She's barely supporting herself by being the PR manager for a genocidal general. This was an amazing story and worth the price of the book all by itself. It made me cringe and laugh by turns. It's an excellent and piercing look at the extreme weirdness of the human psyche.

Ms. Egan's characters are fantastic. I love how very human they are. They are sweet and sour, adorable and genocidal, innocent and devious. They know the score while simultaneously having absolutely no idea what's going on around them or how to deal with it.

The whole book was like a nice, refreshing drink on the hottest day of the summer. I'm going to have to hunt down her other work.

You can read an excerpt here: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/201020/a-visit-from-the-goon-squad-by-je...

Bonus Treat:
This week's bonus treat is from Mike Dawson. It's a comic called Prospect Park Dusk Prospect Park Dawn. It's about a mother who is going to tremendous lengths to juggle her job, her family and her daycare. That's nothing special, there are billions of us doing the same thing, but she has a certain handicap that makes it all that much harder. She's hiding a secret, which you may be able to guess from the title of the comic. But don't let that stop you from reading it as there's much here to savor.
http://www.mikedawsoncomics.com/ppd/PPD01.html

My apologies for the length of time since my last column. I had some surgery, and then I got an infection and I've been pretty much just working, sleeping or studying since then. But I'm going to squeeze in a little column this week, before getting busy with midterms.

Have you seen a new show called Suburgatory? Did it seem super familiar? Pastel houses in a plastic suburb, filled with weird plastic people, and our protagonists, who don't fit in. The suburbanites are obsessed with sex, poking their noses into each other's businesses and buying and wearing ridiculous clothes. There is a set of ironclad rules that are incomprehensible to the outsiders and to us, the viewers.

What is missing to make this familiar setting complete? A castle on the hill and a boy with scissors for hands.

I've seen two episodes of Suburgatory so far and I feel like they've taken the worst half of Edward Scissorhands and made it onto a sitcom, leaving poor Edward and the castle to molder away on the hill all alone. (Also there isn't any fun topiary in Suburgatory.)

The basic premise of the show doesn’t make sense to me. Dad (named George) freaks out when he finds condoms in his teenage daughter's possession, uproots the entire family, and whisks them off to the pastel foothills of Scissorshandlandia. Does he think there are no boys in the suburbs? Has he never heard all the ridiculous urban legends about the sexual hijinks that suburban teens are supposed to get up to? Pregnancy pacts, rainbow rings, etc, etc. Why not just go whole hog and ship her off to a nunnery? Or how about being sensible, commending her for having protection and then talking about safer sex and whether Tessa (the daughter) is really ready for sex? Logic is entirely missing from this series.

I'm also weirded out by all the gender conformity and homophobia. The jokes about lesbians and a gay couple, none of whom are actually gay, could be straight out of Three's Company, a show that made me grit my teeth when I was a teenager myself. As people fight for basic civil rights in many of our states and queer teens commit suicide after being bullied, do we really need to hear this kind of garbage? I think not.

Why did I watch this show at all? Because I really enjoy Alan Tudyk, who has a fantastic sense of comedic timing as seen in Firefly and Serenity, possibly his two best known roles. Other actors who have been hilarious in various roles are Cheryl Hines, of Curb Your Enthusiasm fame, and Ana Gasteyer, an SNL alum. Both of these actresses play caricatures of suburban moms. You can get an idea of what they're like by checking out their twitter feeds. http://twitter.com/#!/mrssheilashay http://twitter.com/#!/DallasRoyce I think it's sad that there's so much talent in this show and so little comedy.

Bonus Treat:
This week's bonus treat is from Craig Thompson, who wrote Blankets, one of the most amazing graphic novels I've ever read. He illustrates the Owl and the Pussycat, which has one of my favorite words, runcible, and tells the tale of forbidden love between two predators. The drawings are gorgeous. http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/10/nursery-rhyme-comics-the-owl-and-the-...

The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch

I read a small graphic novel this week that I really enjoyed. It's by Neil Gaiman with art by Michael Zulli and lettering by the ever wonderful Todd Klein, both of whom worked with Neil on Sandman. It's called The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch and it's a fantasy story set in the very real world.

It begins with Neil and his real life friends Jonathan and Jane having dinner in a sushi restaurant while discussing a mystery involving a woman they're calling Miss Finch (not her real name.) Most of the rest of the story is told in flashback and is about their evening, which takes place at a creepy little circus that struck me as fan fiction inspired by the vampire theater in Interview with a Vampire. Which is not to say that Neil wrote it as fan fic, but that the characters had read the book and were inspired to put on their own rendition, mixing it with those awful hell houses that certain Christians like to put on every Halloween. If you think that sounds like a match made in hell, you're absolutely correct.

The book is filled with both beautiful and grotesque images, some of which I couldn’t look at for more than a second. It's an adaptation of the short story by the same name and is mysterious and magical. You should enjoy the book even if, or maybe especially if, you've read the short story.

Problem Dog
Are you watching Breaking Bad? It's consistently great television that has kept intense dramatic tension at a peak for season after season. This year's offerings are no different and I suspect actor Aaron Paul will be up for some tasty awards for his portrayal of troubled meth addict/dealer Jessie Pinkman. His acting in the episode Problem Dog is utterly compelling and he looks as though his mental turmoil is making him physically ill.

His speech about the problem dog illustrates something the fabulous Connie Willis told me when I met her a few years ago: people will forgive you for almost anything in fiction but they won't forgive you killing a dog. Don't do it.

The creators of Breaking Bad are doing an excellent job making Walter White a thoroughly unlikable figure. Whatever compassion I had for him went out the window with his "I'm the one knocking" speech. Jesse is obviously on a self destructive path, unable to live with his past actions, but I wonder if Walter is also suffering, in a quieter, less flamboyant way. I'm curious and nervous to see what the rest of the season brings.

Bonus Treat:
This week's bonus treat is from Julia Wertz, who writes about her own personal experiences as a New Yorker during hurricane Irene. http://www.juliawertz.com/2011/09/05/hurricane/ She does an amazing job summing all the conflicting weird emotions that come with expecting something big and scary that turns out to be not so big and scary (although it was pretty awful for many people, she's just talking about her own personal experience.)

Quick housekeeping note – I am back in school, which means posting will be erratic. Columns might be short and they definitely won't be posted on a regular schedule. My weekly papers, exams, videos, etc are due on Sunday so I might be posting on Mondays for a bit, once I'm finished with the weekly school stuff. I'll play it by ear and I apologize for the inconvenience.

This past weekend while the power was out and Irene was raging I wasn't able to do any of the things I was supposed to do, which gave me the chance to do something I wanted to do. Instead of doing my homework, which I do online, or any of a million other chores, I picked up my son's copy of Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones and read it almost straight through, something I haven't had the luxury of doing in a very long time.

I wasn't sure if I was even going to be interested in the book, considering how many times I've seen the film, but the author's smooth style is a delight and soon carried me away into her magical world. Sophie is the oldest of the three girls and she is very aware that the eldest always fails when they set out to seek their fortune. She's so convinced that this is going to happen to her that she stays put in her stepmother's hat shop, being kind of miserable, really only associating with the hats.

Her two sisters have been sent off to seek their fortunes, one at a fancy bakery and one at a witch's house but poor Sophie remains behind. One day she goes to visit her sister at the bakery where she finds out something surprising about her sisters and is told that her stepmother is taking advantage of her incredible hat making talents. Sophie makes exactly nothing for all of her work in the shop and when her stepmother agrees she deserves a wage but refuses to even talk about what it should be and when it should start, Sophie becomes grumpier and more unhappy.

Meanwhile rumors fly about two wicked characters that are rampaging around the kingdom. The Witch of the Waste is a figure of fear to everyone and nobody wants to cross her. A wizard with a castle that roams around the countryside is frightening mothers who warn their daughters that the wizard, Howl by name, eats the hearts of young girls, who are never seen again.

An obnoxious customer comes to the hat shop and Sophie is a little saucy in response. To her horror the client turns out to be the very scary Witch of the Waste, who puts a spell on Sophie, accelerating her age and turning her into a very elderly woman. Half crippled and in shock, Sophie leaves the hat shop, hobbles her way out of the valley and ends up at the back door of Howl's castle, where she hitches a ride and starts a long impersonation.

Here she meets a fire demon, an apprentice and Howl himself, who is perhaps the vainest character to show up in a fairy tale since the stepmother with the magic mirror that told her who was the fairest in the land. Howl spends more of his magic looking pretty and wooing women than he does on anything else and Sophie is both bemused and amused by him. But she's determined to find out the truth. Is he eating the hearts of girls? Or is he just stealing them and hiding them somewhere? While she's trying to get to the bottom of Howl's secrets she also needs to help the fire demon, who has promised to help break her spell, avoid a scary scarecrow that keeps following her, keep her sister from falling in love with Howl and hide out from the Witch of the Waste.

If you've been charmed by the movie you'll be charmed times ten by the book, which is jam-packed with adventure, fun and little mysteries. If you're feeling stressed it's the perfect thing to help you forget your troubles. You can read an excerpt here: http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780064410342/Howls_Moving_Castle/exc...

Bonus Treat:
This week's bonus treat is a cute sword and sorcery comic called Gorek the Magnanimous. We've all seen revenge stories and as I said a couple of weeks ago I'm thoroughly sick of them. This one is different and really made me laugh. http://oglaf.com/gorek/

This week was quite mad with a lot of rumbling and grumbling from Mother Nature. Towards the beginning of the week we had an earthquake; a rarity in Maryland where I live. It rattled everything from the Carolinas all the way up to Canada and led to the shut down of quite a few federal buildings. At the same time a giant storm was heading to shore and as we went to press I'd had to put the column on hold to run out and get hurricane supplies.

Luckily I did have time to squeeze in some reading time in which I read some stories I really enjoyed. Bitter Grounds by Neil Gaiman is now available on the tor.com site. http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/09/bitter-grounds Originally published in Mojo: Conjure Stories anthology and then later in the short story collection Fragile Things, this detailed story is about zombies (not the plague kind, the voodoo kind), a journey, impersonation, being lost and the seduction of letting go. The Zora referenced in the text is Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote during the Harlem Renaissance and is the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, which is as good as it is heartbreaking. She traveled to Haiti to research zombies and voodoo and if you're interested in this subject you should pick up her book Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. But first read Bitter Grounds.

Another tale by Neil I read this week is called The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains. This powerful story is about a little man on a dangerous quest for his monarch. He enlists the aid of a reaver. (Not the kind of Firefly or Serenity.) There is treachery, danger, treasure and many other ancient story telling elements. This story shocked me, although looking back I wasn't sure why. My son had a different take saying, "none of the reveals were shocking, but they each lead to the next in a very natural way." The story is fantastic and compelling and can be found at the Fifty-Two Stories site. http://www.fiftytwostories.com/?p=1338

One-Eyed Jack's by Tracy Canfield is an urban fantasy about two women in the same family who fight against evil, but not in a Superman or Spiderman kind of way. Granny Hillburn spends her time doing things like chopping open the buds of kudzu; buds that would grow into things like a meth lab. She and her granddaughter spend most of their energy fighting against the encroachment of a church that doesn't seem too wholesome and an approaching interstate. One-Eyed Jack's is charming and original and a very fast read. http://strangehorizons.com/2011/20110704/jacks-f.shtml

The Dala Horse by Michael Swanwick is an incredibly detailed fairy tale with modern technical elements. Linnea, a young Swedish girl, has to leave home abruptly when an unspecified terrible event occurs. She has a talking backpack, a map that also speaks and a little Dala horse, which gives her important advice. She isn't on the road long when she meets a man, who she views as a troll. The Dala horse warns her that he is dangerous but he is too large and ferocious to fight and she must rely on her wits and the help of her companions. The illustration that accompanies this moving story is just as beautiful as the prose. http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/07/the-dala-horse

Bonus Treat:
This week's bonus treat is a beautifully drawn story by one of my favorite cartoonists; Emily Carroll. Called the Prince and the Sea it's about an unlikely romance between a Prince and a mermaid. This is no prettied up Little Mermaid. You should be prepared for anything. http://emcarroll.com/comics/prince/andthesea.html

For the last few years I've been excited about shows coming up in the next season. These were shows like Dollhouse and Sarah Connor Chronicles and Caprica; basically all shows that aren’t on the air any longer. This year I'm just not too thrilled regarding anything I'm hearing about. There are a couple that have me interested but nothing that has me counting down the days until they appear. Most of the commercials I've seen have left me either feeling meh or violently opposed.

Shows I won't be watching this fall – anything revenge themed. I don't care about revenge. I don't care about these characters I haven't met yet. Why should I root for them as they go out and wreak mayhem, usually harming loads of innocent people? (Not to mention property damage.) Also have you noticed that the dead person, the one the revenge seeker is avenging, is usually portrayed as a sweet and blameless person, who would no doubt be horrified at the notion of someone running around town killing in their name?

I'm also planning to skip Whitney, a show that appears to be eighty pounds of misogyny in a five pound bag. A typical ad states that the way to "punish" a man is for a woman to talk. Wow, what a fresh concept! We certainly haven't heard the same thing from a bunch of comedians through the years and it's definitely not the theme of a recent Klondike bar commercial. We're supposed to think Whitney's anti-women rhetoric is funny and acceptable because Whitney is a woman. What century is it again? Weren't we tired of women talking trash about each other back when we lived in caves or trees or on the savannah?

Another show I will never watch is called the Chew. Seriously, that's really the name. You know how cellar door is supposed to be one of the most beautiful sounds in the English language? The word chew is one of the worst. Cheeewww. Yuck. It even has the word ew built right into it. But terrible name aside, I'm so not interested in a chat show about food. This one is replacing a soap opera which is currently featuring long dead people coming back to life. How can yet another show telling me small shrimp is cheaper than big shrimp compete with that?

Shows that will make my head explode when someone says they feature strong women characters – the thing with the Playboy bunnies, the thing with the stewardess, the thing with the Charlie's Angels. Pardon me while I bang my head on my desk.

Shows I am looking forward to – Terra Nova. If you watch TV at all you've no doubt seen a gazillion commercials for Terra Nova, the upcoming Swiss Family Robinson VS the Dinosaurs project. None of the commercials look particularly interesting, but a writer/multihyphenate I like is working on the show so I'll give it a shot. Jose Molina has worked on Haven, Castle, Firefly, Angel and many other lovely shows. Hopefully Terra Nova will be in the same quality ballpark as the others.

There are two fairy tale themed shows coming out this fall and I'm looking forward to both of them. One is called Grimm and the other Once Upon A Time. Obviously they aren't trying to hide their origins. Both of these shows have writers I like working on them so I have high hopes. Grimm is about a detective who works in a supernatural Portland and is one of the few who can see the truth behind the normal façade. You can watch the four minute trailer here: http://www.nbc.com/grimm/ Once Upon a Time, brought to us by two of the producers of Lost, is more of a crossing the borders of fairy and our world and back again story. A young lady is reunited with the son she gave up, who thinks she is the child of fairy tale figures. There is an evil queen, a curse, danger and other well loved tropes. You can see a trailer here at the official site: http://abc.go.com/shows/once-upon-a-time

Bonus Treat:
This week's bonus treat is an XKCD comic that I'm in love with. I think my favorite part is that she refers to cancer as something that's holding her back, not as a devastating illness or something that can kill her. She's amazing. http://xkcd.com/933/