Lying Awake with T.S. Spivet

Lying Awake, by Mark Salzman

Ok, first of all--dude. Look at that picture over there. Go ahead and google this book, find a bigger version. Does it scare you, a little? Am I the only one who is disconcerted that we can't see her legs? GHOST NUN! GHOST NUN!

So anyway, that as my first reaction to the book, and I thought I'd mention it.

ON TO THE WORDS!

Not my kind of book, but not bad. When filtered through my jaded and sarcastic mind all the shit I learned about nun-hood in this tome seemed kinda hokey, but that was just me. I really appreciated the nun's inner struggle about her faith. That is what drew me in to this book, and what kept me in.

However, any enthusiasm I had for writing a blog post about it disappeared when I started reading the next book, which is so awesome it outshines "Lying Awake" completely. I really should write the blog post BEFORE I start another book. . .

Anyhow!!!!

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen

OMG SO GOOD!

I like extras. And books rarely come with extras. "Selected Works" has extras GALORE!!! Because T. S. is a mapmaker (and did you know that you could draw maps of anything? You can make a map of how your sister shucks corn, or the circulatory system of a beetle, ANYTHING! SKY IS THE LIMIT!!!! Actually, that's not even correct, because I bet T. S. could map Heaven if he wanted to). So, got off on a tangent; T. S. is a mapmaker, and he fills the margins with illustrations, and they are simply awesome.

Also, because it's been a few days since I finished it, and my enthusiasm has slightly dissipated, I am going to be very lazy and transcribe a series of notes I made on a junk mail postcard I was using as a bookmark. I made these notes while in the waiting room(s) of a day surgery suite, waiting on the VA to finish with my father so that we could finally go home. I am VERY THANKFUL that I brought this book with me, because it turned a horrible wait into a slightly less horrible experience. Note: I will be putting my thoughts and reasons behind the notes on the postcard in bold.

p. 36, last paragraph. I love T. S.'s thoughts on reading fiction.

"A novel is a tricky thing to map. At times the invented landscape provided me shelter from the burdens of having to chart the real world in its entirety. But this escapism was always tempered by a certain emptiness: I knew I was deceiving myself through a work of fiction. Perhaps balancing the joys of escapism with the awareness of deception is the whole point of why we read novels, but I was never able to successfully manage this simultaneous suspension of the real and the fictive. Maybe you just needed to be an adult in order to perform this high-wire act of believing and non-believing at the same time."

p. 79--list of things to pack. It's hilarious--Underwear galore! Other things that you wear! You really need to read this for yourself. I laughed. Out loud. In public.

p. 87 Sorry for what I did. . . This is what he says to his dead brother's room. At this point I realized that T. S. is just a kid, and that just like in "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" the narrator is not exactly trustworthy here. He is capable of hiding things from me, and everything he tells me has to be filtered through his very intelligent and yet still 12-year-old mind.

p. 139 "snagged on the baleen of my recall" -- look up. Baleen or whalebone is a filtering structure in the mouth of most whales, which they use to feed by sieving small animals from large mouthfuls of seawater.

p. 199 "I am not a reading nerd." He is explaining how he doesn't spend the entire trip reading--and I've spent nearly the entire wait today reading, at least from 36 on. I can't remember exactly where I stopped reading, but I know it was at least the beginning of Chapter 12 (p. 303).

p. 265 Holy crap T. S. just stabbed a guy!!! Very exciting passage. Also very strange. What T. S. says about reading--being in a state of belief and non-belief at the same time? This pushed me a little out of the balance for a bit.

Don't forget to mention that weird foray into the nothingness on the train. Oh yeah, this happens before the stabbing--T. S. wakes up and looks out the windows and he is nowhere. Pretty pretty weird. There is a very slight explanation later on, but the author doesn't give us any concrete answers. He does this in such a way that I'm not mad at him, though.

Book's got several sections--real, surreal, a book within a book, and basically some incredibly strange shit. This is not the same book I was reading a hundred pages or so ago. In the middle of the train ride T. S. starts reading one of his mother's notebooks (he stole it before he left, he doesn't really know why). Instead of containing research on beetles (what she's been working on for like 20 years) it's the story of his great-great-great grandmother--the first female geologist--who quits her job on an expedition west, falls in love with the very first Tecumseh Spivet, and quits science. That's the "book within a book". It's a very good book, but T. S. and I were both confused as to why she tried to write it. Also, it's unfinished. She never gets around to why the chick quit science. We think it's because she can't explain her own marriage to a man so different from her.

It is around the time that he reaches DC that I start to think perhaps he died sometime back there. DC is not what he expects, and the adults he encounters don't exactly react to him in the way that I would like. It's less like I think he died and more that I kinda hope he died, and that he's not actually experiencing all of this after all. He gets to the Smithsonian, finally, and he becomes their poster-child; he is used by them. We both began to wish for his mother, his sister, his ranch, and even his silent and removed father. SIDE NOTE: his father ridicules his maps when he tries to help after the brother dies, and I totally teared up. His father is an asshole. END SIDE NOTE. The Megatheriums? And their plot? Seriously? The book took another turn. And they knew about the stabbing and the sparrows that showed up immediately after? FUCKING HOW???

That's the end of the notes. Honestly, if my address wasn't on this card I would have just scanned it in. This turned out longer than I'd planned.

For the record, he didn't die. And his father redeems himself. And you realize that the two adults he had most trusted were lying to him, but I think he's going to be ok with it.

What I haven't mentioned yet but what I think is awesome--he jumps a train across country, but gets lucky in that his train is transporting at least one Winnebago, and so he spends the trip in relative comfort. Also, the Winnebago talks to him. (He and I both know that he is supplying the words, but it's still a nice touch in the story.)

OH NOES, ENTHUSIASM SUDDENLY RETURNING!!!!

You must all read this book! And you must love it! Because I say so! SO TO MY ONE REGULAR BLOG READER, AND TO MY SOMETIMES MAYBE BLOG READER THAT I'M NOT SURE ABOUT, AND EVEN YOU SPAMMERS IN CHINA--READ IT! AND TELL ME HOW MUCH YOU LOVED IT! I COMMAND YOU!!!

Chinese spammers: if you manage to post a comment on this blog post that even KIND OF mentions this book I WILL ALLOW IT TO STAY!!! Even if you link to porn!!! THAT IS HOW COMMITTED I AM TO THIS BOOK!