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Block, Francesca Lia. 1998. Dangerous Angels: The Weezie Bat Books.

Dangerous Angels is an all-in-one edition of the five Weetzie Bats books: Weetzie Bat, Witch Baby, Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys, Missing Angel Juan, and Baby Be Bop. Not all books are narrated by Weetzie Bat. In fact, most of them aren't--three of them are narrated by Weetzie Bat's children. What can I say about this series of books? Well, they're all bizarre. But bizarre in a strange-and-surreal-but-beautiful kind of way. They're very original, very unique, very postmodern. The first book, Weetzie Bat, was published in 1989. The remaining four books were published between 1991 and 1995. I would say that the books--especially the first one--were groundbreaking. These books were "edgy" before edgy became so common, so expected, so normal.

I don't believe that everyone will love this book. I would imagine that this is something that you will either love or hate. Block's characters break all the rules of society--broke all the rules of society I should say. And the vision of the world she creates is both harsh and hopeful. There is an ugliness, a painful awareness of hate, of fear, of anger, of "evil" if you will. But there is love and beauty there as well. It's just very bizarre. Weetzie is a character that creates her own family when she meets her best friend, Dirk. Dirk's grandmother, Fifi, gives her a lamp with a genie. "I wish for a Duck for Dirk, and My Secret Agent Lover Man for me, and a beautiful little house for us to live in happily ever after." And sure enough, Dirk gets a guy named Duck and Weetzie gets a boyfriend named My Secret Agent Lover Man. They also get Fifi's house after her sudden death. These four live as a family and bring in nontraditional ways two children into the world, Cherokee and Witch Baby. Family and friendship and love and life seen through various nontraditional perspectives. It's all surreal. Definitely layers of urban fantasy colliding with the real world.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Peck, Richard. 2000. A Year Down Yonder.
Review by Becky Laney.

A Year Down Yonder is the sequel to A Long Way From Chicago. However, this is not a novel in stories. Nor is it narrated by Joey Dowdel. No, A Year Down Yonder is the story of Mary Alice, the little sister that is almost-but-not-quite all grown up. The year is 1937. The Depression is making life difficult both in urban and rural areas. It is economic necessity which prompts Mary Alice's parents to send their daughter away. (Joey is sent away also, but not with Mary Alice.) Mary Alice is being sent to live with the vivacious, one-of-a-kind, sometimes embarrassing Grandma Dowdel. How will this "city" girl fit in with these country bumpkins? Will they accept her? welcome her? Not if the Burdicks have their way!

A Year Down Yonder is a treat. It's rich in detail, rich in humor, rich in heart and humanity. The characters, the place all come alive. Richard Peck is a pro when it comes to capturing the good, the bad, the ugly, and the laughable. Mary Alice does have a few adjustments to make, but this book captures her unforgettable journey, her coming-of-age in small town America.

If you haven't read A Long Way From Chicago, this book does stand alone. In case you're wondering. But I would recommend reading both books. Both books are such a joy, a treat, a delight.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Peck, Richard. 1998. A Long Way From Chicago.

Prologue
It was always August when we spent a week with our grandma. I was Joey then, not Joe: Joey Dowdel, and my sister was Mary Alice. In our first visits we were still just kids, so we could hardly see her town because of Grandma. She was so big, and the town was so small. She was old too, or so we thought--old as the hills. And tough? She was tough as an old boot, or so we thought. As the years went by, though, Mary Alice and I grew up, and though Grandma never changed, we'd seem to see a different woman every summer.
Now I'm older than Grandma was then, quite a bit older. But as the time gets past me, I seem to remember more and more about those hot summer days and nights, and the last house in town, where Grandma lived. And Grandma. Are all my memories true? Every word, and growing truer with the years.

A Long Way From Chicago is a book that is practically perfect in every way. (It did win a Newbery Honor.) It's historical fiction. The book is set during the Depression. The title page calls it a "novel in stories" and that's a fair assessment. The book does consist of loosely connected stories or memories told within a framework of an old man recalling his youth fondly. There are eight 'memories' shared within the book that are the heart and soul of the book. Seven are the consecutive stories of his summer vacations. Each August (starting in 1929 and ending in 1935), Joey and his younger sister Mary Alice leave Chicago to visit their grandmother who lives in a small town in Illinois.

Here is how the first chapter begins, "You wouldn't think we'd have to leave Chicago to see a dead body. We were growing up there back in the bad old days of Al Capone and Bugs Moran. Just the winter before, they'd had the St. Valentine's Day Massacre over on North Clark Street. The city had such an evil reputation that the Thompson submachine gun was better known as the Chicago typewriter. But I'd grown to the age of nine, and my sister Mary Alice was sever, and we'd yet to see a stiff. We guessed that most of them were where you douldn't see them, at the bottom of Lake Michigan, wearing concrete overshoes. No, we had to travel all the way down to our Grandma Dowdel's before we ever set eyes on a corpse."

Joey's voice is of immediate interest to me. He's a great little narrator. The story is rich in detail, rich in character. Every person--man, woman, child--has depth. Peck is just a genius when it comes to writing, to capturing human personalities with wit and humor and heart. The reader becomes intimately acquainted with Joey, Mary Alice, and most importantly Grandma Dowdel. A woman that is one-of-a-kind. A woman that has spirit, gumption, personality, heart, and a mind of her own. A very strong woman who sees the world in her own unique way.

I definitely recommend A Long Way From Chicago!!! It was a fantastic book.

Le Guin, Ursula. 2004. Gifts.

Gifts had me practically at hello. "He was lost when he came to us, and I fear the silver spoons he stole from us didn't save him when he ran away and went up into the high domains. Yet in the end the lost man, the runaway man was our guide." (1) If the first chapter didn't hook me (which it did) then the second would have certainly, "To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well. It's unwise, though, to think you know how it's going to go, or how it's going to end. That's to be known only when it's over." (15) I hope that gives you a small glimpse of just how magical this fantasy can be.

Here is how the jacket describes it, "Scattered among poor, desolate farms, the families of the Uplands possess gifts. Wondrous gifts: the ability--with a glance, a gesture, a word--to summon animals, bring forth fire, move the land. Fearsome gifts: They can twist a limb, chain a mind, inflict a wasting illness. The Uplanders live in constant fear that one family might unleash its gift against another. Two young people, friends since childhood, decide not to use their gifts. One, a girl, refuses to bring animals to their death in the hunt. The other, a boy, wears a blindfold lest his eyes and his anger kill. In this beautifully crafted story, Ursula K. Le Guin writes of the cruelty of power, of how hard it is to grow up, and how much harder still it is to find, in the world's darkness, gifts of light."

Gifts is the story of Orrec and Gry and the outsider, Emmon, that unknowingly showed them the way out. I loved the story; I loved the characters. Highly recommended. It is a story beautifully and powerfully told. It's not quite your typical framework of storytelling. But it works. It really works.

"Grieving, like being blind, is a strange business; you have to learn how to do it. We seek company in mourning, but after the early bursts of tears, after the praises have been spoken, and the good days remembered, and the lament cried, and the grave closed, there is no company in grief. It is a burden borne alone. How you bear it is up to you. Or so it seems to me." (202)

Michael Sedano

A ticket to Royce Hall this week brings a hot return on investment if scalpers can be trusted. Tickets to King Lear command upwards of $3000 per ducat from a scalpee. Come let us see which of our fans loves us most!

My pair of balcony seats would scalp for around $800 each, which isn't worth the hassle so I'll keep them and attend in propria persona. I bring binoculars and gladly take a relatively comfortable seat in the big old lecture hall doing double duty as a Shakespearean stage.

I am happy I did not scalp tickets to the opening concert of Los Angeles' latest experiment in urban gold mining, Nokia Theatre L.A. Live. Content aside, I'll avoid Nokia.

I ordered my wife our anniversary present for the Dixie Chicks, who, I learned, would open for The Eagles, in the inaugural event at a brand new venue.

Linked by pedestrian space to Staples Center and Los Angeles Convention Center, and new hotels in the works, the developer hopes to turn this into an entertainment nexus. To add to its distinction, it has banned the article "the". Both big attractions, the sports arena and the music hall, bill themselves sans article.

Prior to its renovation, the area featured transient hotels populated by typical raza underclass. When one of those hotels was hit by a rare tornado thirty years ago, I overheard two women outside a ballet studio discussing the news. One remarked to my chagrin, "thank heavens it didn't hit anywhere important!" I wondered if one of those young mothers were among the post middle-age mothers surrounding me at the Nokia for the Dixie Chicks.

I sat row Z last seat on the right and thought I'd be the only mexican in the house when behind me sat a couple fresh out of Sinaloa. Someone unkind would say a couple of chuntys, but they looked right in style with the crowd. I chatted them up a bit, turns out the fellow knows all the words to the Eagles' music and sang loudly the entire performance. Con gusto. Lots of gusto.

Getting to the Nokia is half the confusion. There are new street names that my Prius GPS hasn't yet learned, so navigation is catch-as-catch-can luck. The traffic uniforms answered a query politely, but wrong, leading me through a long way around maze to a point half a block from my starting point, faced with a left turn against oncoming traffic.

Arriving by car directs one to the rear entrance. The neon lit mall and pedestrian space sit somewhere beyond the entrance. Parkers enter directly into the door into a cavernous auditorium. Photographers experience the oppression of no cameras allowed, and the injustice of ubiquitous cell phones twinkling in the darkness like thousands of Tinkerbells.

Nothing distinguishes the interior of the hall. Flat black walls surround the immensity of engineering and construction--no support beams obstruct anyone's view, it's one huge tent. And the show goes on. Sadly, the Dixie Chicks had a bad night. The women sang their bits, the backup guys played theirs at the same time but they never hit it. The Eagles offered a complete performance, satisfying. It's the first time I'd heard their music in one sitting like this and recognize they've earned their reputation. The crowd gave them the kind of wild applause Esa Pekka Salonen got from his Beethoven 7th last month, but with more gusto. That was the best part.

My least favorite experience and this will keep me away for a long time, are the tightly packed, endless rows. To their favor, the Nokia designers leave room enough so my knees don't hit the seatback (unlike many Disney Hall seats). While the absence of aisles means long pan shots for awards t.v. shows, plus hundreds more seats to sell, the uninterrupted rows make a nuisance of thirsty fans. Throughout both performances people trekked from mid-aisle, fifty seats away, to me. Minutes later, they reappeared at my right with two large cups of brew in hand. Across the house the rows did the wave, it wasn't just my row. The Nokia is just too tough a row to how, so I have opted out until something really good comes along. Like a Beatles reunion.

Bits & Pieces. Late news FYI from Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Daniel Alarcón announces South America: Untold Stories. Wednesday October 24, at UC Berkeley, Ted Genoways (Virginia Quarterly Review) Jon Sawyer (Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting) and Alarcón will be hosting a panel discussion called South America: Untold Stories. We'll be presenting the current issue of The Virginia Quarterly Review entitled "South America in the 21st Century."

Panelists include:
Filmmaker Gabrielle Weiss screening her film on the Ghost Train of Buenos Aires
Journalist Pat Joseph discussing the environmental impact of soy production in the Brazilian Amazon

Journalist Kelly Hearn exploring Camisea, Peru's largest natural gas deposits, and the race to control it

The work of Etiqueta Negra journalists will also be presented.

South America: Untold Stories
Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall
Townsend Center for the Study of the Humanities
UC Berkeley
Oct 24, 6pm

For more information about the magazine, please see www.vqronline.org/south-america
*This event is sponsored by the UC Berkeley Center for Latin American Studies*
www.danielalarcon.com


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AUTHOR SIGNINGS AND EVENTS

Saturday, October 27 at 2:30 p.m.
Saturday afternoon begins with a celebration of Latino noir, as local favorite Alex Abella and best-selling Bolivian novelist Juan de Recacoachea discuss their books.

HAVANA NOIR is the 17th in Akashic's series of "Noir" anthologies.

ALEX ABELLA discusses and signs HAVANA NOIR, edited by Achy Obejas
Akashic Books, $15.95 (trade paperback original) and JUAN DE RECACOACHEA discusses and signs AMERICAN VISA. Akashic Books, $14.95 (trade paperback original)

AMERICAN VISA is one of the very few Bolivian novels ever to be translated into English. Unemployed English teacher Mario Alvarez goes from the country to La Paz in an effort to get a visa to visit his son in Miami. But his paperwork is faked, and he needs better documents – which plunges him into an underworld of desperate men and even more dangerous women.


Add your own late-breaking announcements here. Let's see what's happening in your neck of the woods, gente!

At any rate, that's Tuesday, the 23d of October 2007, a day, like any other day, and that's not so bad, que no?

See you next week.

mvs