Books! Jospeh Boyden's Orenda and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

First, Orenda.  First because I read it first and first because I think it's one of the most important books written in the last decade or so.  Orenda is the Things Fall Apart of the Americas.  Just as Chinua Achebe showed the fast deterioration of a world that seemed to be working just fine in Africa, Joseph Boyden showed us what happened through the colonization of North America.

Most importantly, he showed us the nuanced version in which First Nations people were and were not victims.  They were powerful, independent and in charge, dealing with the French as equals for a time.  Their own choices, because they were actors in their own history and not passive victims, were part of the shifting tides of history.  They took French priests into their villages because they thought it would bring them trading advantages, not because they were forced (or worse yet, fools).  There was no way to no that disease would follow, that European rivalries would exacerbate their own historical conflicts with the Haudenosaunee.

Yes, the French held racist attitudes, and they acted in their own interests, but Joseph Boyden's fictional account does more to help people understand the complexities of history than just about anything out there.  It's brilliant and supremely important.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is not a typical book for me.  It is something of a science fiction touchstone apparently and served as the basis for Blade Runner.  But it's much less dramatic than Blade Runner yet somehow much more pregnant with meaning.  The 'andy' characters are not super-human; they are, more than anything, simply human.  And this is what prompts Deckard to struggle with what it means to be alive.

Read both, but if you have to read one, choose Orenda.

Fifteen Dogs - I'll never look at dogs the same way again

I have been remiss in posting lately (very busy) but I had to write about Fifteen Dogs.  This is André Alexis's 2015 book that won the Giller Prize, and it certainly deserved it.  Just as Animal Farm used barnyard animals to provoke readers into thinking about the nature of being human, so does this book.  In contrast to Orwell's work, however, his characters are not simply allegories for humans. They remain dogs - dogs who have suddenly gained human intelligence, but still dogs.

Orwell wanted to show us human behaviour; Alexis wants us to think about how our human intelligence would irrevocably change another species.  In so doing, we must think about whether the abilities that come with our intelligence make us happy or not.  As Hermes and Apollo (whose bet prompted the sudden changes in the fifteen canines) witness, it's not clear cut in any way.  Self-awareness, rational thought, and deeper emotional connections come with a price.  It's not all art and poetry.  They give us a tremendous capacity for love and art, but they also give us a capacity to suffer in new ways.

I want to recommend the book to some of my students who believe so passionately that to suffer and feel is what makes us human.  I'm not sure what they would think, but it would be a great book to teach and discuss.

Gold Fame Citrus

Gold Fame Citrus is the future California (well, the Southwest in general) we all figure will come to be some day.  It's also the California a few (million?) 'love to hate it' people secretly wish for.  In its 'dystopian-ness', it might seem like just another well-written book about society after the accumulated effects of our avarice and consumption of every possible resource.

But Claire Vaye Watkins has done something 'more' with the apocalypse.  She has mined California's long-running love affair with cults and religious leaders to show us what California might be after the dust of modern civilisation settles.  We see the desperate willingness of some to believe in the false promises of others and their willingness to destroy those who stubbornly refuse to be absorbed into their world view.  It's compelling because she makes it seem somehow plausible and alluring that California will eventually revert to being, not the land of Hollywood and tech, but the realm of the misfits and the fringe.

It doesn't have the all-encompassing feeling of an entirely new world the way Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy does.  Instead it's a bit more rooted in the here and just a little bit later than now of a world we know, much like Walking Dead (but without the zombies).  Her characters, Luz and Ray, are beautiful in their loving dissimilarity.

It's not a middle school book (for the sex and a bit of language), but it would make a great IB or AP English novel.  It's fodder for imagining what we create out of our own fall.

The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan

Cathy Marie Buchanan’s The Painted Girls combines four elements to tell a compelling story of three sisters.  The grinding poverty of late 19th century Paris, the spreading belief in biological determinism, the emerging art of Edgar Degas, and the world of ballet at the Paris Opera are woven together to form the backdrop of the stories of Marie, Antoinette, and Charlotte von Goethem, three real young women who all danced in the ballet.  Though Charlotte had the most successful dance career, Marie was immortalised in Degas’s series of works based on models from the ballet.  She was the model for Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (among many others), one of the most successful sculptures to emerge from the era.  

Buchanan constructs a fictional story of the relationship between the sisters but most compellingly their relationship to the social forces at play around them.  In her story, Antoinette falls in love with headline-grabbing convicted murderer of the time, Emile Abadie.  Marie’s innate goodness crashes headlong into a world that shows very little kindness.  All of them confront the limited options of the poor, and particularly of poor women, of their times.  

Around them, ‘scientists’ are publishing papers linking physical characteristics like brow lines and jaws to criminal tendencies.  Others see the root of poverty as a flaw in moral character attributable to evolutionary flaws.  In the minds of many, character and behaviour are fixed, pre-determined by forces deep inside us.  In a world like this, Buchanan shows us that to simply hope is to struggle and fight. 

It’s a time where Emile Zola creates works that show the ceaseless struggles of the working poor.  But it’s also a time in which many believe that their ‘condition’ is part of the natural order of things.  The most poignant and powerful moment of the book is when Marie sees the reviews (real reviews from real newspapers and magazines of the time) praising Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.

With bestial impudence she thrusts her face forward.  Why is her forehead, half hidden by her bangs, already bearing the signs, like her mouth, of a profoundly heinous nature? Perhaps Degas knows of the dancer’s future things we do not.  He has picked from the hothouse of the theatre, a sapling of precocious depravity, and he shows her to us withered before her time (p. 317, from Le Temps).

As with most historical fiction, it’s the setting that counts most and Buchanan has made it the villain in the novel, a powerful and conniving force that her heroes must confront.  

Distantly Related to Freud - A Coming of Age Story

I just finished Distantly Related to Freud by Ann Charney the other day.  I read it 'blind', without even reading the jacket description.  As it opens, I imagined it to be a story of Holocaust survivors creating a new life for themselves in 1950s Montreal.  It seemed, after the first few pages to be about struggle and the things people have to overcome in order to create a sense of normalcy.

But it wasn't.

I had to spend a bit of time thinking about whether I was disappointed that Charney instead wrote a normal story about a normal life.  In the end I decided that I wasn't; she had created a character, Ellen, and a novel that explored something real and relatable.  Ellen's coming of age among people who have been touched by tragedy and brutality does not prevent her life from being 'normal.'  She wants to know about sex and her own artistic ability.  She wonders about her difference from others and how to find her place in a world that is good to her but simultaneously full of people she can't quite feel completely connected to.

In that, it's a real story about a real life.  Charney's Ellen is particularly fascinating because she defies so many expectations.  The book opens in 1952 and continues through the 1960s, times of important social changes.  In Ellen, we see someone who was ready for those social changes and embraced them not as someone rebelling against social norms but as someone who simply questioned what she wanted in life.  Anyone familiar with Montreal and Quebec society in the 1950s and 1960s knows that this makes Ellen a pretty remarkable character.  Those were conservative times.  Charney's understated description and narration serve to make Ellen something of a quiet hero, a young woman who is not openly defying a social order but who is simply changing it by following her own path.

More Small Steps (London)

I read the novel Brick Lane by Monica Ali years ago and loved it.  Yesterday I got to visit (with great people).  It's a great area and probably a lot more inviting than the Brick  Lane of the novel.

Ascension by Steven Galloway

In Ascension Steven Galloway has told a great story with some wonderfully diverse elements.  He has woven together the story of the circus, the feats of wire-walking, circus life, the persecution of Roma people, and family drama in one novel.  It's immensely readable with original characters.

What stands out more than anything, however, is the opening chapter.  Galloway has written one of the most tense, stressful chapters I have ever read.  In it, Salvo Ursari, his main character, attempts a walk between the (now destroyed) World Trade Center towers that left me sweating and breathing hard.  I didn't dare skip a single word, but was, at the same time, desperate to finish.  It's just twelve pages, but twelve pages that I will never forget.

The Ravine by Paul Quarrington

Paul Quarrington’s The Ravine is one of those books I ended up picking up simply because it was ‘homey’.  It’s set explicitly in Toronto, and I am always a sucker for something explicitly Canadian.  It’s silly, but when you are from a ‘small’ place, it is sometimes gratifying to see a place you know well through the eyes of someone else.  New York, for example, is portrayed all the time to the point that it’s practically a character in films, novels, and music.  Other places, not so much.  Places in Canada are often backdrops or stand-ins for other places; they rarely get pride of place in creative works.  That may be a silly reason to read a book, but it’s led me down some interesting artistic paths.  

Besides its explicit Canada connection, Quarrington’s novel is deeply rooted in an incident in one of Toronto’s ravines.  For anyone who has explored the ravines, you know they are special in that they are a world next to and below the real world.  In a city that is pretty tame by most standards, walking into a ravine is something like going through the wardrobe to reach Narnia.  Even in bland suburban Toronto, to head down a wooded slope into one of the ravines is something of an adventure.  

Rushing creeks (and even a river), wild animals, trees, flowers, and, on occasion, some sketchy people are the world of the ravine.  In the winter, snow can pile high and animal footprints - deer, coyote, rabbits et al - remind you that you have left behind the city and entered a more magical space.  Many are the adult Torontonians today who have a story to tell about time spent in the ravines.  

It is one of those moments that gives Quarrington his title and his main character, Phil, a direction-changing life-defining moment.  I guess it is that idea - that a life can be changed so profoundly by one incident - that kept me from loving the book.  Of course those moments do exist (and apparently did for Quarrington himself if you read the article linked above), but more than anything they are plot devices.  The best fiction does not depend on plot devices to tell a story.  

Plot devices aside, Quarrington has mastered the tragicomic.  His characters are wallowing in misery, but the story is dripping with humour.  Seeing what’s funny in the midst of a life that is quickly collapsing is a talent; writing about it so that readers feel empathy while laughing is a gift. 

You can’t go wrong spending time in ravines.  

The Way Through Doors by Jesse Ball (a review, this time)

A few days ago I wrote something of an homage to The Way Through Doors by Jesse Ball.  [The Jesse Ball link there is about as enigmatic as the book, so if you want more of the straight story on his career, click here.]

The book is homage-worthy.  This is one of those books where, as a reader, you pause at times to contemplate just where the story came from.  It springs seemingly from some dream-like state in which everything is possible.  Ball was not bound by the traditional narrative form.  Links between ideas and characters can seem ephemeral, yet they are beautiful.

This is not a book for everyone.  I can think of many people who would dislike it (intensely), but it is a rare gift of imagination for anyone who is willing to immerse him/herself in the gauze of Ball's creation.  I paused often while reading to try and visualise the world I had entered.  In doing so, the image that first came to mind was a map of the 'world' in some video games.  In some of them you can cut to a map that shows the levels or worlds, explored and unexplored.

In some that I have played (and it's been a very long time since I have), the map resembles ant tunnels underground.  Usually there is only one connection between the levels/worlds, like a gate or a door.  Within the levels, it feels like a self-contained and independent place in that each has an environment and characters.  To wake up in one of these worlds, it would seem like the world, but having played/worked to get there, one realises that it is only part of the puzzle.  By playing through, one sees the connections and feels a sense of completeness.

Reading The Way Through Doors feels something like that map.  The parts of the novel fit together to form a beautifully hallucinatory whole; the connections between them are delicate whimsy things that a careless reader could almost miss (just like getting lost in a level of a video game).  Reading through connects and completes the journey.

I have thought a lot about how to best appreciate The Way Through Doors (especially since I am encouraging several people to read it).  I alluded to this in my first post, but Doors should ideally be read in one sitting.  To sit down and suspend one's connection to daily life means being able to take off the leaden shoes of our expectations and let our minds float along with Ball's.  Putting the book down means having to re-enter and reorient oneself to the story.

With no pagination, no chapters, and only a fascinating system of line-numbering, that re-immersion is not as easy as with other novels.  So take my word for it - find a comfortable chair, start in the morning when your head is still a bit fuzzy and follow Selah Morse and his guess artist friend through the doors.  You might not finish until the evening, but you'll see and remember those magical doors and remember how you got from one room to another.

That is when the novel is at its most beautiful.

The Way Through Doors by Jesse Ball (In pale imitation but with great respect)

He rose from the ashes and sprinkled water all about.  The day was proving to be one of great potential with birds suddenly chirping their approval of the rising sun.

"Yes, you're right.  Today does indeed look promising," Adam agreed with his avian companions. "We should visit the bookstore for today we will surely find just the right book."

Adam strode away, looking back only to be sure that the fire was indeed out.  The last thing he wanted was for his carelessness to cause a conflagration that would ruin the promising day dawning for his feathered neighbours.  Passing his local news stand, Adam stopped to buy a package of his favourite smoked fish flavoured candy.  He planned to save it for later, knowing full well that his winged neighbours would be greatly offended if he did not share when he got home.  Somehow they had a way of sniffing out any unshared meals or snacks and expressed their displeasure in one of two ways.  If it was minor, they would simply begin their morning chirping extra early to wake him up.  Since every moment of slumber counted in his line of work, this was an effective form of reprimand.

In serious cases - and he believed that the smoked fish candy would count as one of those - they would swoop down over the ashes of his fire.  The result would be a great cloud of dust that got into everything you could imagine - his hair, clothes, and eyes among them.  Worse yet, when they were really mad, they would time their swooping to coincide with his meals leaving all his food covered in thick grey ash.

Yes, indeed, it was better to wait and share when he returned to the ashes from which he had risen.

The newsagent cheerily rang up his purchase and announced, "That will be $2.35, Adam."  He paused then, cocking his head to the side to regard him.  "I can see from the twinkle in your eye, Adam, that you are off to buy a book.  And, given this wondrous sun-filled sky, I believe you will find just the right book.

"That is indeed my plan!" said Adam.

"If that is the case, then may I recommend this fine literary supplement from our city's daily paper?  They have a special section on choosing just the right book."

"Oh, that sounds perfect.  I will take one.  How much is it?"

"For you, young sir, take it as a gift.  Think of it as my way of furthering arts and culture in our fine city."

Adam continued down the street, happier than ever and now fully convinced that he would find just the right book.  Passing the park on the way to the bookstore, he suddenly heard a friendly shout.

"Adam, please, come join me for a moment."  It was his friend Mariana.  She wasn't much of a reader but she had a natural talent for numbers.

Adam sat down and told Mariana about his day and his quest for the perfect book.  She was curious but had no recommendations to give.  After all, she wasn't much of a reader.  "I will say, however, that the square root of the number of pages in your literary supplement is 9.  Given that today is the third anniversary of my graduation, it seems prudent to multiply 9 x 3.  Hmmm.  Yes, exactly, go to page 27 in your supplement."  At that, Mariana rose to leave.  As it was her graduation anniversary she had a speech to prepare.

Adam, now comfortably settled on a park bench on a fine sunny day, turned to page 27 and began to read.

"The Way Through Doors is the perfect book for this wondrous sunny day.  After rising early from the ashes and buying some fish candy, nothing will be better than to settle yourself on a park bench and read.  

Having started this wondrous day early, you will have time to read The Way Through Doors in one delirious sitting, the way it was meant to be read.  Yes, you may stop to stare up at the sky now and then through the leafy canopy of the park, but otherwise, you can follow the heroic adventures of Selah Morse, pamphleteer and city inspector, and his guess artist friend.  

They follow a sinuous path of storytelling to dizzying depths and mythical heights.  

In short, this is the perfect book for you. 

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie: An Important Accomplishment

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is Sherman Alexie's young adult novel about a high school age boy, Arnold Spirit, Junior, who risks his identity, family and community ties, and humiliation for the chance to hope for a better life.  It's a beautiful story accompanied by great illustrations, but that's not what makes it a great teachable book. 

I have worked for part of my career with low income students and the other part with mostly upper-middle class to wealthy students.  This latter group, even when they are the most empathetic, caring young people you could ever hope to encounter, has tremendous difficulty understanding some of the pernicious effects of poverty.  They understand the symptoms - things like access to health care, graduation rates, and income disparities - but not the effects a life of poverty can have on people.  And that makes sense; It's hard to understand the ways in which a life of poverty can change a person. 

Data and statistics are effective ways to show people why addressing societal problems is important, and I have students who volunteer, donate, and write passionately about these issues because they study this data.  Most of them have a fairly developed sense of fairness and social justice.  Nevertheless, for many of my young students (but I believe for many people in general), when it comes to individuals, they often believe that 'if s/he just tried a little harder/set aside a little bit of money/didn't drink', s/he could change his/her life.  Is it true?  Yeah, to a point.  Is it extremely difficult and rare?  Yes.  Understanding why it's hard is often elusive. 

What Alexie shows through The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is why it's so difficult.  Junior is a heroic protagonist because he takes such an enormous risk to escape the culture of poverty he has grown up in.  Alexie shows how a culture of dreams denied can not just rob people of opportunity but also of hope.  And he doesn't do it by making the reader pity Junior; he does it by showing us how hard he must fight - and how much he must risk - to change his life. 

This is the power of stories and of literature, to allow us to see perspectives and feel empathy towards those whose lives are not our own. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Alexie has put that power to great use and possibly changed the lives (or at least the minds) of many young readers. With this novel he has created a powerful tool for teachers and students everywhere. 

Carry Me Down by M.J. Hyland: 4.5 of 5

Carry Me Down by M.J. Hyland is my first book in what seems like a long time.  Looking back at the date of my last book post (21 May), it hasn't been that long, but the craziness of the end of the school year and moving make that last book seem very far away.  

Carry Me Down was a great return to reading with another author I've never encountered before.  Her main character, John Egan, is one of those characters you wonder about long after reading the novel.  Did Hyland invent him from scratch?  Is he an amalgam of people she has known?  Or is he somehow inspired by her own life?  Like Dawn from Welcome to the Dollhouse, Todd Haynes's film, John Egan lingers, indeed tingles, in my mind still (though for totally different reasons than Dawn).  

Hyland reveals a suffering pre-adolescent, unusually tall and physically mature for his age but with all the insecurities that arise unbidden from the well of puberty.  Somewhere in all this, John comes to believe that he can detect lies.  With his feet in both the world of his childhood and of adulthood, he fails to see that some lies are actually far easier to live with than the truths they cover.  As he navigates these increasingly muddy waters, his fairly comfortable world seems to unravel. 

The unraveling is more compelling for its contrast to the opening scene of (seeming) simple domestic tranquility.  John's family lives with truths ignored or lies unconfronted, but reality invades.  As it invades, we are left to ponder whether John is falling apart (understandably so) or manifesting the first signs of mental illness.  

Are these the normal struggles of someone figuring out his/her sexuality while also trying to find friends?  Are his coping mechanisms perhaps a bit self-destructive but temporary?  We all spend a lot of time in our own heads at that age - part of the reason early adolescence can be overwhelming.  Those things that trouble us can seem inescapable.  John's behaviour is erratic, but we are left to wonder whether it's temporary or the beginning of something worse. 

Days after reading the book, I am still thinking of John Egan, hoping that these were just 'bad' times and his behaviour just a phase. 

That I'm still worried must mean that Hyland got it right when she wrote Carry Me Down.  Be well, John Egan. 

The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht (4 of 5)

Martin 'Mottl' Simmonds finds his life transformed three times by the sudden entrances/exits to/from his life of brilliant violinist Dovidl Rapoport.  It is these transformations - the idea that one person could so exert an influence on another - that is at the heart of The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht.  Dovidl's first entrance on the stage of Simmonds' life is the most believable, shaking up his pre-war London childhood world of benign neglect.  As the Nazis rise in Europe and Rapoport's family disappears in the maw of the Warsaw ghetto, Simmonds takes on the responsibility of companion and muse, nursing his friend's musical talent.  All the while he happily takes his place as second - just outside the spotlight that shines ever brighter on his friend both at home and in the musical world.

When Rapoport flees his seemingly bright future, Simmonds stumbles through life - mediocrity defines him.  Without the shining light of Rapoport, his music, and the force of his personality, Simmonds pursues nothing, simply moving forward because time does.  On a regional sales trip, through a quite (perhaps overly) elaborate series of events, Simmonds rediscovers Rapoport.  He faces the emotional damage he suffered as a result of Rapoport's escape and is, as a result, emboldened, confronting both his past and his future.  When Rapoport disappears yet again, Simmonds is free - free of his past and free to pursue any future he wants.  His wagon unhitched from the brilliance of a virtuoso, he can merely be.  

That one person could so profoundly affect another seems hard to fathom, yet it remains a fascinating idea.  Lebrecht constructs the novel in such a way, that the reader can believe it.  Rapoport is tormented by the loss of his family and his people at the hands of the Nazis, so is it any harder to imagine that Simmonds could be shaken to his core by the loss of the man who roused him from the slumber of an unhappy childhood?  The circumstances of the disappearance, reappearance, and final disappearance may test the limits of patience a bit, but the effect it has on Simmonds's character is a great subject to explore.

Lebrecht also does well what I love most in historical fiction.  The layers of reality underneath the fictional story demand exploration.  I read this on paper, and I am glad of that.  Otherwise, the narrative would have been constantly interrupted as I looked up references, events, and people.  I ended up fascinated by the twentieth century masters of classical music, a world I have very little interest in normally.  The lives and deaths of great talents, some because of the Holocaust, created both a great backdrop for the intricacies of the Mottl/Dovidl relationship and a window on a transformative period in history.  And Lebrecht shows its transformative effect on the world of European Jews, on Britain, and on culture.  As it is, I have about fifteen folded pages to go back and look up references for.

Something to savour after the book is done.

González and Daughter Trucking Co.: A Road Novel (4 of 5)

 I just finished María Amparo Escandón's novel, González and Daughter Trucking Co.: A Road Novel.  It's good.  The best part of the novel is the idea of storytelling and its cathartic power.  Both for the storyteller, Libertad, and her audience of prisoners, the tales of the road provide the means of either facing down the past or of providing enough distance from the present that the future seems like something that can be faced.  I like the idea of using the book in class as an accessible way of introducing students to the idea of a novel about telling stories.

Escandón's characters are all kind-hearted and the novel is full of a feeling of loving fun.  In this sense it can feel a bit trite - that whole prisoners with a heart of gold and a painful past thing - but it's a cast of characters you care about.  If a writer could do one thing well, creating characters the reader cares about has to be one of the most important.  It seems like an ideal novel to be turned into a film, and, surprise, it's in the works.

After reading this one, my interest is piqued enough to read Escandón's other works as well - Esperanza's Box of Saints and Carcass.   Carcass, a collection of short stories that you can download here, looks particularly interesting as it ties in with two aspects of the González and Daughter, the final terrifying drive down the highways of Baja and Sofia's museum of wrecked cars.

Plainsong by Kent Haruf: The McPheron Brothers

Plainsong is another book that somehow ended up on my shelf - not a typical choice for me - but I loved the book. What stood out for me the most, however, were two of Haruf's characters - the McPheron brothers. 

I'd like to meet the McPherons.  More than that, a part of me hopes they are real and still living in the Eastern half of Colorado. Harold and Raymond are two old bachelor brothers living out on a cattle ranch by themselves, tending their animals and sharing a splendidly quiet seclusion - they aren't the two people most people I know would think I want to meet, but Haruf invented two special men.  

The two embody the sentiment of the title - down to earth and rooted in what matters. Their kindness, no their goodness, ties the novel together. Harold and Raymond give to those who need without judgement. They change when change means making someone else's life a better one. 

There aren't many McPherons out there, but I feel like I've been lucky enough to meet a couple.  To my shame, they are a 'type' outwardly speaking that I would likely regard with some suspicion, figuring them to be conservative and harsh in their judgement of those who do not conform to their world view.  Haruf reminds me that, like the brothers, I should give a little more than that.

Plus, they have a fine sense of humour (as evidenced below).

(Absence of quotes is Haruf's choice.)

-----

     Then Raymond opened his hand and let go. The man stood up. You dumb old son of a bitch, he said. I was joking. 

     You got some of that right, Raymond said. 

Animal Farm Revisted

Like so many others, I first encountered George Orwell's amazing Animal Farm when I was in junior high.  I loved it and appreciated its message at a pretty good level.  I had a good teacher (Mr. Melcher) at the time, so he helped make sure I explored both the historical context and the thematic importance of the novel.

Unknown, http://bit.ly/1aSitZm

I recently decided to read the novel again both because some of my students are reading it and because I find the idea of authority to be particularly relevant today.   Rereading it as a teacher is fascinating on many levels.

At my grade level, the book isn't a great choice for a whole class novel, but it worked as book club choice for some of my more sophisticated readers.  The drawback to book clubs, of course, is that students don't get to explore a novel quite so deeply because the teacher is working with multiple groups and multiple books.  As I rotated through book club groups, I wanted to be able to jump in with the best possible questions and/or answers about symbolism, theme, and historical representations.

[No offence to Marie Lu, but there isn't quite the same need to be right on top of a book when students are reading Legend.]

That takes care of the professional...

On the personal front, I want to protect the naive Boxers and the idealistic Snowballs of the world.  I wish desperately to counsel them and tell them how they can direct their love of what is right in a direction that will keep dreams of better systems, better ideas, and better people/animals alive.  Not only do they need defending from the Napoleons of the world, but also from those who surround the Napoleons and nod in agreement at all they say.

I want to help keep ideals and ideas at the forefront of people's minds - not let them slip into some fuzzy haze so that they can be manipulated and moulded into something that suits the purpose of those in charge; may the beautiful ideal persist.

The Centennial Edition of Animal Farm includes some great essays to preface the book.  Among them, Russell Baker's stood out for its reminder that Orwell's work was frowned upon for its criticism of Stalin and the Soviet Union.  At the time, both had many friends in the West; Orwell's narrative apparently did not sit well with many of his peers on the left.  As Baker points out, Orwell was the type "that real politicians detest" because he could not "bear to let any wrong deed go undenounced"(p. xvi).

Perhaps more than anything, I want to help ensure that there is always a safe place for people like Orwell to shine a great light upon power misused and ideals abused.  As a person and as a teacher, can I do anything more important?