But enough about that. Onward.

Recently Whispering Gums asked What do YOU look for in a book review? and one of the things she wondered about was spoilers. As you might guess, many people do not want spoilers and if there are some, they want a warning. I remarked that I didn’t mind spoilers because I’d probably forget all about them by the time I got around to reading the book.

Today I stumbled upon What Do Spoilers Spoil? (via). Stanley Fish argues rather persuasively that spoilers don’t spoil our pleasure in a book unless the book has nothing else going for it but plot. He cites “The Paradox of Suspense” in which a reader (or movie viewer) can know exactly what is going to happen but still experience a sense of suspense – like when I mentioned that every time I reread Pride and Prejudice I worry that maybe this time Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy won’t get together.

No one is exactly sure how the Paradox of Suspense works and some argue that it doesn’t really exist. Whatever the case, Fish makes a great argument about spoilers and why we shouldn’t get so uptight about them. Go give the article a read. I haven’t spoiled all of it for you.

Oh, and don’t forget, tomorrow, May 25th, is Towel Day. Don’t leave home without your towel, especially if you are planning on doing any interstellar hitchhiking!

Set in the fens of Cambridgeshire at an old house known as Ninepins, Laura has been renting out the pumphouse (an old drainage station) to college students. The house falls empty and this time Laura is persuaded to rent it to a 17-year-old girl named Willow. Willow has had a troubled past, but Laura is assured by her social worker, Vince, that everything will be fine. Laura’s twelve-year-old daughter, Beth, hits it off with Willow and Laura is immediately worried about Willow’s influence. But it isn’t Willow Laura has to worry about. Beth is at a new school and has fallen in with some girls of dubious motives. But the more Laura tries to be Momma Bear and protect Beth, the more Beth struggles and rebels. At one point Willow slyly notes,

Laura acted as if fresh vegetables and proper home-cooked meals could solve every problem, could make things whole again when they were broken. But they couldn’t. Nothing could.

As the story progresses we learn more about Willow’s childhood and her own mother, Marianne, who is in a mental hospital.

Marianne and Willow present a neat contrast to Laura and Beth. Both single mothers with only daughters, they did and are doing the best they can. But Marianne’s untreated mental illness made Willow’s childhood especially hard. To Laura, Marianne is motherhood gone all wrong. Willow is envious of Beth and thinks she has nothing to complain about while Beth thinks Willow is the ultimate in cool. The story presents the contrasts without judging. Not once is Marianne condemned for being a bad mother. Instead, we are asked to be sympathetic and understanding, to realize we have blinders and biases and fears that get in the way of being able to see and understand the needs and motives of other people.

Ninepins is a non-sappy and realistic book about mothers and daughters. There is a love interest for Laura but this is low-key and beyond the point of the story. It does, however, get addressed as potentially changing the dynamic of Laura and Beth’s relationship should it progress to something serious.

What I enjoy most about Thornton’s writing is that the characters could be real people. Her stories are also every day sorts of stories that ponder the messiness of families and relationships. The tone of Ninepins is gentle but the story manages to be compelling. And while Willow might be right about a home-cooked meal not being able to fix things that are broken, she does find out that compassion and love go a long way towards making things whole again.

I Shot the Serif (via)

I made it all the way to “director” level which isn’t saying much. The letter “Q” is the trickiest one for me and fools me often. Go there now and play if you have some time to waste.

If you don’t have time to waste then you might want to go and check out Digital and Print: Living in a World of Both/And at the Library of Congress digital preservation blog. There are some wise words from Michael Suarez, Director of the Rare Book School. Did you catch what the man does? Rare. Book. School. If I lived on the East Coast I would enroll in a heartbeat. For those like myself who live far away, at least there are reading lists to delve through. Not quite the same, I know, but it will have to do. Oh, and did anyone else who read the post giggle at the blog poster who seems to think that moving 20 boxes of books is a lot? When I moved into my house in 1999, I had 70 boxes of books and I am sure that if I had to pack them all up now the number will have at least doubled. Twenty boxes! Peanuts!

Speaking of books, it’s time to go and read one. Or two. Maybe three.

We don’t know much about the Huastecs. They lived on Mexico’s northern Gulf coast. Around 1400 this prosperous community was wiped out by the Aztecs. There is no trace of Huastec writing, only Aztec accounts of them that has been transmitted in Spanish after the Spanish conquered the Aztecs. So when looking at this beautiful statue of a woman, nearly life-size and very stylized, information about the people who made her comes filtered through two other languages and two other cultures. Not everything the Spanish said about the Aztecs was true so we can surmise that not everything the Aztecs said about the Huastecs is true. There is even some disagreement over whether the woman is a goddess or a sculpture of a woman from the wealthy classes.

The whole book is a feast. It had me thinking about the nature of history and the stories we tell about ourselves. It had me wondering what about our history and these objects might we be overlooking because we see them with our own biases. And it had me wondering what will survive of us 500, 1000, a million years from now? We are so much better at documenting than we used to be, but even so, not everything can be noted or saved. Choices must be made and whose stories are told and whose are deemed not worth preserving says much about who we are and what we value.

The last few objects in the book belong to our modern era and include a credit card and a solar-powered lamp. Utilitarian both, as well as saying much about our culture, but when compared to ancient shards of pottery or the carving of swimming reindeer (11,000 BC), these modern items are so very ugly.

Which is something else of note; our modern items are often lacking in beauty. I am under no illusions that 1,000 years ago everyone carried water in gorgeous clay pots or wove baskets using artistic patterns. I am sure most items were plain and simple. But even plain and simple have a beauty to them that so much of our mass-produced world lacks. It is rather sad to think about. And maybe that is why do-it-yourself and arts and crafts have been rising in popularity over the last decade or so. Handmade and imperfect has so much more meaning and beauty than the perfect but mass-produced.

But I digress. A History of the World in 100 Objects is a wonderful book. And, even better, the original BBC series broadcast is available for free download as podcasts. So if you don’t want to wait in line at the library you can listen to them on your MP3 player and then look at the photos of the object online. Pretty awesome.

You can expect me to look at the successes and failures of media in terms of portraying women. You can expect me to occasionally mention videogames. You can expect me to touch on the history of women in the genre, riffing off the SF Mistressworks project. You can expect me to highlight discussions about women and genre in the blogosphere — if your not-so-humble correspondent fails to miss them. You can expect me to look at recurring tropes that turn up in genre, often to our detriment. And you can expect me to pop up, yelling, “Feminism WOO YAY!” once or twice a month. (Like a bad penny.)

The first post has loads of links to online feminist geek/SF/genre goodness to keep me busy for days. And, Bourke promises to write about lots of feminist genre writers and their books, so TBR piles beware!

One of the most amazing things about this post, however, is the comments. Usually one can expect some real trolls to turn up with stuff like this. And while there were some challenging males that did make an appearance the general tone did not degrade to name calling and mud slinging.

Sadly, it looks like it is only going to be a twice a month column but I am still pleased. Go check it out and add it to your feed reader.

And while I am on the topic of feminism, have you heard the sad news that Susan Gubar, co-author of Madwoman in the Attic and author and co-author of many other books and articles, is dying of ovarian cancer? She has managed to write a memoir, Memoir of a Debulked Woman: Enduring Ovarian Cancer, that was just published April 30th. I’m number 33 in line for it at the library so will probably find myself reading it in the middle of summer. Of course I will post about it.