Dollhouse: Epitaph One

If you haven't seen it, you should. (Download it from itunes if you don't want to buy the DVD). Dollhouse's second season premieres this Friday, September 25th at 9 p.m. Eastern/8 p.m. Central. Spoilers below the fold.

Alexandria

Earlier this week I saw that it was the 1,928th anniversary of the day (September 14) that Domitian, the last member of the Flavian Dynasty, became Emperor of the Roman Empire. The Flavian Dynasty lasted not quite thirty years, beginning in A.D. 69 when the Roman Senate declared the soldier Vespasian emperor and ended with the assassination of Domitian, his son. The only other emperor in the dynasty was Vespasian's other son Titus.

Discuss Among Yourselves

I belong to two different reading groups and, recently, I've been thinking of taking a break from both of them. Not a permanent break, just a hiatus.

One of my groups meets once a month and the other meets about every six weeks. That means that every two months I have to read three books for my groups. And that is certainly a manageable number. But I am having a problem with it. It is not that I can't read three books in two months but I am, more and more, finding that I want to use the time I take to read those three books to read different books.

Petty Details

Reaching into the bag of "Brit Lit" last July I was surprised to find a novel that took place in Canada.  Camilla Gibb was born in London but grew up in Toronto and still lives in Canada.  Her second novel, The Petty Details of So-and-So's Life, was published in 2002 and I'm sorry I missed it and didn't read it earlier.   

The story could have been very depressing.  Gibb creates a pair of siblings, Emma and Blue Taylor, and takes us through their early lives into young adulthood.  They are the children of dysfunctional (to say the least) parents.  Their father is a dreamer of dreams that never pan out - inventions that never get invented.  Their mother is ... depressed.  The children have only each other and develop a very close bond.  They communicate in their own language.  They even try to communicate without words.  But in some ways their bond is also dysfunctional because in many ways they don't understand each other and as they grow older they realize that they react to the earlier abuse by their father (and mother) in very different ways.

This could have been a very depressing novel but Gibb's witty writing relieves the grimness of the narrative.    For instance, when the family moves to Niagara Falls there is no room in the fully packed car for the children, so the mother puts the four and five year old children on a bus by themselves with a sign:  "Niagara Falls or Bust".  And they make it there safely.

The day that their father leaves the family and disappears is the day their lives diverge.  Blue's life becomes an ongoing search for his father.  Emma tries to live her life but realizes that she is a dreamer like her father.  She becomes an archaeology student and discovers that nobody wants to hear the big theory - in archaeology it is the petty details that matter. 

This is the story of two children who are too close to each other and who have to become separate.  In the end Blue makes a strange sacrifice that he thinks is to save his sister.  But far from seeming the pointless act that it, in fact, is, the reader can recognize it as an act of love.

Every Dog Has His Day -- To Swim

Pools close to humans on Labor Day but it usually takes a while for the closing process for the winter to be complete. And sometimes this benefits pets. For instance, this weekend at the Maplewood Family Aquatic Center they are holding a Dog Swim, "Where Pooches Rule the Pool." Proceeds benefit the Maplewood Dog Park.

Informative?

Booking through Thursday asks: What’s the most informative book you’ve read recently?

This is hard because I've just started reading again after my unintentional hiatus. And I haven't read much non-fiction.

I'm in the middle of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle so I guess I'll go with that one. It is making shopping at the farmer's market a bit more interesting.

Barbara Trapido

AndiF's bag of "Brit Lit" included two novels by Barbara Trapido:  The Travelling Hornplayer and Frankie & Stankie.  I had never read anything by Trapido before and, after reading the The Travelling Hornplayer,  I was happy to have another of her novels to start immediately.

The Travelling Hornplayer is an ensemble story but it revolves around a cast of characters that knew the deceased Lydia Dent who died, suddenly, as a teenage girl in London.   Her only sister Ellen Dent is profoundly changed by the death.   One of her college roommates, Stella, is the daughter of novelist Jonathan Goldman, outside of whose flat Lydia was killed.  But none of these characters seem to put the connection together, at least not at first.