I’m not normally a big fan of nerdcore, but this should be a requirement for any NES fans of old.

(Via The Daily What)

The Things They Carried

This is a book that all aspiring writers should read, focusing on the importance of story to the world. It also sheds some light as to the ways writers can take what they know, transform it into fiction, but still leave the gravity of truth embedded in it.

No, it was not a war he agreed with, not a war he wanted to be a part of, but he was also able to make me see the reality of being too afraid to *not* go to war when drafted. I could see how this boy had very few other options available to him, makes me grieve all the more for those soldiers who get sent to war without a true choice in the matter, without a true desire to help fight the battles the governments have said are vital to our well-being.

The lyrical beauty of O’Brien’s prose made me cherish the images of war in ways that I would never have thought possible, while at the same time, making me a more solid hippie. As he describes the scene of a young man, “one eye closed, one eye a star shaped hole,” I was taken to the path, taken into the head of the soldiers dealing with this image, taken into the grit that can both scar and create a new man. Being exposed to the brutality of death, the coping mechanisms employed in order to deal with that death and gore, I am grateful that I will likely never have to become one of the soldiers for whom this is personal history.

The Red Tent

I must be on a biblical fiction streak, because, wow, this was another fabulous read… at least for me.

The story of Dinah (she gets chapter 34 of Genesis, kind of…) is told from her point of view in this massive book of her life. We are given background, shadows and highlights, details and grand scheme images, all of which I was fond of. This kind of exploration of a character, who on a read-through the Bible might not (and didn’t for me, at least) garner any further questions, is breath-taking.

Not only are we given a peak into Dinah’s life, though, we are given a possible universe in terms of female relationships in the times of Jacob and Joseph. What it means to be a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a mid-wife, a wet-nurse, a widow, a wanderer… these are what it means to be Dinah. But Diamant’s exploration of this girl (and this woman) goes beyond the gender roles she plays, and allows me to see the omnipresence of femininity, in terms of growth, dreams, and desires.

There are claims that this novel is a bit too free with the sexual descriptions of Dinah, her mothers, and the workings of female lives in general (birthing, feeding, caring, pleasuring), but this could not be further from my read of the novel at all. Instead, I think the book could not have worked without all of these snapshots of a woman’s body and the creation of a niche for that body in the every day lives of the people of the Old Testament.

This is a powerful book for any woman interested in the historical period of Jacob and Joseph, for any woman interested in interpersonal relationships between women (and how they might have a constant structure in time), for any woman interested in faith - how it can be viewed as intrinsic, irresolute, and increased over the course of a life.