Bookish Thoughts | Bookshelf Fantasies

Let’s be honest, shall we? If you came across this description of a soon-to-be-released book, would you want to read it?

When Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…. Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the town’s council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

(book description lifted from the nice people at Amazon)

Sounds okay, but it wouldn’t rise to the top of my to-read pile (which I swear grows a few inches taller every time my back is turned, but that’s another story for another day). I tend toward the dark, the weird, the magical or mysterious, the slightly off-kilter in my must-reads. A story about small town politics? Well, maybe when I have nothing else to do… and when I’ve run out of Stephen King or Christopher Moore to fill in the slow moments.

BUT… and it’s a very big but (ha! I can hear my 9-year-old saying, “Mom! You just said ‘big butt’!”), this is no ordinary, run-of-the-mill tale of life in a charming English town. This is The Casual Vacancy, the debut adult novel by J.K. Rowling! Changes the picture a bit, doesn’t it?

According to Amazon’s stats as of today, The Casual Vacancy is currently #223 in their sales ranking, with still two months to go until its release date in late September. If this wasn’t a book by J. K. Rowling but rather by some unknown author, I’d imagine that the preorders on this would be non-existent. BUT (again with the big but…) this is the queen of bestsellers, the creator of Harry Potter! Who doesn’t want to read whatever she writes next?

I can only imagine the conversations between J. K. and her agent and her publisher. “Well done, you’ve finished the most successful book series in the history of the universe! What are you going to do next?” “Ummmm….”

I suppose it would have been easiest for J. K. to coast for a bit, write more tales set in the Potter ‘verse. C’mon, don’t we all want to know more about Neville? That Teddy Lupin seems like an interesting guy, right?

And too, she doesn’t actually have to do anything for the rest of her life, and she’ll still be more or less a gazillionaire forever, thanks to Harry.

It takes a certain amount of courage to go off in a new direction, to say to her legions of fans, “Hey, I know you lot want more wizards and magic — but I’m over it. Moving on, here!” And no matter what she writes next, there’s certain to be an intense amount of scrutiny and incredibly high expectations. The schadenfreude crowd would love, I’m sure, to be able to say, “Oh, J. K. Rowling? One-trick pony. She has nothing else to say after Harry Potter.”

So, onward to The Casual Vacancy. I wonder — is this a story she was dying to tell? Did she have a sudden burst of inspiration, see whole new worlds opening up before her? Has she always wanted to explore small-town English politics?

Or, perhaps, is The Casual Vacancy just a first tentative step toward moving into a post-Harry Potter writing life? Get that first book out there, like throwing a bone to a hungry dog, let all the people salivating over her next work see that she’s capable of writing something outside the HP world. If The Casual Vacancy is released to big fanfare and the world reads it, shrugs its collective shoulders, and realizes that J. K. Rowling is a novelist who will be around for a while writing lots of different books, then maybe the pressure will be off.

Who knows, maybe it’s the next book after The Casual Vacancy that ‘s the one that she’s just dying to write, and The Casual Vacancy is just a test balloon to get us all to back off and ease up on the expectations.

As for me, I’m sure I will read it. I love Harry Potter, world without end, and I’m willing to give J. K. the benefit the doubt, even if it means reading a book about Muggles.

Although it would definitely be cool if a dementor or two showed up in Pagford.

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

What about you? Are you planning to read The Casual Vacancy?

During my recent re-read of A Discovery of Witches, Deborah Harkness’s huge bestseller from 2011, I noticed something that hadn’t struck me as forcefully the first time around.

Man, that Diana Bishop runs a lot.

Oh, to be sure, there’s an explanation for why her fanatical running routines get such prominence in the story. Diana’s a spell-bound witch, you see, which means that she has a huge store of power inside her that she can’t access and use via magic. All that back-up results in an excess of adrenaline, and to release it, Diana runs. Constantly. And rows. Up and down the river, in the fog, occasionally with her eyes closed, but you get the point. That woman MOVES.

Earlier this year, I read Ocean’s Touch, an erotic story by Denise Townsend centered on a lonely widow and the sexy selkie who reawakens her to the possibilities of life and love. (Yes, I said sexy selkie. Deal with it.) Meredith is smart, sad, responsible… and she runs. A lot. Miles at a time.

And there’s more. It seems like every other book I read lately features a strong, sexy, intelligent woman with an intense, highly demanding fitness routine. A couple months back, I read the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs, in which the heroine is a car mechanic, a shape-shifter, and a highly trained expert in a specialized martial arts discipline.

Even in the supremely silly Austenland by Shannon Hale, the Darcy-obsessed main character is so stymied by her faux-Regency immersion vacation that she must sneak outside for an early morning run in the gardens, corset and all. (Lesson learned: Corsets are not appropriate activewear. Invest in yoga pants instead).

Leaving aside Austenland, whose lead character simply cannot be taken seriously, the running and exercise habits of fictional women seem to be a sort of short-hand to denote certain character traits: intensity, intelligence, fierce independence, determination to go it alone. In the first three examples I mentioned, Diana, Meredith and Mercy start their stories as talented women who are walled off from their passions. When I read about a woman who’s a serious runner or other type of athlete, I generally know what to expect — this is a woman to be reckoned with, and often someone with issues to work out.

And where does that leave all of us, we the readers? If you’re like me, a low-to-moderate achiever on the scale of devotion to fitness, it’s a bit tough to take sometimes. Not only is Diana Bishop a Yale professor and a powerful witch, but she runs ten miles a day! Not only can Mercy fix a VW with her eyes closed, she can also kick your butt! Thank you, dear authors, for yet another reason to feel inadequate.

Perhaps this factors into why I love Jane True so very much. Jane is the creation of Nicole Peeler, and is the hilarious heroine of Tempest Rising and four other books (so far). Jane reads, works in a bookstore, and her appetite for hot sex is matched only by her appetite for delicious food. (Okay, to be fair, Jane also swims in the ocean on a daily basis, but that’s just to recharge her magical mojo… too much to explain here, but in Jane’s case, the exercise is part of her magic, not just a piece of her perfect fitness regimen.) Besides the fact that end I up laughing out loud whenever I read these books, I think I love Jane because if I met her in real life, I wouldn’t be intimidated by her perfectly toned abs and her runner’s legs — I’d be too busy pouring the hot chocolate and cutting up some pie to go with.

A final glimpse of the world of Jane True, in which our heroine finds herself confronting some hard choices in a diner with her would-be lover:

I wanted them all, but I also knew I was being greedy. Then Anyan’s deep voice rumbled from next to me.

“Why don’t I get the three-sausages and mash with the special sausages, and you get the same thing with the traditional ones, and the vegetarian, and we can share?”

At his words, I nearly choked on my emotions. You’re perfect, I thought…