18. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire

Maguire, Gregory. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.

There are a number of ways that books show up on my lists. These include but are not limited to:

• I was supposed to read it for a class but didn't
• I read part of it once and feel I should finish it
• It's one of those cultural oddities of 'you should...if you are a serious writer' books (Candide, Metamorphosis, etc.)
  
• I read something else by that author that I liked
• Somebody told me I would like it
• I randomly picked it up at a bookstore because it looked interesting

Or, and this one is a facet of suddenly finding myself a lit teacher,

• All the kids are reading it, why are all the kids reading it? *paranoia*

So I find myself, even though I swore never again after Wicked, reading another Maguire fractured fairytale. Mostly because about four kids in my English classes are reading it. Out of a total of 23 kids, that's actually a pretty high percentage. So here I am going, oh god, what's it going to be this time? Sex? Drugs? Violence? It has to be something. In any case, generally expecting the worst and doubly expecting that I'm going to hate finding out what it is based on my experience with Wicked.

As it turns out my concerns were baseless and beyond that, I actually enjoyed reading Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. Color me chagrined. Maguire fixed most of the pacing issues that caused me such problems with Wicked and put together an alternate story for Cinderella that I found hard to put down. Maguire set in Holland during the midst of the tulip craze which was interesting to say the least.

All and all, a pleasent surprise.

Apparently the reason everyone was reading Confession was that the musical of Wicked was playing downtown at the Fox and the library ran out of copies of the book. *shrug* Life is nothing if not strange.

17. Witch World by Andre Norton

Norton, Andre. Witch World. New York: Ace Books, 1963.

This book took some hunting down. Andre Norton didn't come to my attention until after she died in 2005. In fact, it was her death that brought her name to my attention in the first place. Being such a fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy, people kept asking me, "Oh God, did you hear? Andre Norton died." Now if you are a bibliophile, having to answer, "Who's Andre Norton?" is a trifle embarrassing. So, being uniquely me, I found out.

Andre Norton wrote SciFi Fantasy from the 1950's through until she died in 2005. Despite her vast popularity in the 60's and 70's somehow she dropped out of popular consciousness for my generation (whoohoo being a child of the 80's) and many of her books dropped out of print, including Witch World.

Witch World is the flagship title for the Witch World series; it was published in 1963 and was nominated for a Hugo in 1964. Its last reprint was in the early mid-80's. So picture me, the intrepid book explorer: pith helmet, flashlight, and spear (wild bookworms you know) on the hunt. I trolled through the used-bookstores of Atlanta, scraping through stacks of V.C. Andrews novels and warding off attacking anthologies. No back room was too dark and no shelf too high. After about three months of looking, I finally found a copy in the Decatur Book Nook.

It was worth the search. On the surface, it's a fairly typical 'lost in another world' scenario. However, Norton actually addresses many of the practical considerations that many authors neglect, such as language and culture shock. It's well written, and thematically cohesive. Norton has a knack for circling back around on ideas unobtrusively. I suspect that a publisher will eventually get around to reprinting Witch World since they do seem to be slowly cycling through her catalog, but it's worth hunting down an old used copy.

16. Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

Kaysen, Susanna. Girl Interrupted. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

A break from my usual fiction, this one is a memoir. In the 1960's Susanna Kaysen was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and placed in a Psychiatric Ward. It seems clear that Ms. Kaysen certainly didn't feel that all was well with the world. She had a history of suicide attempts and running away from home. However, Borderline Personality Disorder seems a bit much. Kaysen's memoir points out the impossibility of perception. When admitted, she accepts her diagnosis but over time she comes to realize that virtually any person can fit into the description for a borderline. Additionally, attitudes and morals change and the psychological disorder discriptors can't keep up. Compounded with out of date unfair gender norms and were any of us ever really safe. What's the quality that keeps us out of the nuthouse? Is it sanity, or just an ability to fit in?

Years later, Ms. Kaysen's book was made into a movie. It's a good movie, as far as it goes, but it misses out on the true tragedy. Life and sanity. Insanity and death. In the end, just lables.

15. Snow FLower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

See, Lisa. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel. New York: Random House, 2005.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is another random used-bookstore find. It is too newly published to appear on many of my lists and I don't keep track of new releases as well as I'd like. Likewise, this was my first exposure to Lisa See's writing. I'd never actually heard of her before despite her eight books, many of which were well received. I am impressed. See possesses a natural style and a gift for fluidly explaining cultural traditions to the unfamiliar.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is about two young women bound together in a formal relationship that made them laotung (like a best friend for life) to each other. One, Lily, is from a poor farming family. The other, Snow Flower, is from a very wealthy family. The book tracks their relationship over the span of their lives and observes how it was complicated by the formalism of imperial Chinese culture.

While many of the aspects of Chinese culture and history See focuses on were somewhat familiar, I felt her account of the process of foot-binding was masterful. The explanation of nu shu, women's writing was intriguing. Overall, this was a fascinating read.