Odds on Christmas

Q. How do you know it's officially a White Christmas?

A. Ask an Irish bookie.

Here on the frigid Emerald Isle, where the green rolling hills have been buried under several feet of unseasonable snow, whether or not it will be a White Christmas is not determined by the icicles dangling from every tree, but rather by the booking office. It states, in no uncertain terms that it will be White Christmas only if it snows on the actual day, regardless of the fact that the country is experiencing the lowest temperatures in 70 years. The odds currently stand at 4/1 of a single snowflake falling from the skies over Dublin on Christmas Eve (one assumes within the direct line of sight of a booking agent). The odds extend to 5/1 for Christmas Day itself.

The odds of my making it from Austin, Texas to Belfast, Northern Ireland felt considerably higher as I started off early Monday morning. I shudder to think what bookies would have made of my attempt to land at both Heathrow and Belfast City, as my itinerary boldly stated, when the latter was closed outright, and the former was operating at about 30% when I started out. By the time I got to Newark, the flights to London both before and after had been cancelled, but mine was still on the board, flashing "on time."

It was there that I met my Boston sister and brother-in-law (also making their way to Ireland for the family Christmas, though flying direct to Dublin) who got me into the Continental Presidents Club thanks to their status as people who fly a ridiculous amount and only on Continental. Have you ever been in one of these special club rooms in airports? I was amazed. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't the parallel-universe airport I experienced upon entering the unassuming sliding doors right off Gate 120. Here I was, thinking I was a sophisticated world traveler and had no idea that if you had enough money and/or traveled enough on the same airline, you could bypass the long line at Starbucks and the drafty chill of the terminal and instead settle into a comfy chair in a well-heated lounge, surf the Internet (free), while sipping on wine (free) and nibbling cheese, crackers, fruit and chips (free, and I hear some club rooms have a much more interesting spread). Maybe I should have cynically expected as much. But until Monday night at Newark Airport, I was a total innocent in the ways of elite airline travel.

The glass of wine surely did wonders for the flight across the Atlantic. We landed in the eerie dark of a northern European morning. (Seriously...it's weird when it's full dark and 8 a.m. Weird in a primal, visceral sense that makes me empathize with pagan sun rituals.) Heathrow was not the bustling crush of humanity it so often is. In fact, as I made my way to Terminal 1, more and more of my fellow travelers veered off until I was literally the only one winding through the security line switchbacks to get to the guy who takes your in-transit picture and checks on the infrared camera to make sure you don't have a raging fever.

• Him: Where are you going, then?
• Me: Belfast
• Him: Good luck with that.

The odds were steadily climbing as I rolled my bag to the other side of the barrier and joined a short line of other Terminal 1 hopefuls. The lady at the desk took one look at my ticket and waved me through. Two steps later, a guy asked my destination and sent me back. "Belfast City is closed." Sighing, I rolled back, only to be sent on by the lady again. "bmi 84 is going--and it's Belfast International that's closed, not City. Not yet." I tried not to feel the envious eyes of the other people in line as I, and I alone, wheeled my way into the terminal.

Heathrow Terminal 1 is a place I have spent some time. United flies out of there along with all flights to the British Isles and Ireland. So, between visits to family and and my two years in the Middle East, I have become somewhat familiar with Terminal 1, especially the Pret a Manger and the Giraffe Cafe. Let me tell you, on Tuesday morning, Dec. 22, it was a mere shell of its former self. A few pitiful forms stretched out on chairs (who knows how long they'd been waiting?) Some dads and kids browsed in the shops. There was no line at the Pret a Manger (a miracle in and of itself) and the departures board had a long list of red "cancelled" notices with just a sprinkling of "on times" or "delayed" in Christmas green.

bmi 84 was most definitely going out, a fact I hardly counted on until I was actually walking down the jetway. I had a window seat and a prime view of the few planes landing (mostly big 777s from faraway places) and even fewer taking off. So I was hardly surprised when the pilot came over the intercom and announced that, right as he was about to start the plane, he was told that Belfast City had closed (this was shortly after an announcement that we would be taking off, but he wasn't sure if we'd be able to land once we got there. None of us knew if this was a joke or not, though he assured us we had plenty of fuel...) The whole plane groaned in unison, but no one suggested we de-plane. bmi 84 was most definitely going. How long we had to sit on the runway was another question entirely.

Turned out to be only about 45 minutes--the best 45 minutes I've ever spent grounded. There's nothing like the prospect of spending multiple days in the confines of Terminal 1 to put a delay in perspective. Belfast City re-opened; we took off amid merry cheers, and landed into a startling red sunset over an arctic Ireland buried under at least two feet of snow. There were TV cameras waiting for us in the arrivals area, and a lot of families, like mine, relief warring with disbelief on their happy, holiday faces. I got interviewed by a radio reporter who asked me if I minded the delay.

• Me: Mind?! I feel like I've won the lottery!
• Reporter (somewhat taken aback): Oh? And why is that?

Because, dour British person, that's how it feels when you beat the odds, thread a very narrow needle of international air travel and slip into a country on the only plane that's landed in three days. Driving back to my sister's house in the suburb of Ballynure, the fat full moon looked especially stunning rising over the snow-blanketed hillside. I don't care what the bookies say, it looks like a White Christmas to me.

This Train's Year in Books 2010

Not that this will come as any kind of huge shock, but there are few things more enjoyable than recommending books to people. I've recently had occasion to do this for two friends, one who was traveling to Italy and my Secret Santa from school. The experience left me aglow for days and hungry for more.

Then, as if life couldn't get any better, my family has been coming through recently with the Amazon gift cards (really, the only thing I want for Christmas, ever), thus swelling my account balance and prompting mad book-buying sprees. While on Amazon, I read through their 2010 book recommendations, then flipped to the NY Times Book Review to do the same.

And thought to myself...why can't I also release a Best of 2010 book list? The answer, of course, is there is no reason in the world. It's also a great way to re-cap the year in a way that makes sense for me. I'll leave the Christmas letters and pictures to my more-organized relatives with cute kids. Consider this my year in review through the lens of the best books I've read in 2010.

January: No Logo by Naomi Klein

I spent half of 2010 in Abu Dhabi, and in January had just returned from Christmas with my sister, brother-in-law and K in Morocco and Spain. K recommended Naomi Klein's No Logo after we'd both finished The Shock Doctrine (also highly recommended). In No Logo, Klein writes about the endless and destructive cycle of corporate advertising and the effects of selling image (as companies do these days) as opposed to actual products. It's a brilliantly written wake-up call and an important reminder of the dehumanizing forces that perpetuate sweatshops in Asia, the loss of blue-collar jobs here and the bankrupt illusion that we can buy peace of mind.

February: The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of 'Proper' English from Shakespeare to South Park by Jack Lynch

I bought this book for my birthday, and rarely have I given myself such a cool gift! I know I've mentioned it before, either in this blog or RR of Arabia, but Lynch's book is by far the best in a long string about the English language I read this past winter. The best part is his obvious enthusiasm for our language as an ever-evolving wonder as opposed something that should be set in stone. One of the ways he does this is by exposing most of these supposed set-in-stone rules as 19th century impositions by Latin grammar teachers (including the split infinitive and whether anyone should end a sentence with a preposition). Of course, I share Lynch's fascination with English's free-wheeling, anything-goes vibe, but his take is far from hippie-dippie. Here is a lucid writer with a lot to say about what is fast becoming the language of the world.

March: The Weed the Strings the Hangman's Bag--Alan Bradley

If you haven't already discovered this amazing mystery series, go out right now and pick up the first installment Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. It stars Flavia de Luce, a scarily precocious 11 year old and budding chemistry genius growing up in her family's rapidly decaying manor house in rural post-war England. These deeply real, often stark novels are anything but twee Brit kid-lit. In fact, they are most definitely are not for kids. Only adults can truly appreciate Flavia's intellectual brilliance combined with her very child-like emotional vulnerability as she struggles to be seen as the youngest in a family of three (all brilliant) girls and an emotionally distant father still reeling from his wife's (and the girls' mother) recent death. As someone who interacts with 11 and 12 year olds on a daily basis, I respect what Bradley does with Flavia as a character, which is both respectful and captivating.

April: An Anti-Cancer Life by David Servan-Schreiber.

My mother, as most of you know, is recovering from lung cancer, having never smoked a day in her life. During the first year of her recovery, she read this book and spent the next months 1) putting it into practice in her own life and 2) recommending it ceaselessly to my sisters and me. When I finally picked it up, I wasn't sure what to expect. I knew it contained lists of anti-cancer foods, along with explanations from Servan-Schreiber, a doctor who applied the rigors of science to the study of how changing one's lifestyle and eating habits can truly keep cancer at bay. He himself has inoperable brain cancer, which he has lived with for more than seven years by taking his own advice. His honest and clearly written account of both his own struggles (medical and personal) and the science behind his claims is more about how to live than what to eat (though the aforementioned food lists are also there).

The bottom line is this book changed the way I look at food and exercise and helped anchor the sense of "balance" I wanted to bring to my post-Abu Dhabi life. So far, so good! Even if you don't have cancer or know anyone who does, this is an excellent book about staying healthy in mind as well as body.

May: Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plot Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory AND The Big Short by Michael Lewis

You may have seen both of these books on other "best of" lists (including at least one of the reviewers from the NY Times). I'll add my voice to the hype. Although about vastly different time periods, they both are the kind of nonfiction that read like the best kind of page-turning fiction. They are also both about audacity in action, written by masters who know as much about plot, character development and suspense as any novelist. In the case of Operation Mincemeat, the audacity lead to the success of D-Day and the defeat of fascism. In the case of The Big Short, it nearly led to the collapse of the financial system as we know it. Pick your dose of audacity and enjoy!

June: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

As I was leaving Abu Dhabi, I found a copy of this book (which wasn't released in the States until July), so I'm going to count it as a June book. It was the perfect companion for the transition from the Middle East back to urban teaching in the States. It's all about living in a foreign culture and the ways it becomes home, as well as the ways it never can be, and the implications this has for relationships, politics and daily life. Mitchell is my favorite living author (who wrote my favorite book of all time Cloud Atlas) and this book has everything I love about his work, including a perfect balance of history, character, plot and deeper themes. It takes place in 17th century Japan, on a tiny Dutch colony--the only Western point of contact with Japan at that time. Jacob de Zoet is a clerk with a deep moral center who finds himself adrift in more ways than one. My explanation doesn't even begin to cover it. Read it. If you like it, read Cloud Atlas, Mitchell's less linear true masterpiece.

July: Tongues of Serpents: A Novel of Temeraire by Naomi Novik

This is the seventh installment of Novik's alternate-reality history set during the Napoleonic Wars, which imagines the world exactly how we know it except with the addition of sentient dragons to the political and military mix. As with most books that involve dragons, Novik's Temeraire selected and bonded with his captain, the surprised naval commander Lawrence, shortly after emerging from the egg. The relationship between the two is thoroughly wonderful, as is Novik's familiar-not-familiar world. (Napoleon also has a dragon corps, of course.) Start with His Majesty's Dragon, the first in the series. If you like historical novels and fantasy, you cannot go wrong with this series.

August: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (Also, The Professor and Other Writings by Terry Castle, which I reviewed already on this blog.)

This book came out on the second day of school in Austin, where I'm now teaching 6th grade nonfiction studies. It's only appropriate that after spending all day with 105 12 year olds, I would stay up until midnight reading the last of the best Young Adult series to come out in recent years. Collins's dystopian, sometime-in-the-near-future America is divided into 12 districts where a vastly reduced population work in near-slave conditions for the benefit of the Capital. To keep the districts in line, the powers-that-be stage an annual Hunger Games, a gladiatorial battle to the death using two children randomly selected from each district. Our heroine Katniss is the strongest and most genuinely written girl character I've ever read. She and her district partner in the Hunger Games unwittingly put in motion a series of events that threatens to topple the Captial's hold on the population. Collins brings it all together in the final pages of Mockingjay. If you are just discovering this series, be glad you don't have to wait for all the books to come out. Buy them all at once, starting with The Hunger Games. You won't want to stop reading even long enough to get the next installment after you finish the first.

September: Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach

Never one to pass up a book about outer space, I picked up this nonfiction look at how NASA and other space programs throughout the world prepare human beings to live and work in space (with an eye on an eventual human mission to Mars). Roach is a hilarious and brilliant writer who somehow gains entry into the weird world of weightless experiments, space food taste tests and many other riveting and decidedly unsexy aspects of space travel they never show on Star Trek. This book is laugh-out-loud funny and full of information, an excellent combination.

October: Bury Your Dead: An Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny and The Rhetoric of Death by Judith Rock

I bought only two books in October and have to recommend both of them. October is a rough month in the education world. The school year is in full swing, and there is very little time to surface. But I made time to read these new novels by two of the best mystery novelists writing today. The Rhetoric of Death is the first novel by my godmother Judith Rock. Though I'm hardly an unbiased source, I would enthusiastically recommend this book even if I had no personal connection. Set in a Jesuit college in Paris during the Counter-Reformation, it stars Charles du Luc, a young rhetorics teacher who gets caught up in court drama and international politics while trying also to help stage a ballet for the king (Jesuit ballet was a big thing in those days!). The historical details, compelling characters and several exciting scenes set in the Louvre when it was still a run-down palace and home to squatters definitely separate this book from your run-of-the-mill mystery/thrillers.

Louise Penny's newest Gamache novel is not to be missed. Though start with Still Life, the first in the series, if you've haven't read any before. Penny sets most of her books in Three Pines, a Quebec village she goes to great lengths to idealize in a way that contrasts strikingly with the very real characters that populate it. Gamache, the chief inspector of the Surete, is one of the most appealing detective out there today. Though this new installment is only partially set in Three Pines, it features many of the characters from the previous books.

November: At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson

What's not to love about Bill Bryson? His latest is about the history of the home, centered around his old historic vicarage in Norfolk, England. It's full of facts you never thought you even wanted to know about the various rooms in the house and how they evolved through the years. I especially liked the chapter on the hall (how that has changed!) and the whole concept of private space. I love my light-filled apartment here in Austin, and had even more occasion to be grateful after reading Bryson's book that I have such a wonderful space to myself, given the ways our ancestors lived in the not-so-distant past. Anything by Bryson is worth your time. I especially love A Short History of Nearly Everything and The Mother Tongue, my second favorite book about English.

Which brings us to...

December and my recent book-buying sprees! Rather than recommend any of these (most of which I haven't started), I'll leave you with a list of what I have recently downloaded. If you've read them, or are planning to, I'd love to hear what you think!

• The Passage --Justin Cronin
• How to Live--a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
• The Sherlockian--Graham Moore
• The Disappearing Spoon: And other Tales of Madness, Love and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements
• Songs of a Dying Earth--various authors (sci-fi, not environmental nonfiction)
• Body Work--Sara Paretsky
• Atlantic--Simon Winchester

On Monday, I'm off to a white Christmas in Ireland with the family. I will be taking these books (and maybe a few others) along for the ride. Overall, 2010 was an excellent year--for books and in so many other ways. The peace of the desert has lasted, and though I'm working nearly as hard as I ever did, it has not sent me reeling and rootless. I remain anchored in what feels like a safe harbor and am able to keep the worst of the storms at bay. These books have helped.

Onward to 2011!

Glimpses of a further shore or On being asked to help with a college essay

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

--the last line of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, my favorite book and one you should read immediately if you haven't already.

As the above quote shows, I'm an incurable optimist of the Don Quixote school who will gladly tilt windmills or dedicate my life to drop-hood if it means that maybe, just maybe, I can help fill the ocean. This also explains my love of our root myths like the journey of Prince Siddhartha or the resurrection. Although my cultural home is Christianity, it is the underlining narrative arc of all faiths that I truly believe in. I care less about theological particulars or what happens after we die than I do about the promise that light will eventually defeat darkness, that striving for justice or peace or renewal will bear fruit, that forgiveness is possible, that the ocean will fill with drops, slowly and surely, until the tide changes forever. Never in my lifetime, of course. But in that future Someday. And that my microscopic butterfly-wing-flapping over however many years I'm alotted on the planet will somehow contribute.

When you think about it, this is probably just as outlandish as believing that a 1st century prophet was the result of a virgin birth and the biological son of God who bodily rose from the dead, hung out for a few weeks then was whisked up to heaven through the clouds. But it's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I've been thinking a lot more than usual about these questions since my first class of students have become seniors in high school. In a world where examples of failure, greed and darkness constantly parade before us, I have been treated to brilliant shafts of light in the form of these teenagers. You will be glad to know that there are members of the up-and-coming generation who have tilted and run over real monsters like poverty and homelessness and yet remain on the path to academic and personal success. One even asked me for help with her college essay. As a middle school writing teacher, this is immensely satisfying, even dreamed-of--the equivalent of actually giving the "I'd like to thank the Academy" speech aspiring actors practice in front of the mirror. More than that, though, it bolsters the kind of hope that is only possible if you believe that little victories add up to big ones. This particular student's life is a dramatic case in point, but certainly not the only one. She lost both of her parents and lived in shelters for most of her life until being adopted by a couple from her church, who sent her to a private Christian school in Oakland. She is now applying to college and will no doubt be accepted. She is a senior in high school, a typical teenager who hates chores and a blinding beacon of what is possible.

Naysayers will point to all the not-beacons out there, the kids without a kindly couple from church, without an email list of editors-in-waiting or whatever other advantages that came the way of my former student or those like her. It's true. There are so many of them. And some are also my former students: girls who are now pregnant, young men (and women) who haven't been able to slip the bonds of addiction or crime or whatever else ails life these days. What to do in response to this wildly contrasting reality? Some will throw up their hands; some will batten the hatches and get as much for themselves and those like them as possible. Some will continue to work to squeeze a few more drops into the ocean. It's no secret whose team I'm on, and all of my students make it possible to stay here, hopeful and even happy, that the changing of the tide is coming.

So hope for a great sea-change

on the far side of revenge.

Believe that a further shoreis reachable from here.

Believe in miracles

and cures and healing wells.

--Seamus Heaney, "The Cure at Troy (excerpt)"