The most noble title any child can have is Third.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Ender's Game is a story of how a young boy came to save humanity, and how dearly it cost him. Ender is a rare third child in a futuristic world where families are permitted only 2 children. The government has sanctioned his birth because they are searching for a commander to fight the next war with "the buggers", an insect-like alien life force that nearly wiped out Earth roughly 50 years ago. Ender's older brother Peter is brilliant, but ruthless, and his sister Valentine is equally intelligent, but too compassionate to command in a violent war. Ender is, as the government had hoped, a perfect blend of Peter and Valentine.

At just 6 years old, Ender is sent to Battle School in outer space, ripped from his family. He struggles at first, but quickly rises faster than any other student, moving from an army of other "launchies" (kids his own age) to being placed in an army of older students under the command of the ruthless Bonzo Madrid. Ender continues to lead practices in his "free play" time with his "launchy" friends, quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with despite his age and size. Though he is tested frequently by the special treatment he receives from the adults, he makes it all the way to commander.  With an army of novices, Ender manages to revolutionize strategies and defeat all of the armies at the school.

Meanwhile, Valentine and Peter hatch a plan to write philosophy/political commentary on adult discussion groups under pseudonyms, gaining such fame that they become a part of the Earth-side conflicts at the highest level. Valentine is asked twice to intervene to motivate Ender, as his treatment by the adults takes a heavy toll mentally and physically. After his success at Battle School, Ender is transferred and taken first to Earth (for 3 months, to fall in love with the planet so that he can desire to defend it) and then to IF Command, where he is mentored by Mazer Rackham, the commander who defeated the buggers in the last invasion. Ender is given a fleet to command (made up of his best comrades and friends from Battle School) and after successfully defeating the simulations, they begin to face Mazer himself, who controls the enemy in the simulator. They fight many battles, some easy, some hard, but Ender never loses. He gets more and more demoralized until he is nearly broken. During what Ender believes is his "final exam", Ender wins the battle with a shocking twist, only to discover that in fact, his fleet's battles had been with real buggers, not Mazer Rackham.  Unknowingly, Ender has led the 3rd invasion and wiped out the buggers.

Ender is shocked and horrified, never intending to kill (and still only eleven years old). Earth breaks out into conflict, Peter rises to the top of the ranks, and Valentine abandons her pseudonym, Demosthenes, to move to a "colony" on one of the now empty bugger planets where humans are encouraged to have as many children as they'd like. She convinces Ender to join her (as he cannot return to Earth without falling under Peter's control) and he governs the new colony as she writes a history of the 3rd invasion. While exploring a new potential planet colony, Ender discovers that the buggers have created a planet out of his video game from Battle School. He follows the journey of the game and discovers a larva of a queen bugger (they have discovered they work in a hive colony formation). She shares (through thought) the history of the buggers, and reveals that they didn't realize the humans had thought, and once they knew, they didn't plan to attack again. She begs Ender to keep her alive so that she can rebuild the bugger population, but he explains it's too unsafe right now.

He returns to his colony and writes a history of the buggers from the Queen's perspective, calling it Speaker for the Dead. He begins a tradition of having a person speak for another human at their funeral, sharing their best and worst qualities, a complete history. He does so for Peter, who dies back on Earth, but only after sharing his whole history with Ender via "ansible", an interplanetary communication device. As things settle down at the colony, Ender and Valentine set off to travel the galaxy, moving from planet to planet telling stories and speaking for the dead. Ender keeps the queen's larva with him, waiting for the time to come to rebuild.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

If you haven't read this book, you should. Its target audience is young boys, but the message and the plot are accessible to everyone, and it's a great read. You can borrow my copy if you want - but you have to wait until my roommate Laura finishes it. :0)

-- This book definitely felt like it had the makings of a series -- I think there is a sequel, but technically only this one was on my list, so I decided not to read it. I also thought that having a dual story line to follow Valentine and Peter was really fascinating. All three children are brilliant, but their minds work in totally different ways, and they each play a huge role in shaping the world (or I guess, the universe). It made me think about the differences and similarities between me and my sisters.

-- The master manipulating heads of IF Command tell Ender that he had to think it was a game:

"But somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed. Could never go into battle willing to win at all costs. If you knew, you couldn't do it."

  I thought this was fascinating. Do the best military commanders bury their compassion, or suspend it, while they lead vicious battles? Do they lose it completely? So often we see people come out of the military with a different personality, a changed perspective. Is there a way to prevent it? Is that even desirable? Killing as if you were in a game, but murdering in reality. It's a lot to think about.

-- Ender loves life on Earth (the 3 months he chills at a small house on a lake) and when he tells Valentine he would be happy "just living", just existing, she can't agree.

"She tried to imagine herself being like the other girls at school. Tried to imagine life if she didn't feel responsible for the future of the world. 'It would be so dull.' None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing."

  This is how I feel most of the time. I think maybe I'd like to find some small, idyllic town, set up a bookstore/bakery, and just revel in the mundanity of it. But then I remember that there are bigger things, wider concerns, and while no "bugger war" lurks, there are oh-so-many analogous conflicts that do. I can't help but feel that some of the responsibility for the future of the world rests on me. It rests on all of us.

-- Proust wrote that the best writers aren't the ones that tell the best stories; they're the ones whose stories do the best job at reflecting ourselves back to us. The classics that last are the best mirrors; they show us our truest, rawest selves, in ways that we couldn't see on our own.

   I loved this book. It's one of my new all-time favorites. It's not the most spectacular prose I've ever read, and it's pretty plot-driven as far as literature goes. But it's an incredible mirror, and one that we will always need to remember. Ender reminded me of so many protagonists -- like Frodo, like Holden Caulfield, like Harry Potter, at a young age he was thrust into a complex world of good and evil. With barely enough time to build his own morality, he is asked not just to take part in, but to lead an epic war. And when it's all over, he doesn't know how to exist.
   I always cry at the end of the Lord of the Rings because Frodo is too broken to just live out his days peacefully at the Shire. I know he goes on to the Grey Havens, which are basically a sort of heaven, but there's such a palpable sadness in the idea that the world he's struggled to save from destruction is not his anymore.

When Ender and Valentine have lived for many years on the colony planet, Ender approaches Valentine one day and says they have to go:

Ender:         "We have to go. I'm almost happy here."
Valentine:   "So stay."
Ender:         "I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it."

This just tears my heart out. But there's truth in the idea that once the pain creeps in, once we understand how the world works and how others suffer, there's no going back. Like the Giver, we've been blessed and cursed with knowledge. We share the burden of what we do with that wisdom.

Favorite passages:

•  Conversation between head officials at the Battle School:

  "I went back through some of the tapes. I can't help it. I like the kid. I think we're going to screw him up." 

"Of course we are. It's our job. We're the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, but we eat the little bastards alive."

• "Human beings are free except when humanity needs them."

• Slang speech from Dink, a brilliant student who has refused to rise through Battle School's ranks:   

"I be crazy too, little buddy, but at least when I be craziest, I be floating all alone in space and the crazy, she float out of me, she soak into the walls, and she don't come out till there be battles and little boys bump into the wall and squish out de crazy."

• Ender -- "What difference does it make if I hate the part of me that you most need?"

•  Queen of the buggers, to Ender: 

"We did not mean to murder, and when we understood, we never came again."

In closing, I will say simply this. Like Ender, I am a Third. And I have never been prouder in my life.

To rabbits, exploration, and Aircanoe Up!

Our legs and our arms are full of torpid memories.

In Search of Lost Time, Volume VII -- Time Regained by Marcel Proust

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

And now for the THRILLING CONCLUSION. Okay, so it's not that heavy on plot points actually, but here's the basic gist. World War I hits, Paris changes, society changes, people change. YBN spends some time in a sanatorium (2 separate stints), Robert de St-Loup goes off to war with the other men, and eventually dies a valiant death. (I know! I loved him.) In another voyeuristic scene, YBN witnesses Charlus with some pretty intense S & M action that his pal Jupien cooked up for him, involving chains, whips, and some young men who pretend to be "thugs". Social circles are re-arranged, both because of the war and because of passing generations. Odette becomes the Duke de Guermantes' latest mistress (even though he's in his 80's and she's no spring chicken!), St-Loup's old lady of ill repute mistress Rachel becomes a famous actress, Mme Verdurin marries the Prince of Guermantes after the Princess passes, Charlus has a stroke, and YBN's life and memories all come together at last and he prepares to begin his epic novel, realizing that his subject matter (his life) has been in front of his eyes all this time.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

-- When WWI hits and everything gets rationed, Mme Verdurin gets a prescription for croissants, claiming they cure her headaches when she dips them in her morning coffee. I have headaches sometimes! Can I get a prescription for croissants, please?

-- Sorry to throw a spoiler in again, but St-Loup was one of those epic characters in literature, and even though his character faded a bit in importance throughout the volumes, I was sad to see him go. YBN, after hearing of St-Loup's death:
   "I recalled his arrival the first time at Balbec, when, in an almost white suit, with his eyes greenish    and mobile like the waves, he had crossed the hall adjoining the great dining-room whose windows    gave on the sea."

-- The passage is a bit long-winded to include here, but you can search for the words "Revolving the gloomy thoughts which I have just recorded..." and it will pop up. Proust discovers these flashes of memory (like the madeleine from volume 1) in this book that help him to reset, so to speak. They reveal powerful memories that reignite his literary fire and he realizes he needs to find these triggers (and record them) in order to write his epic work. This one is just him stepping between two uneven stones. Think of the million moments in life when you smell or feel or hear something that transports you to a specific instant from your past. The smell of a city (often sewage mixed with exhaust, in fact) puts my feet back on the cobblestones of Nantes; strains of Shostakovich throw my fingers up the neck of my cello; trains, hooting in the night, slide me under the covers in my childhood bunk bed, under my sister who slept above me. What memories transport you?

-- My favorite part of this volume was when Proust discussed writing itself. In speaking of this work, he writes, "it would be my book, but with its help I would furnish them with the means of reading what lay inside themselves."

-- Towards the very end, Proust starts to worry about dying before finishing. (In fact, he's worried about dying before starting, as he's only just really settled on beginning at the end.) A few of my favorite lines:
-- "I bore within me as by something fragile and precious which had been entrusted to me and which I should have liked to deliver intact into the hands of those for whom it was intended, hands which were not my own."
--"No doubt my books too, like my fleshly being, would in the end one day die. But death is a thing that we must resign ourselves to. We accept the thought that in ten years we ourselves, in a hundred years our books, will have ceased to exist. Eternal duration is promised no more to men's work than to men." Proust died after the publication of "Sodom & Gomorrhah". He'd written the final volumes, but they were fragmentary, somewhat rough drafts. His brother Robert edited them and published them.
-- I was so touched by Proust's self-awareness as a writer. Now that he's finally found the germ of his great work, he writes, "But for me was there still time? Was it not too late?"
He writes that he had become indifferent to death, but when he realizes that he's to write this epic novel, he starts to worry that death will snatch him before he has time to write it.

-- Best line: "For neither our greatest fears nor our greatest hopes are beyond the limits of our strength - we are able in the end both to dominate the first and to achieve the second."

Sentences I particularly liked:

• "The death of unknown millions is felt by us as the most insignificant of sensations, hardly even as disagreeable as a draught."on wars where the "front" is distanced from the civilian population
• "Excuses have no place in art and intentions count for nothing."
• "A name read long ago in a book contains within its syllables the strong wind and brilliant sunshine that prevailed while we were reading it."
• "Through art alone we are able to emerge from ourselves."
• "Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance."
• "The internal timepieces which are allotted to different human beings are by no means synchronized."

3,123 pages. I've completed a journey that not many will undertake, but at roughly the 100 year mark from Swann's Way's publication, I'll do my part to advocate that these books aren't dead yet.

I'm always sad when I finish a really great novel. A little because it's over, and if I've really enjoyed it, I  wanted more. But I think a little, too, because writing raw truths and careful prose takes not just intelligence and hard work, but true guts. Proust may have flitted from one party to the next for a few years, but he spent the better part of his life writing this novel, and that kind of dedication to art is so rare these days. There's a reason why this one's a classic.

Now appropriately I move to a different time and perhaps a different dimension, beginning far from the beginning.

Good-bye: I leave you with the best part of myself.

In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI -- The Sweet Cheat Gone (or, The Fugitive) by Marcel Proust

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

Ready? The last volume ended with Albertine's departure. After a series of letters, lies, and melodramatic gestures are exchanged between Albertine and YBN, Albertine is thrown from a horse and dies. YBN is informed by letter, and enters into a period he calls "Grief and Oblivion". After learning of her death, YBN receives her last 2 letters, in which she promises to return and reconciles herself with YBN.  He proceeds to grieve, obsess over whether or not she was in fact a lesbian, throw himself at little girls (getting him into a spot of trouble, understandably) and find out several truths about Albertine, none of which we are entirely sure of. In the end, it appears that Albertine was a rather active lover, and in fact had a great many affairs, most particularly with her good friend Andrée. At first YBN is horrified, then scandalized, then intrigued (he doesn't mind as long as he can sleep with Andrée, too -- which he does) and then indifferent. Albertine was apparently also in love with Mme Verdurin's nephew, and was possibly going to marry him! Oh, and Morel helped her to "ensnare innocent virgin girls" (are you creeped out? Because I WAS.) Then YBN encounters a women he thinks is a prostitute Robert told him about who turns out to be none other than... GILBERTE! His boyhood pal! He goes to Venice with his Mamma, gets a telegram that he thinks is from Albertine, saying she wants to talk about marriage and that she's not dead (I know, WHAAAT?) but it turns out he misread it and read what he thought he wanted to read and it was really from Gilberte. YBN gets a letter on the train home from Gilberte, informing him that she's going to marry... dun dun Dun.... Robert de Saint-Loup! YBN's old bestie! Also, apparently one of the Cambremers is going to marry Jupien's niece (which we only sort of care about). Gilberte's status in society goes THROUGH THE ROOF, and the last scandal we uncover is that Robert de Saint-Loup is gay gay Gay, and he's having an affair with.... can you guess? Morel! The Baron de Charlus (St-Loup's uncle)'s old lover! Wow. Can. You. Say. Incestuous? These people really need to expand their social circle. Gilberte and YBN start hanging out again (just as friends) but she reveals that she loved him too (mostly not when he was in love with her) and starts to reveal a secret regret but then the volume is OVER. Cliff. Hanger.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

OK, so honesty time. This was not my favorite volume, by a long shot. All the Proustian grief philosophizing and Albertine obsessing got a bit long-winded for my taste, and there were a few moments where I just had no idea what was going on (Gilberte is a prostitute? Albertine's not dead? Oh wait a minute... that's not right...) But, it moved the plot line forward, so I'm still excited to see what happens in THE VERY LAST VOLUME, volume #7.

-- My used copy of this book included notes by someone who simply identified as "SAHR" (I'm thinking middle-aged married woman based on handwriting, comments, and 4 initials). She also commented in the book, and I alternated between (A) not being able to read her comments (not very neat handwriting, as it were) (2) agreeing with her comments and writing the equivalent of "Amen, Sister" in several places and (D) completely disagreeing with her comments and feeling the need to write my comments in next to (and sometimes over) hers.

-- YBN makes up all SORTS of lies when he's writing to Albertine to get her back, but my favorite is that he pretends he has bought her a Rolls Royce and a yacht and that now he's stuck with them. At first he says she'll have to buy them off of him (which he knows she of course cannot do, since she is quite poor) but then he comes back and writes, "No, I prefer to keep the Rolls and even the yacht." HA!
   Also, during their period of estrangement, he sends St-Loup to "discreetly" buy Albertine back by offering election campaign funds to her aunt. When Albertine references this rather ungentleman-like behavior, YBN replies:
     "P.S. I make no reference to what you tell me of the alleged suggestions which Saint-Loup (whom I            do not for a moment believe to be in Touraine) may have made to your aunt. It is just like a Sherlock Holmes story. For what do you take me?" Tee hee hee.

-- In several places, particularly the ones that involve Albertine or Morel, my comments look like this: "oh. Oh! OHH MY!"  hee hee hee. Proust is many things, but lacking scandal he is not!

-- YBN decides he's not going to go back on the train from Venice to Paris with his mother (because he wants to find a lady-love to bring home with him. I know. Eye roll.) but he totally can't go through with it. He sits there on the patio and orders "a cool drink" and he's all, this is going to be SO GREAT. And then five minutes later he freaks out and high-tails it to the train station just in time to catch the train. Oh, YBN. :0)

Sentences I particularly enjoyed:

• "It seemed to me that my life was stained with a double murder from which only the cowardice of the world could absolve me."
• "The thought that we must die is more painful than the act of dying, but less painful than the thought that another person is dead." (I would say this is quite apt, except of course in cases where one is unfortunate enough to die rather a painful death. Slow or quick.)
• "Days in the past cover up little by little those that preceded them and are themselves buried beneath those that follow them. But each past day has remained deposited in us, as, in a vast library in which there are older books, a volume which, doubtless, nobody will ever ask to see."
• "It is the tragedy of other people that they are to us merely showcases for the very perishable collections of our own mind." (It's okay. I don't get it either. But I like the way it Sounds!)
• "In spite of everything it was for me the actual point of contact between reality and dreams."

By the by, the title is a line from Albertine's letter when she leaves YBN. 

Now that I've finished the penultimate Proust, now it's time for the terminal Proust. Whee!