I Was Told There'd Be Cake (book review)

I Was Told There'd Be Cake
Sloane Crosley
Riverhead Trade, Paperback, $15.00
April 2008 240 pages

Usually, I have no tolerance for embarrassment humor. Public shame, social ridicule, even someone's private agony over a social gaffe or deception, twists my stomach with dread, and I fight the urge to hide behind the couch. (A defensive position usually reserved for the truly scary episodes of vintage Dr. Who.)

I got a review copy of Sloane Crosley's latest, How Did You Get This Number, and asked for this prior volume too, because I was completely new to Crosley's writing. Full of wry humor and social pratfalls, Crosley's essays celebrate what's funny in her awkwardness and quirks. In confessing her moments of selfishness, cluelessness and hypocrisy she strikes a note that has me giggling, nodding, maybe even admitting that yes, I do that too.

(Side note for readers who don't know me in person.. That admission is huge for me! I'm usually so socially uptight that Glee makes me squirm painfully.)

I want to deconstruct why Crosley's essays are so funny, and yet so comforting in their honesty. But I'm not sure I can, other than to appreciate her craft. From outlining her childhood mental picture of a one-night-stand (jumping on the bed in high heels) to attempting to tame a diabolically awful boss by frosting her likeness onto a cookie, Crosley's essays are perfect snapshots. It's frustrating, because I want to take each essay apart, English class style, and deconstruct the secrets of how to get this candor and humor blended into my own writing. It reminds me of reading Billy Collins' poetry specifically the last few lines of "Taking off Emily Dickinson's Clothes."

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

No, I can't explain why essays about accidental butterfly theft, boorish dinner guests and chocolate tarts, or being the only Jewish girl enthralled with Jesus camp got me to Billy Collins and his mysterious poem about Emily Dickinson. It's about wanting to root around backstage at a magic show and check the tricks for false bottoms and hidden strings, or getting underfoot in someone's kitchen, while they're making a delicious family recipe. I want to know what the secret ingredients are, so I can steal them for my own writing.

I'm optimistic that I'll feel the same way about Crosley's next collection, because each essay here is so self contained, with moments that can make me laugh, and cringe without wanting to bury myself behind the furniture.

This Book Would've been Better in the Whedonverse

Girl Parts
John M. Cusick
Candlewick Press
August 2010 $16.99 240 pages
YA- Age 14 and up

This was another Book Expo grab. Won't be out for another couple of months... but I'll be curious to see what others think. Especially Joss Whedon. Notions of women's identity, sex, robot-vs-real... it's full of themes that seem to haunt Whedon. Wonder what the creator of Dollhouse, Firefly's Companions, and the BuffyBot would say about this book.

Guest Book Review, by Fashion Designer Brandon Graham

Fashion Illustration Exposed. Edited by Julia Stanescu.

It’s great to have a book tailored to the subject of fashion illustration.  Hats off to Julia for bringing together a collection of artists who take the time out to do what they do best and are willing to share their knowledge with others. Reading this inspired me to try new techniques and keep pushing my art. Honestly, I’ve never liked painting my fashion illustrations because there’s no Edit > Undo button.  Sometimes I say to myself, “It’s so hard to correct mistakes when you paint so why bother.”  I know it’s not true, but it gives me an excuse to keep doing what I’ve been doing and not take the chance of ruining a good line illustration.

I was encouraged by the opening tutorial by Maryanne Oliver. She explained how to build your painting in layers so you get the look you want, and easy ways to make adjustments if you don’t get the desired effect. Not only did she break down the type of pens and brushes she uses, she also gave inspirational creative advice like, “Remember, don’t be afraid of making mistakes!  There are no mistakes in art!”

Fashion Illustration Exposed. Edited by Julia Stanescu.

It’s great to have a book tailored to the subject of fashion illustration.  Hats off to Julia for bringing together a collection of artists who take the time out to do what they do best and are willing to share their knowledge with others. Reading this inspired me to try new techniques and keep pushing my art. Honestly, I’ve never liked painting my fashion illustrations because there’s no Edit > Undo button.  Sometimes I say to myself, “It’s so hard to correct mistakes when you paint so why bother.”  I know it’s not true, but it gives me an excuse to keep doing what I’ve been doing and not take the chance of ruining a good line illustration.

I was encouraged by the opening tutorial by Maryanne Oliver. She explained how to build your painting in layers so you get the look you want, and easy ways to make adjustments if you don’t get the desired effect. Not only did she break down the type of pens and brushes she uses, she also gave inspirational creative advice like, “Remember, don’t be afraid of making mistakes!  There are no mistakes in art!”

Continue reading at PinkyShears.com

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress
Rebecca Janzen
Holt Paperbacks April 2010 $14.00 272 pages

The disarmingly funny candor of this memoir made it feel much more "little black dress" than Mennonite. Janzen's confessions of her failed marriage to a bipolar atheist who left her for a man via Gay.com are howlingly, sometimes uncomfortably funny. But they seem out of place with a mental image I have of Mennonite. Janzen's appendix chapter is helpful on this front: I may have gotten Mennonites confused with Amish. Janzen's perspective on her family and the traditions of her Mennonite upbringing sees the humor in their warmth and gentle oddity, rather than a hard-line religious seperateness. The way Rhoda and her family relate to each other, they could be any family: laughing and dredging up old family stories, driving across country to help each other out. But the Janzens also have the extended Mennonite community and traditions- singing in harmony, not dancing particularly, and the language and rosy cheeks of extended German heritage.

There's so much of both heartbreak and laughter in these essays, sometimes both woven together in the same one. Janzen details the collapse of her marriage, her husband's caustic barbs, her own health difficulties. And also leaves me snorting and gasping with laughter over her mother's gross-out dinner table conversation, crazily frugal family camping trips, vacation bible school. The Five Mennonite Lunchbox Foods of Shame that made Rhoda and her siblings feel like school outcasts get described in loving, but kind of stomach-turning detail.
Some passages will make you cringe, some will make you rage (why did Rhoda take 15 entire years to leave Nick, who seems useless and mean?) and some of the odder customs of Janzen's extended family will perplex you.

You can't read this book quietly. You will giggle, snort, howl, wheeze, even sigh. Read it.

History, Mystery and Mold We Take For Granted

A Fierce Radiance
Lauren Belfer
Harper Collins
June 2010 $25.99 544

I picked this one up at BEA, without knowing much about it, except it was historical fiction.
I love it.
Set in the early years of World War II, this is the story of Claire Shipley, who is a photographer and single mother. The first story we see her covering is cutting-edge medicine, using a new medicine to bring a man back from certain death. As she works to set up photographs, she wrestles with memories it dredges up. Her own daughter died from the same infection the new drug is designed to combat.

The new drug?

Penicillin.

The meticulous detail, at the historical, and character level, of this novel blew me away. Claire is one of the focal points of an ensemble cast of characters in this view of early 1940s New York city. Amid the tensions of World War II, she's covering a story that could change everything. Doctors at the Rockefeller Institute have begun to use penicillin to reverse the course of infections that have been certain death up to this point.

I think that was the most startling aspect of this story for me-- just the certainty, the inevitability, of a simple infection exploding into a scary, septic fever, mystifying and challenging doctors. Miscarriages. Cat scratches. Simple sidewalk scrapes. Months in the hospital recovering. If there was any hope of recovery at all. The early attempts at penicillin only offering slight hope, before a loss of life. Diseases like meningitis, pneumonia, polio, killing children.  The urgent push of science is tied up in the war effort, and in memories of the fatalities of 1918's Spanish flu as well.

It's one of the things the novel does particularly well: anchoring each character's past in memories without seeming to go off on tangents. That same eye for detail comes across in Claire's character. She's a photographer. Even when she's not working, she notices light and has an eye for framing shots, for seeing things like the angle of sunlight while walking her son to school.

With all that detail and character driven history to read, I didn't entirely need some of the more typical novel plots, of romance and mystery.  Both were decently plotted, and, I suppose, good for the linear plot. I was honestly content to wander around historical New York with the characters and the developing medicine. From today's perspective, the way medicine and hospitals were organized is fascinating, even lavish-seeming. But there are seeds of the big drug companies' evolution. (Odd to see Mr. Merck talking about drug patents at a meeting.)

As for New York itself- I enjoyed a glimpse into how it has changed over time. Claire is raising her son in a neighborhood many of her male colleagues find dubious- the west Village. She remembers her mother having Margaret Sanger over for dinner. Her son loves walking to Waverly and Waverly. Claire and Jamie have their first romantic dinner at Grand Ticino. I'm pretty sure my parents have done the same. I had to look up the Rockefeller Institute, the story's central hospital, to fit the scene into my mental map of the city.

A single woman, trying to make her way in a world thrown into tumult by World War II. Photography. Romance. Detailed historical fiction, centered on characters who are earnest, fragile, scared and loving. I noticed a lot of similarities between this novel and Nothing But A Smile, which I read earlier this year and also loved. I wonder if reading them back to back would be an interesting exercise. Book club potential?

Not finishing a book

I always feel odd when I decide not to finish a book. Mostly, I feel guilty. Maybe a little rebellious.

I've decided not to finish Of Bees and Mist. I feel sheepish about this. Especially because, on the surface, it's exactly the sort of book I often like.

 A bit supernatural, a bit spooky, a sense of folklore. Neil Gaiman's written several in this vein, and I devour them. Books infused with a strong sense of cultural identity usually appeal to me too- other reviews of Setiawan's debut mention the author's use of myths from his Indonesian and Chinese background. Honestly, I'm not far enough into the book to see the multicultural pastiche influence... mostly, it seems Gothic, with strange and deliberately whimsical touches. The mood setting seems... off, in a way I'm having trouble articulating. And it's making me think of reading something else.

I would be curious to hear from other readers-- what makes you give up on a book? Do you go back to it? I'm willing to decide this is a right-book-wrong-time scenario, and keep it on my shelf for a bit. Because that's happened before. I tend to read by inexplicable whim.

The naming of characters

The naming of cats is a difficult matter. It isn't just one of your holiday games. -T.S. Eliot, from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.

Nomenclature in fantasy novels is tricky. A fact which has been on my mind recently, thanks to starting to read fantasy again. It must be tough, in addition to juggling the elements of plot and setting, to come up with convincing names for characters. Fantasy and mythic names need to be otherworldly, allegorical, exotic, without alienating the reader.

And, putting syllables together in a way that pleases you might be a difficult task for an author.

That said... I can't believe that the main character in Eric Setiawan's 2009 novel, Of Bees and Mist is named Meridia. Okay... it sounds pretty, it's unconventional, maybe with suggestions of tidal pull and finding a place in the world.

That could be why Meridia is the brand name for a drug. Specifically, Sibutramine Monohydrate HCL. A bit of Googling reveals that the drug, Meridia, has been on the market since at least 2004. So-- I wonder if Setiawan had any awareness of it, or if the name tickled his subconscious from one of those awful "Ask Your Doctor About..." drug commercials that name-check a drug without telling you what it does. It's woefully easy to be inundated with that kind of pharma messaging. Maybe he was, and it got under his skin and he forgot the source?

I wish the main character were named, oh, I don't know, Susan. I wish I didn't know that Meridia was a drug. In any case, it's much more distracting from starting this promising novel, than I want it to be.

I'm not too far in, but it has a lot of what I like. Magic realism, in a folklorically spooky way, a house full of spectrally reflecting mirrors, expanding staircases, and odd mists. Parents who are ciphers- a terrifying father and an absentminded mother (non-pharmaceutically named). Shades, a little bit, of Neil Gaiman's Coraline, in the spooky-parents-and-house dynamic. I can hope its mythology will unify into something equally interesting.

I'm reading other reviews,  variously cautious and ambivalent, though appreciative of some aspects. But I'm the only one who noticed the pharma-associated name that I can see. And once I've made the association, I'm having trouble ignoring it and letting the story get on with itself. Drat.

Thanks to Kelly Welsh, of Simon and Schuster, who sent me this to review.

'Fever Pitch' Left Me Lukewarm

Fever Pitch
Nick Hornby
Riverhead Trade $15.00 Paperback 256 pages

Obsessions you share invite a smile of recognition. Obsessions you don't share are bafflingly weird. Hornby's devotion to Arsenal football, lifelong and all-consuming, is very much the latter. Hornby acknowledges that he's taken his Arsenal obsession to a level beyond reason. He admits he doesn't even like being an Arsenal fan, stomach knotted with nerves before every game, shivering in the rain to watch the team lose. Conflating the team's fortunes, superstitiously, with his own. Scheduling his entire life around making sure he can watch games.

This piqued my interest, in the aftermath of the World Cup. I was looking for context and understanding of British football culture.  I might have been too female and too American to read this. Being an American, and a woman who only dabbled in soccer (and got most World Cup news off Jezebel.com) I am probably not the book's target audience. I watch football. NFL football. But-- if there's something else fun to do on a Sunday, off I go. (Not during the playoffs, of course.) Can my team win without me? Sometimes, sure! Do I even have a team? Sometimes! Sure!(Go Jets!)

True, lifelong sports fans despair, reading my perspective. As much as I love a good football game, or women's basketball, I watch more indiscriminately, without living or dying over a particular team, without as keen a sense of history as Hornby has built up. watching Arsenal. There's a giant differential of commitment between going to games, and watching from the comfort of a bar or the couch. Hornby's obsession with actual physical presence at the games, starts early in his childhood, as a father-son outing. But, Hornby's presence at the game becomes integral, urgent, far beyond a pleasant outing, closer to religious mania.

Tracing that mania in vignettes of matches that have intertwined and propelled his own life brings the reader along into the particulars of Hornby's obsession. He also does a wonderful job of capturing the atmosphere of each match, including the famously violent and boisterous soccer hooligans. After reading this, I at least have some sense of visual context for English football, on the good side, loyal and boisterous--- on the menacing--- unruly, racist, inebriated, even deadly.

In a barrage of names and game history, Hornby makes a good faith attempt to bring a reader along, of both the wider football world, and his own myopic focus. (His inability to truly cheer for a sweet goal, if scored by the opposing team feels strange.) Maybe if I had a better context for English football, I'd be able to follow along better, really understand what the FA Cup meant, or Luton, or Liverpool, or Chelsea.

There are spots where I'm not only baffled by the sport itself, I have trouble reading about the level of obsession Hornby brings to his Arsenal fandom. The confessional nature of his prose, his own slight embarrassment about the level of his psychic involvement bothered me. Especially when contrasted with the aimlessness of his own college and adult life, the focus on football, and acknowledging that it caused him misery--- kind of sounded like Holden Caulfield. Only with soccer obsession thrown in.

So it was a relief to read about some of his football experiences outside Arsenal. Watching Cambridge football games, even playing games and kicking around the ball with his friends. Digesting his fandom differently. That, even more than the successes of his wandering career, reassured me that there would be evolution, not just obsession in his memoir.

It whets my appetite for other sports reading. And, as if on cue, this morning I got an email from my fantasy football league.  Yeah. It's July, it's humid. And it's time to think about my kind of football. The kind with helmets!

The Poet Prince (book review)

The Poet Prince
Kathleen McGowan
Touchstone Hardcover/Simon & Schuster
June 2010 $25.99 407 pages

With historical roots in Italian Renaissance and apocryphal gospels, The Poet Prince offers an interesting take on art and Christianity. The idea of positioning Mary Magdalene as a central female principle in the original Church isn't new, nor is the idea of secret societies dedicated to preserving the beliefs the established Church got wrong. Countless other authors have drawn on the secrets of the Church to fuel suspense and unrest, often to highly famous, but not very well written results. (Dan Brown, I'm looking at you.) By building an interesting take on art history and some emotionally immediate historical fiction into her mythology, McGowan gets the mix right.

Although this is the third in a series, McGowan refers enough to previous escapades to get newcomers grounded. In the 21st century, we have the author Maureen Paschal (whose surname is positively Dickensian with double meaning) who has discovered alternate Gospels, preaching the sacredness of romantic love, soul mates, and art as a conduit of angelic blessing. It also brings Maureen to the realization that her prophetic dreams, and feelings of connection to the past mark her as an Expected One, not only discovering new Christian mythology, but up to her neck in the center of it. Of course, publishing these ideas puts her at the center of a controversy in the Church, including peril to her own life.

The action of The Poet Prince brings Maureen and friends to Florence, Italy, where a parallel story begins, told to her by her spiritual teacher, Destino. The chapters set in Lorenzo de Medici's world of art, political conspiracy, and Christian mysticism are an absolute delight to read. McGowan does a wonderful job describing the compassionate leader Lorenzo, and his devotion to both sound politics and the creation of beautiful art. Lorenzo's beloved boyhood friend, Sandro, grows up to be the talented artist, Botticelli. In keeping with McGowan's worldview, Lorenzo meets his soul mate, the young girl, Colombina, at an early age. They are doomed by political exigencies of marriage, to be apart, though they remain devoted to each other. Some of their passages of tortured spiritual romance got me choked up.

One of the aspects of McGowan's worldview that was particularly interesting was her take on Renaissance art. She characterizes truly gifted artists as "angelics," secretly flouting the Renaissance church by infusing their art with strong emotion, classical themes, and honoring the female principle of the Magdalene rather than the Virgin Mary.  Although I haven't seen most of the paintings she references, except in reproductions, she describes them well enough that I'm ready to believe in her symbolic take.

With the strength of the historical sections, and the vividness of her art history writing, it's hard not to notice that much of the 21st century plotting doesn't fare as well, or seem nearly so creative. It may be that Dan Brown ruined this particular sandbox for subsequent authors, but the plot of religious conspiracy/mystic visions/peril doesn't fare so well, or so believably, as the sections McGowan sets in the past. It's easier to believe symbols and visions against a Renaissance backdrop- the immediate urgency and conviction of Maureen's visions make her too much of a superhero character, in a way I have trouble buying. It's telling that I felt so wholly invested in the lives of Lorenzo and his Colombina, in Sandro and the nasty menace Savonarola, and less so in the 21st century cast. Not sure what it's telling me--- that I need to go read McGowan's prequels for proper context, or that I would rather see more of McGowan's excellent historical scene setting than the suspense plot.

I wonder whether readers who weren't raised Catholic will get as much out of McGowan's writing as I did. I was wary, at first, about her Christian secret conspiracies, but the humanist approach won me over. As I said, it's not the first time I've seen, and enjoyed, the perspective of Mary Magdalane coming front and center in a sensual, gnostic belief system. Some aspects of McGowan's take on Mary Magdalene reminded me of a book I read several years ago, and loved, The Wild Girl, by Michele Roberts.  The Poet Prince reawakened a curiosity I've had for a long time.

One of these days, I owe it to myself as a lapsed, slightly bruised Catholic, to go back and read some of the historical scholarship about Gnostic or apocryphal Gospels, or alternate views of Jesus's teaching that might have gotten lost in translation.

Thanks to Ashley Hewlett of Touchstone Publicity for sending me a copy.

The Magicians' Guild: Review

The Magicians' Guild (The Black Magician Trilogy, Book 1)
Trudi Canavan
Eos, January 2004 $7.99 384 pages

It's been a really long time since I read a fantasy novel. Not sure if I ever consciously rejected or went off the genre, the way Sassymonkey, one of my favorite book bloggers, has. Just hadn't been reading much of it, or even prowling those sections of bookstore and library shelves. The considerable exception being urban fantasy, particularly that with a YA bent. Teenagers having magic in ordinary worlds? Yes please, voraciously! Wizards and made-up worlds? Eh. Not really, lately.

The Magician's Guild came highly recommended by a good friend, and was exactly what I like in fantasy, mostly a keen sense of history driving the conflict. Mages, drawn from the upper classes, do the king's bidding, by helping the king keep order when the townsfolk have gotten rebellious. The action starts in the poorer parts of town, with common folk being evicted, to reduce crowding in the city. Understandably, they throw rocks at the mages, who have magic shields, and nothing to fear from townsfolk.

Or so they think. Until Sonea throws a rock right through a wizard's shield.
Nothing I like better than a good upset of the status quo!
Except maybe some insights into the structure and culture of magic in a fantasy world it- how is it learned? Who gets to learn it? What kinds of magic are there and who can do it?

The Magician's Guild delivered that beautifully.  Also, because it shifted perspective between the fugitive Sonea, and the wizards pursuing her and trying to figure out what she meant, it was more nuanced than a classic good and evil fantasy setup. Each side's assumptions get in the way of making the best choices. I particularly like how Sonea's mistrust of the wizards played out in the book's later stages, and how some of the wizards reacted to her, with empathy or puzzlement or contempt.

The book was so good, in fact, that I'm impatient to get my hands on the sequel, and I can think of nothing to criticize except the structure of Canavan's created language. Have used the cut tag to spare you my quasi-anthro-linguistic nitpicking.

Smart Women and Abominable Men

Thanks to the library's timing, I wound up on a bit of a Georgette Heyer binge, reading The Black Sheep and Frederica almost back to back.

I liked both for the same reasons. Banter! I love banter. I love witty ripostes, huffs and frustrations, smothered laughter, twinkling eyes. Eye rolling? I am not sure eye rolling happened in the Regency England Heyer's writing about.

Cut for spoilers... if there is such thing as a spoiler for a Regency Romance.

My Life From Scratch, A Memoir Sweet as a Cupcake

My Life from Scratch: A Sweet Journey of Starting Over, One Cake at a Time
Gesine Bullock-Pardo
Broadway
June 2010 $14.00 240 pages

Reading this memoir without a good, delicious bakery nearby is exquisite torture. Gesine Bullock-Pardo describes herself as a misanthrope, painfully shy and not terribly fond of people. She lavishes love on the pastries she bakes and describes, and on a few quirky people in her inner circle in a tiny Vermont town. The way she describes an espresso-flecked cheesecake or a chocolate-dipped almond macaroon I can almost taste it. The "almost" is the killer. I'm pretty sure I drooled over some of the descriptions.

I like to think I have an indifferent sweet tooth. Mostly, I can ignore cupcakes and the almost aggressive sugar of their frosting. But... for this baker's luscious taste writing, I begin to rethink my stance. For other readers who find their sweet tooth primed, there are recipes at the end of each chapter. Although I haven't tested any, each looks detailed enough to shepherd even baking novices through the steps. (Provided said baker has a few key kitchen gadgets, such as a fairly badass electric mixer.)

I admit to being unfair to this book at first, because I'm usually about as interested in Sandra Bullock's romantic comedies as I am in cupcake frosting. I like both my desserts and my rom-coms minimally sweet. (Grosse Point Blank, one of my favorites, may be the cinematic equivalent of baker's chocolate.) So, while I enjoy reading about the family closeness of two dissimilar sisters, I admit I was braced for something teeth-hurtingly perky and sweet. (And yes, I'm aware that Sandra Bullock sometimes doesn't do perky. I still do want to see that football movie she did last year. I'm a sucker for a sentimental sports flick.)

Bullock-Pardo's wry misanthropy, blended with her clear love for her baking and her oddball small town won me over. As did her memories of growing up, learning to savor baking and slow time with her grandmother. I didn't need the frame for this story to be her leaving her Hollywood life and seeking something real.I would have happily read it as just a baking and food memoir.

I don't enjoy reading about people being stifled, or fake, or L.A. culture. People who do lunch? No thanks. People who make lunch, in such mouth-watering detail, in a small-town bakery full of characters? Yes please!

Got this as an ARC, many thanks to Broadway books & co.

Rick Bayless gets it right:

From Chef's Story: 27 Chefs Talk About What Got Them into the Kitchen

"Translation is what I do and it is inspired by what I do in linguistics. A word-for-word translation means nothing. It won't have the power. If you tried to speak Oaxacan in Chicago, it wouldn't work. The corn is different."

"But I also don't serve such tacos, or grasshoppers, for that reason, because it turns a culture into strangers. People eat all parts of animals everywhere in the world pretty much except in the United States, where we've become so narrow about this stuff. I think that shows us to perhaps be lacking in our culture. People often ask me 'What's the weirdest thing you've eaten in Mexico? I heard that they eat armadillos.' It's saying 'They're weird down there.' It makes it into the 'other.' And I want us to be together in this whole thing."

Yes. Just.... yes.

An Irish Country Girl

An Irish Country Girl
By Patrick Taylor
Forge Books, January 2010 $24.99 320 pages

I picked this up from the library, a little disappointed that it wasn't an audiobook. I'd listened to two previous installments of Patrick Taylor's series, An Irish Country Doctor and An Irish Country Village. There's something about stories of rural doctors, read aloud with nice accents, that helps me wind down, even sleep, at night. Set in Ulster at the start of the 1960s, Taylor's stories focus on two doctors in the fictional Ulster town of Ballybucklebo. They're general practitioners, with some very mild and small town medical drama. It's like James Herriot, for people.