Mind. Blown.

I don't think there's anything more I can say. Except maybe that as the type of person who likes celebrating unnecessary vaguely landmarkish things, I love that this is the last book I read in 2009. Amazing.

The time to make up your mind about people is never.

Reading Zadie Smith's book of essays, Changing My Mind, is an inevitable way to feel like an idiot. That's not a complaint. It's like talking to the smartest person at a cocktail party, making mental note after mental note of books to read and movies to watch, all the while nodding as though you've already read and seen them, and being sure to get her phone number so once you've caught up, you can hang out and hope to be as cool and smart as she is. Therefore, it is unsurprising that you recommended me this book, Sarah. However, I could not disagree with Zadie Smith more when it comes to Shopgirl. I love that movie and am not ashamed of my sexual attraction to Steve Martin, so I therefore can understand Claire Danes'. Especially when her last date was with Jason Schwartzman who suggests a baggie when nobody has a condom. But anybody who shares my love of Katharine Hepburn and especially The Philadelphia Story does have soooome taste in movies, I must admit. Overall, I couldn't appreciate every essay of Smith's, but I look forward to pulling it off my bookshelf as a reference once I've read more of the books she discusses.

Seriously. She wore a feather boa.

After seeing the travesty that is the movie version of NINE, when I started reading Love and Obstacles and realized it was a string of short stories about a Bosnian man growing up in various countries and becoming a writer, I was a little hesitant. No more self-referential or self-congratulatory or self-anything stories. But then I started to read it and my biases slid away. The portrayal of displacement and detachment from home is poignant and each individual story becomes more powerful in the company of the other stories. It's almost enough to wash away the image of Daniel Day-Lewis trying to dance or Judi Dench wearing a feather boa. Almost.

Aeroman Lives

How does someone write a book like Fortress of Solitude? Do you just put pen to paper and people spill out or do you know these people in your head somehow? In 509 pages, Lethem has created several indelible portraits of people I feel like I know. I can't believe it took me so long to read this book, but I'm so glad I read it now, because reading it in New York gives me an extra appreciation for Lethem's insane attention to detail. And reading it at this point in my life gives me an extra appreciation for Lethem's understanding of the constant see-saw of power in those friendships we carry from childhood onward. Even for those of us whose differences aren't quite as massive as Dylan and Mingus', there's a recognition. I finished this book this morning, but I don't know that I'll ever really be finished with it? This one sticks with you.

Waste of Oxygen

In the past two weeks, I've read two books about really smart people making historic contributions to modern society: Free For All about Joe Papp and the Public Theatre and The Audacity to Win, David Plouffe's book about the Obama campaign. Both are fascinating tales, moving and powerful, about brilliant people doing brilliant things.

And then I realized I spent approximately twenty five minutes dissecting favorite episodes of "Saved by the Bell" yesterday with my friend's new boyfriend and I wonder....what will the book about me say?

Welcome back, Sarah! YAY.

House of Mirth

I bought this book at the half-price bookstore in my hometown last May and gave the first 50 pages or so a desultory look-through before going back to being distracted by the internet. I finally picked it up again a few weeks ago, tired of the guilt I felt every time I saw its unbroken spine on the shelf. Finished a few minutes ago and now I'd like to go to bed please, pull the covers over my head and listen to sad music until morning. 

I have a bad habit of getting so deeply involved with the characters of well-written novels that my identity begins to merge with theirs. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Actually, isn't that the reason people read? For a momentary respite from the daily tedium of life inside our own bodies?  Wharton's writing is so clean, the edges so crisp and well-defined, that once you decide to give yourself over the world she creates, it becomes impossible to get away until she sets you free. You're stuck in Lily Bart's hot fever dream of a life as she descends from New York society queen to...something else . For those of you, like me, who managed to avoid reading this book through high school and college I don't want to give away the ending. Think of it as an episode of Gossip Girl where the stakes are way higher and everyone is smarter and more evil (though I imagine Blair Waldorf could hold her own in this set without a wrinkle of either perfectly waxed eyebrow). Depressing though it is, this book is worth reading if only for the chance to get to know the original mean girls while engaging with a great artist at the height of her powers. 

Things As Elegant, If Not More Elegant, Than Hedgehogs

-cappuccinos with the copious amounts of foam
-when the subway and I reach the station at exactly the same time and I don't have to wait
-ny times sunday magazine
-gummy vitamins
-when Sarah calls while I'm grocery shopping and I get the combined happiness of talking to Sarah and finding instant oatmeal on sale

Books That Are Very Important Capitalized

I was in the midst of reading one Important Book (The Mayor of Castro Street) but that wasn't enough, I was too impatient to start on the Important Book Du Jour, Eating Animals. It was an upbeat two weeks.

The former is a phenomenal read. The best class I took at Northwestern was Gay and Lesbian History because its history we're a part of and I find that fascinating enough to outweight the cheesier implications of such a statement. The latter...as someone who has been drinking all that Kool Aid and then some, I enjoyed it, but anybody else would be better off reading the incisive New Yorker review of the book. For those of us who don't eat meat and like skinny jeans paired with Converse, Eating Animals is a great read. for the rest of the world... you should probably just re-read Everything is Illuminated.

Also, I'm not giving up on you, Sarah.

The Best Kind of Guide Book

Were it not for my beloved Sarah, I would never have picked up Birds of America. For one thing, it sounds like a guide book to my least favorite species (they are going to poke out my eyes with their evil beaks and they carry diseases in their dirty dirty feathers and nasty feet!) and for another, short stories are tricky business for me. I'm particular about the short story books I pick up because I have to get engaged several times, not just once. That takes mad skill, especially with my currently wandering mind. But of course, Sarah was right, the book was brilliant. I wish I could see the world the way Lorrie Moore does. Also, I wish I could see the world the way Sarah does. I miss you, lady.

Ignorance is Bliss?

Reading is a dangerous passion. It encourages sitting on a couch, wrapped in a blanket with a mug of something warm on a nearby table. No matter how horrible what goes on in the book you're reading, it's just a book. You can put it down to answer a phone call or meet a friend for dinner or even just clip your toenails. It makes being complacement easy. So the Voice of Witness series is both incredibly valuable and incredibly difficult to take. These books confront you with things going on right now that you can do something about. Closing Out of Exile, putting it on a shelf and forgetting about it until the next time someone asks me to recommend them a nonfiction book is impossible. This book is a compilation of various Sudanese refugees' stories. Many of them live in Cairo, some are in other African countries, a few are in the United States. Nobody's story has a happy ending, there are just happier and less sad endings. And they aren't even really endings, because who knows what happens next? One chapter ended with a post-script, describing the narrator's death. If you're willing to open yourself up to this, read this or any book from Voice of Witness, but know what you're in for.

The Kind of People Who Wear Lobster Print Trousers

Judging by the title, I expected this to be a novel about the chafing caused by Brooks Brothers' trousers and how awkward it is to be named Chas Pennyworth VI. I kinda wish it had been. Cause I dunno, man. If you're gonna tempt me with a book about the elite of Boston and open with a prologue describing how far back our leading character's family goes in American history, can the story not be about a girl who just graduated from college and doesn't know what she's doing and her stoner friend who doesn't know what he's doing and her rich dad who knocked up the Spanish nanny and her sad lonely mom and her awkward precocious brother? I imagine Chas Pennyworth VI's life was way more exciting.

Septimus, what is carnal embrace?

Engrossed in all the drama and minutia of moving, I have started two books, one I will certainly never finish as it is now propping up my bed on the slanted yet charming pre-war floor of my new apartment. The other I am enjoying partially because it is good on its own merits and partially because it doesn't require much of my brain, which is great since I don't have a lot to give right now. I can't focus on anything, my mind wanders back to thoughts like, "I live in New York now" and "It's cold" and "Whyyyy didn't I notice how much this floor slants when they were showing me the apartment?"

Times like now, it's nice to return to an old friend and I have spent my Columbus Day, when not being awkwardly flirted with by the sketchy dude installing my air conditioner, re-reading Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. Lovely. I am somehow ready to re-engage with the world and ask questions of it, though none will ever be as eloquently phrased as Stoppard's. Reading Stoppard is almost depressing; he makes the most complicated issues of life seem so simple and he phrases it so beautifully that you have the urge to write his quotes on every blank piece of paper you have and to always be reminded that no, this is what love is, this is what beauty is, this is what life is.

We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of ARchimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?

Twilight of the Superficial

Twilight of the Superheroes took me a month to finish because I kept falling asleep. At first I thought the problem was me. After all, reviewers in publications with familiar names described it in terms usually reserved for the likes of Alice Munro and Philip Roth. "Magic," muses Newsweek. "Dazzling," laughs Time Out New York. "The most important work of fiction published this year," cries the Cleveland Plain Dealer. But no. It isn't me. This book may be all of those things but above all it is also aggressively boring. Perhaps I shouldn't criticize. I mean, where's my MacArthur Genius Grant? But, ok, listen. Someone needs to tell every contemporary literary fiction writer who grew up or now lives in Manhattan that it's ok not to write about wealthy New York families with problems. It just is. Adding in a cursory reference to 9/11 or the Iraq War or the economy doesn't fix things. It only highlights your odd absorption with this tiny, increasingly irrelevant population. The writing is lyrical and beautiful, and Eisenberg teaches at one of the top MFA programs in the country. So why does each story in this collection feel ripped from the headlines of the NYT Thursday Styles section?

postscript: Oh, excuse me, "Home & Garden"

post post-script: At first I accidentally typed Home $ Garden. That made me laugh, probably too much.

post post post-script: I just got mad rageful over a book of short stories nobody I know will ever read. Think it's maybe time to go outside.

Betrayal

Halfway through this book about a weeklong global quest to get rid of a huge sum of money quickly and honor the memory of a recently deceased friend, the companion of our narrator interrupts the story to inform us it is all a lie. He is writing from New Zealand to tell us the only true thing about the 300 pages read thus far is that the narrator did die in Colombia after the completion of this book and they did go to Senegal and Morocco and Estonia. And then I'm supposed to read the next hundred pages and suddenly, I don't care because it's not true. Even though it was never true. It's a work of fiction. But I feel betrayed by this fictional dude I've just spent all these hours with. What the crap, man? Why'd you lie to me, your new best friend? What'd I ever do to you but be interested in you and your crazy shenanigans?

And that's when I realized I need more real friends.

oh what a world we live in

I bought this book because there was a great Vonnegut quote replacing the descriptive paragraph that is usually found on the inside of the book jacket and that intrigued me. It ended up being about a future version of our current world where bees are thought to be extinct until five people are all stung within a few days of each other. From there, it's a vision of a world not too far from ours, where people take drugs to mimic the effects of reading a novel (a comforting grey solitude mined from brains of people reading James Joyce) and shut out the world around them. The phrase "eat your brains" came up more than once. I'd like to say I'm entirely disturbed by the prospects of our crazy technological future, but I'm writing this from an airplane with wireless internet, so maybe I should put my money where my mouth is.

The Inmate With The Mop

The problem with reading books by Tao Lin is that his prose style is so similar to the way thoughts sound that after you're done, it's impossible not to write/think as though he is inside your brain writing your life as you live it. I don't know how he does this but it scares me. There's no real story here. The book is more like an extension of his blog and general online persona. I am going to see him give a reading tomorrow at Book Soup, maybe. This is my favorite thing he's ever written. Bed is also very good.

Okee Dokee Artichokee

There is something about being from the Midwest that I appreciate the farther I get from the Midwest. Years 0-18, in Cincinnati, OH, I was depressed that I wasn't hip and chic and from Manhattan or San Francisco or London or hell, even Toronto. No, I was from a city that realized raw fish was tasty roughly around 2002 and found jumping back on the leg warmer bandwagon easy because they'd never jumped off. Then I went to college in Chicago which is like Midwest for Dummies. Sure, we're friendly and enjoy a big hunk of cheese, but we eat salads and wear Burberry trench coats. As I encountered more non-Midwesterners, I suddenly found myself grateful for what is construed elsewhere as being overly polite and for the random colloquialisms that peppered my speech. And then Los Angeles. Oh Los Angeles. Perhaps as a reaction to the tan people with faces younger than my car, I have embraced my Midwestern roots full on. I can pontificate about the beauty of the Ohio River, happily ignoring the fact that I can still smell the stench from performing on a riverboat for two summers. I can ramble about the friendliness of the people, even though this means the line at Starbucks is out the door with people chatting it up as they order their mochas. My glasses are always rose colored when pointed towards the Midwest, because when you leave the Midwest, everybody's are. On either coast, it is considered a magical land where people talk to their farm animals and nobody has a door because we're all just so darned trustworthy. Whereas when you're there, it's just as boring and stupid as I thought it was when I was 16. Somehow, Lorrie Moore has captured all of this in one book taking place in Illinois and for that, I love her and I love this book. I also love Tassie, our heroine, and I would gladly follow her on another meandering journey again, were she not fictional.

Falling in Love With a Swede

Benny and Shrimp starts up where the majority of romantic comedies end. It's about the argument Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks had in the cab ride away from the Empire State Building about whether they'd live in Seattle or Baltimore. Or the moment when Richard Gere sighs and tells Julia Roberts it's about damn time she learned which fork to use and stopped safety pinning her stupid boots and buy some new ones. Benny and Shrimp meet cute at a cemetery (...did I say cute? maybe it's creepy?) and spend the next 200 pages dealing with the fact that he's a farmer who wants somebody to make him meatballs and needlepoint kittens onto his pillows and she's a librarian who wants somebody to go the opera and restaurants with her. Somehow, this isn't annoying, it's endearing in a we've-all-been-here sort of a way and you find yourself wondering if there's a way Shrimp can crochet while she's at the opera with Benny. The book doesn't really end, which would be annoying if it weren't so metaphorical and emblematic. Also, the book was translated from the original Swedish which means people have really fun names and there are lots of umlauts. Just sayin'.

Speaking of books that change your life (although I suppose they all must, in some manner. Imagine how many buses you've avoided stepping in front of because instead of going out you stayed home and read on the couch) here is one that purports to.  Either you like Alain de Boton or you don't. He is much like 50 Cent and certain types of cheese in that way. If no, this book is a good way to feel like you've read Swann's Way if you have not and don't plan to, but would still like to reference it at dinner parties. 

Towards the end he offers a piece of good advice which is that sometimes it is a good idea to put books down. Like most people who read, I often use books as a way to avoid real life. Finishing a difficult book is a good way to convince yourself you have done something important and that you are a substantial and productive member of society. At a certain point though, bosses and graduate school applications and landlords and mothers and others indifferent to your solitary accomplishments refuse to be ignored. You can't hide behind these paper walls forever, as much as you would like to. At least, this is what I keep telling myself though I have yet to take my own advice. 

A Sudden Urge To Break Out Into Hives

I am moving to New York in less than two weeks. I went there this weekend to find an apartment and somehow, a can-do attitude cultivated by too many viewings of "The Sound of Music" actually defeated the New York Real Estate Monster and landed me in a cozy new home somewhere between the Village and Chelsea and a Pinkberry. This is exciting and scary and awesome and horrible and like I said, hives. So I spent a lot of time reading, partially because you can do that on the subway, as Miss Labrie so eloquently reminds us, and partially because it's nice to think of other people when thinking of yourself makes you want to do cartwheels and vomit simultaneously.


Books I Read in New York, In Order of Importance:
Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck
The Romantics by Galt Niederhoffer
The Big Rewind by Nathan Rabin

This is a good time to be reading a book that reminds us, "Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it."

I'm certainly not a blown-in-the-glass bum but I'm going to do my best impression as my world collapses and rebuilds itself over the next few weeks.

One Way To Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself

The Last Lecture is a farewell speech written by Randy Pausch, a computer science professor who died from pancreatic cancer. He wrote it when he had six months left to live, in part to give his kids and students something to remember him by. The lecture, Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, is cheesy and full of stupid dad jokes and other jokes that are only funny if you are a computer science professor obsessed with DisneyLand but, still, it is a good read if you're looking to put your own life in perspective. Like, say, for example, if you are stuck on the subway with an hour to kill and no clear idea of where you are or how to get to where you are supposed to be. Reading about Pausch's tumor-riddled pancreas somehow makes that type of problem seem much less important. I got this book as a gift, by the way. It is that kind of book. You can watch the lecture that inspired it here.

Lost

At this point, I've probably squandered about 50% of my waking life on unsuccessful attempts to get from point A to point B. Lostness inevitably leads to lateness-or maybe the two problems arise from the same source?- in any event I'm also that girl whose friends assume "I'll be there at 2:00" means 2:30, or maybe 3, or maybe "Wait, didn't we plan that for Tuesday? No? Shit." On vacation this week I rediscovered the fact that Lost in New York means something entirely different than Lost in Los Angeles. Trying to get from Harlem to Brooklyn, I took two wrong trains and spent about 3 hours bumbling about underground. I also finished three books. Three! Just riding back and forth on the train. Most likely, this had a lot to do with why I kept missing my stops but, whatever, it was raining and I had nowhere pressing to be.

Lydia Davis writes stories that aren't so much stories as they are collections of thoughts, ideas for plots, gatherings of information organized according to the Scientific Method, and mathematical analyses of everyday situations. The pieces in Varieties of Disturbance are often about grammar, marriage, maids, and fraught relationships but however improbably she sidesteps sentimentality to create tiny, compact bits of impeccable prose. She also blurs the line between fiction and poetry in a way that makes the whole concept of genre seem futile. She's got an infectious prose style, so if you pick up this book don't be surprised when you start thinking in straight lines. Reading it on the train made me feel less like I was lost, per se, and more like I'd just suddenly decided to surprise myself and go somewhere other than originally planned. Like, um, Queens.

When the Op-Ed Page and Literature Collide

Upon finishing The Tortilla Curtain, my first thought was, Is this what people who read Grapes of Wrath when it was current felt? Not to suggest this book will reach those canonical heights (also not to suggest it's not a great read), but when it comes to reading about issues we're still so tangled up in, like the immigration debate, is there enough distance to appreciate somebody else's thoughts or does it just add to the knot? So if I were some random easterner reading the latest Steinbeck, would I have loved Grapes of Wrath and foretold it being assigned to ninth graders as summer reading everywhere or would I just have been annoyed by Steinbeck's proselytizing?

As for this book, the story was compelling, but I kept being dragged out of it by my own opinions which isn't why I read fiction. The most interesting contribution Boyle brings to the immigration debate by approaching it in literature is his comparison to nature. Our caucasian leading man loses two small dogs to coyotes in his mountaintop community. He believes it's because fellow community members feed these wild animals and encourage them to come around and sniff for food, then stealing said food (or puppies) when there's none being handed out. Whether or not you agree with the comparison, it certainly brings up some thoughts worth thinking.

You've Just Quit Your Job, What Are You Going To Do Next?

If you're me, the answer is to finally finish that stupid 600 page biography of Marc Chagall that's been taunting you since you read the review in the NY Times and bought it online without realizing it weighs more than your head and let it sit in your To Read Pile for a few months. And then you realized it was pretty dry and somehow managed to make Chagall's crazy life (an illegitimate child! an oedipus complex! france!) kinda boring. But the pictures were really pretty, so here are a few.











yayyyy!

Brain Vomit

Four espresso shots deep and reading The Exquisite by Laird Hunt.  "I used to slice the water like a serrated spoon," says the narrator. Serrated spoons are pretty awesome though, right? Like for eating pudding with, or some sort of mousse? I feel like they get way less attention than they deserve. Also, I am thinking this blog should be funnier. The other day I tried to convince a friend that I can be funny, which I guess is a pretty sure bet that I'm not. "I can name 5 people who think I'm funny," I said. "Produce them," said he. I came up with four, one of whom I was sleeping with when the sentiment was expressed. "That doesn't count," he informs me. "It also doesn't count if they think the things you do are funny, like being late all the time or leaving your keys places." I don't remember where I was going with this- a techno cover of Spiderwebs just came on in the cafe I'm sitting in and all my attention got completely redirected.  Anyway, hey. 

The Great Work Begins

Have you ever read something you've read before and liked and appreciated and understood, but suddenly, you're seeing it in new colors and shades and depths and light explodes and it's a little bit like when the Angel first visits Prior in a big budget production of Angels in America?

Yeah, I'm going through that now. It's great.

For Those of Us Not Living Solitary Existences on Mountaintops

I'm currently in the last weekend of my yoga teacher training. About two months ago, when my reading list arrived in my email inbox, I could feel my heart pitter patter with excitement. School! Reading lists! Maybe I should get a new lunchbox! And the books have all been fascinating and honestly, are helping me make some positive changes in my life, but they're tricky. The predominant text, the bible of yoga, if you will, is The Yoga Sutras of Patanajali. This is a brilliant text, but it's written for monks living alone on mountaintops. There is a portion that discusses how to use mind control to shrink yourself and levitate. I know, right? Clearly, your teacher at Yogaworks is a total hack. But in all seriousness, I've had difficulties applying some of the things I've been learning to the reality of life in the big bad city and one of my teachers recommended I read Yoga and the Path of the Urban Mystic. When I stopped laughing at the title and actually started to read it, I could not have been more grateful for the recommendation. It could be a quick read, but it shouldn't be, because the things Darren Main talks about are worth letting sit and stew. You don't have to have read the Sutras to appreciate it either. If you've ever left a yoga class feeling completely peaceful and at rest with the world and want tools outside of your asana practice o continue that feeling, this book will be helpful. If you want tools for leading a mindful and conscious life amidst all the everyday bluster, this book will be helpful. If you want to read about a point of view different from your own, this book will be helpful.

In case you haven't noticed, I found this book quite helpful.

The One Night Stands Of Reading

In high school my friend Vanessa used to make fun of me for reading Airport Novels, books like Life of Pi or She's Come Undone or anything at all by David Sedaris. Basically any book lots of people were reading because lots of other people had already read it. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is decidedly Airport in nature, wildly popular because of the story behind the author's death and also because the cover is just abrasive enough to be impossible to ignore. The story itself is really dark. Yeah, you might think the Swedes are all lingonberry jam and efficient furniture design but apparently that's just cover for the multi-generational incest/torture scandals and immense corporate corruption. It's a compulsively readable thriller but the writing veers into carelessness pretty often, the author sketching out scenes and telling the reader what to feel instead of bothering with character development or realistic dialogue. Still, all is forgiven because hidden among the murder scenes and rape sequences that would do Sade proud is a passage in which the narrator listens to the Eurythmics completely unironically. One more point for the Swedes.

Richard Poirier is SO Invited to My Dream Dinner Party

Here's why.

What's Farsi for "Cajones"?

Hi, Sarah! This is pretty much verbatim what I told you at dinner tonight but on the off chance my mom is reading this like I asked her to, I will repeat myself.

Shirin Ebadi is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work in the Iranian judicial system and this is her story. Truth is always stranger than fiction and while I knew on some scholarly level the upheaval Iran has gone through in the past 40 or so years, I really had no idea the magnitude of the human cost. In about two hundred short little pages, Ebadi managed to bring that home to me. The whole time I was reading this, I kept thinking of a good friend of mine from junior high and high school whose mother was Iranian. I never bothered to ask her about her upbringing or what brought her from Tehran to Cincinnati, Ohio because I was self involved in the way that only a teenager can be. She's of the same generation as Ebadi and I wish now I could call her up and hear her story. After all, it's not just winners of the Nobel Peace Prize who are brave and make sacrifices to do what they think is right. Stories like this make it harder to complain about the piddly mundane issues of everyday life and make it easier to be strong when encountering them. And for that, I am grateful.

Summer Wasting

I'm halfway through The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and a manuscript about time travel. In lieu of an actual post, here is a picture I took on my phone. You're welcome.

Not Finishing, Not The End of the World. Or, Not Finishing Not The End of the World.

A friend and I recently had a conversation about the fact that not finishing a book is a learned skill. We slog through unenjoyable novels as though they were homework and we are expected to turn in a book report upon completion. This was absolutely something I had to learn, the idea that nobody would be mad if I put down a half-finished book never to return to it. And then I had to learn not to be mad at myself, ha. And is it just me or do books of short stories lend themselves particularly well to this lesson? After all, if one story doesn't grab you, skip ahead to the next. There were a few moments of Not The End of the World worth commending, but for the most part, Atkinson's desire to weave apocalyptic visions into the mundane just makes for a lot of vaguely interesting stories that end suddenly and oddly. So I put them down and am on to the next.

A Novel of Manners and Love. No, but really.

About one hundred pages in, I was ready to give up on The White Rose, never again to fall for the phrase "a novel of manners and love" unless when applied to a Jane Austen book I am re-reading. But then Sophie arrived and I must admit, I have a soft spot for socially inept, painfully bright Jewish girls whose true beauty shines through as soon as we take off our metaphorical glasses.....and by "we," I mean "they," of course. She threw a wrench into what was looking to be another story of a young man and an older woman feeling something like love but unable to overcome circumstances. Suddenly, the book became interesting and harder to put down because suddenly it wasn't a story I had heard before and yet it was a story I'd heard before. Korelitz doesn't quite get everything there is to get about That Great Concept That Is Real Love, but she writes so many of its little intricacies so beautifully, you find yourself being taken back to moments in your own life and seeing them in a new light. Not bad for what I had assumed was going to be a piece of fluff, fun and witty and not much else.

Also, Also, Also

Joel sent me this article about the lost art of reading.

If you read this blog you could probably submit to this.

The Gangsters

If you've ever tried to read Knut Hamsun's Hunger only to discover that it takes three months and an insane amount of willpower to get past the first 40 pages (and honestly, who hasn't? Right?), you might give Herve Guibert a try instead. Guibert is Hamsun-lite, equally dark and funny but a little less manic. Also, he writes novellas. As you may have noticed: we are all about novellas. In this one, the narrator, a not-so-fictional version of Guibert himself, is a sardonic young Parisian writer embroiled in a number of romantic intrigues with beautiful, aloof young men. His two great-aunts, Suzanne and Louise, get robbed of millions of francs by a team of shady contractors. Rather than stick around and deal with the bungling French policemen, he leaves the old ladies to fend for themselves and takes off with a lover for the coast. On the trip, he writes letters and drifts into memories of his scandalous sexual affairs. He may or may not get murdered at the end. I don't know. It is all very French. From what I've read about Guibert, he was an OG hipster, a bisexual journalist and photographer who worked at Le Monde and ran in circles with Barthes and Foucault. He writes pretty much the way you would expect, his voice a blend of morbidity, self-loathing, exceptional wit and extreme arrogance. (Sample line: "Once, at dinner my friend Philippe informed that, scientifically, suffering was such a mystery that one could almost say that it did not exist.") Also, dude was H-A-W-T, especially if you can look past the whole contracting AIDS and passing it along to his lover and his lover's wife, then committing suicide at the age of 36 bit. 

Johnny Tremain Did It Better

No joke, every time I hear the word "apprentice," I think of Johnny Tremain, this book I had to read in junior high about a silversmith's apprentice who accidentally pours hot silver over his hand and horribly disfigures himself. I don't remember what happens next, I think he and his crippled paw helped lead America to victory in the Revolutionary War or something, but he is eternally what I think of when I think of "apprentice." And sorry, Bill Buford, although you totally look like someone's cool grandpa in the jacket photo, you didn't come close to challenging that position.

I have a lot of respect for Ol' Bill. It takes balls to decide you love something and want to pursue it despite all logical and sane knowledge to the contrary, even if you do know in the back of your head a lucrative book deal is imminent. Bill Buford "gave up" his writing career to work in the kitchen of Mario Battali's famous restaurant, Babbo. For anybody who has ever eaten in a bustling restaurant, this is fascinating, this look behind the scenes. But then he goes off to Italy to learn how to make pasta from grandmas and how to butcher pigs from The Maestro and he totally lost me. Maybe it's the whole me-not-eating-meat thing that made these portions of the book less than...let's say, appetizing? I don't think that's what it is though. Sometimes, these special, life-altering experiences just don't translate to the outside world. The last 1/3 of this book is the equivalent of me describing to Sarah what it was like when I went to the Tony Awards when I was 13 but without the fun and/or danger of possibly losing an eye to an emphatic arm gesture.

And The Scandinavians Win Again

Machine by Danish writer Peter Adolphsen is about the untimely drowning of a fox-terrier sized horse from the Pleistocene period. It is also about a one-armed Russian immigrant named Jimmy Nash (nee Djamolidine Hasanov) and his brief, unconsummated affair with one Clarissa Sanders, a doomed Austinite of above-average intelligence. The two stories are inextricably intertwined in ways both chemical and metaphysical. To sum up: the horse's heart winds up as a drop of fuel that ignites in the tank of a car driven by Ms. Sanders with Jimmy Nash in the passenger seat. The author draws out the relationship between the two plotlines via biological examinations of everything from death to oil refineries to acid trips over the course of fewer than 100 pages. It is a tiny book that will take you about an hour and a half to read. Afterwards, your brain will feel cleaner and more orderly somehow, as though somebody up there took a trip to Ikea and reorganized your thought space. 

How To Tell A True War Story

“What movie about Vietnam was made by Oliver Stone? Platoon. What movie about Vietnam was directed by Stanley Kubrick? No. Wrong. Full Metal Jacket.” This from an undersized boy in an over-sized pink tee-shirt, fourteen years old and yelling across the racket of Swingers at 10:00 on a Thursday night to a rapt audience made up of his parents and two best friends that look like the kind you only ever get to have once, but remember for the rest of your life. He is confident and brash in a way only kids born and raised in Los Angeles by artistic parents ever are, and I can’t help quietly falling in love with him from two tables away. Maybe it’s envy or nostalgia or projection or some such thing- I don’t know how to describe it. Tim O'Brien probably would. The reason I started listening to the kid in the first place, besides the fact that he pretty much made it impossible not to, was because I am in the middle of reading The Things They Carried for the first time and suddenly it seems like everybody, everywhere is talking about war. I picked it up for a lot of reasons: I saw the Hurt Locker and realized how much time I’ve wasted actively not knowing anything about actual Americans in combat;  somebody sent me a list; I found it on a shelf at my office which meant I got to read it for free; it is one of those books that everybody else has read that I somehow never got around to. Besides being incredibly relevant even 19 years after it was written, it’s a near-perfect meditation on truth and fiction and the strength of language, on what it means to write a story and why anybody would ever do so. Go reread it or read it for the first time right now, I'm serious. Go.

The Novella: Literature's Ego Booster

Hey, wanna feel smart and be the kind of person who can finish a book in two days? Then allow me to introduce you to... The Novella. Half the length of a novel but nobody has to know that when you brag about having finished one on a cross-country flight. Of course, I'm giving away my secret now. I could have let you think it was a 600-pager I pounded through in these past two days. But I could never lie to you. Also, this really isn't a book worth bragging about. The Magic Christian concerns itself with the misadventures of Guy Grand, a billionaire whose predominant concern is discovering how low people will stoop for money. Spoiler Alert: Really low. It was a funny enough distraction and certainly not untrue, but too mean spirited to be really engaging and it never dipped below the surface. Such is the problem of the novella. There is only so much you can do in 144 pages. Unless you're Steve Martin.

In Which Jen Feels Guilty For Having Been a Snotty Seventeen Year Old

Reefer Madness was published the summer I graduated from high school. I spent that summer working at Barnes and Noble, which was a lot like the Target lady sketch on SNL. I'd see cool books customers bought and have to run and get them for myself. I actually memorized my credit card number that summer so I wouldn't have to keep my wallet with me at the cash register. This was one of the few books I didn't read because I was dating a super pothead at the time and I felt to be at all pro-marijuana legalization was to be pro-my-boyfriend-not-buying-me-dinner-cause-he-spent-all-his-money-on-weed. But I saw Food Inc. the other day and remembered how brilliant Eric Schlosser is and decided to pick up this book. I'm so glad I did, although I now feel overwhelmed with a sense of indignation and a little guilt for being such a snot. The book is divided into three large essays, one on marijuana policy, one on illegal immigration (specifically focusing on the immigrants working in strawberry fields in California) and one on the pornography industry. All are fascinating and all will leave you equally confused with how good ideas and good intentions go so incredibly awry.

But that still doesn't mean I should have had to pay for my own burrito at Chipotle.

Nobody Remembers Shakespeare's Daughter

A memoir by the daughter of the novelist James Jones about her alcoholic mother and all their drinky friends. In the interest of full disclosure: I had to read this book for work. Ok. Hm. There's an alright bit where she takes a class at Columbia taught by a young Richard Price. For some reason, in my head, Richard Price was never young but arose fully formed out of the East River. Also, at one point the author grows out of her conviction that "to be a great writer, one must also be an exceptional person," which is something I always believed without really thinking about. I guess this might be a good book to buy for an older female relative who likes books if it is already her birthday and you forgot about it and now it is too late to think of anything else to get her.

And Now I Want a Canoe.

If Dave Eggers isn't yet an entry in Stuff White People Like, he should be. Loving Dave Eggers goes hand in hand with being an upper middle class white kid in your early 20s searching for your one true self. It's right up there with pad thai and ugly sweater parties. So obviously, I've always been a fan. Admittedly, my fandom has more stemmed from stuff Dave Eggers has done that doesn't have to do with his actual writing. I volunteer at 826's Los Angeles branch and I'm incredibly fond of all things McSweeney's, but I found A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius a smidge too navel-gazing for even me and I never felt like What Is the What gelled. Eggers does best using his own voice and I don't think he ever captured his narrator.

All that said, Zeitoun completely won me. If loving Dave Eggers this hard makes me a hipster, dress me in skinny jeans and a fedora and hand me a clove cigarette. I'm in. The sparse prose makes me think of a modern-day Hemingway and the fact that this story is true only makes it more painful and more difficult to put down. He tells the story of Zeitoun, a Syrian immigrant living in New Orleans with his wife, Kathy, and their four children, and how Katrina affected them. Not that we weren't aware of how severely the US government botched the response to Katrina, but to see it so clearly through one man's eyes makes it come home more than any vague news footage ever did. This compounded with the way the National Guard responded to a Muslim makes for a fairly heartbreaking read. Eggers' writing - and Zeitoun and Kathy - never ask for pity. That's not this book's style, nor is it theirs. You will put this book down with both an overwhelming disgust at what can happen when those we put our trust in fail us, but also with an overwhelming faith in humanity - that people can be as mistreated as Kathy and Zeitoun and rise from the ashes and continue with their lives.

Hue and Cry

This is one of those books where, when you've finished, you'll flip back to page one without meaning to, trying to catch whatever it is you must have missed at the start, a hint in the opening lines at the fastball to the face to come. It is a 442 page howl of rage, but Thomas writes like de Chirico paints, his brush strokes invisible, his poetry effortless. He also appears to have read the entire Western canon, then distilled it into an angry screed against most everything. The results would be unendurable if they weren't so unexpected.

It's a story about New York, about loneliness and loss and identity, about race and sex and the trouble with potential, about losing your voice or never having one, about taking what was never anyone's to give. It is also about construction work and playing golf with people you hate. It will make you feel a lot of feelings, almost none of them good.  After it ends, if you are me, you will have to lie upside-down with your head hanging off the sofa for a little while before your mind goes back to normal. If you are a writer, or black, or male, or a person, it will make you question most of what you thought you knew.

Commencement. In more ways than one.

Can a book still be referred to as chick lit if it doesn't suck? Just because its cover happens to be the color of a Tiffany's box and the four main characters happen to be women in their 20s, one of whom may or may not live in Manhattan and drink cosmopolitans? Is it really fair to group Commencement, by J. Courtney Sullivan, into the same category as The Devil Wears Prada and Confessions of a Shopaholic for these reasons?

The answer? No. No freakin' way. I literally could not put down this novel. Usually, finishing a book is an exciting moment for me. I place it triumphantly on my bookshelf like a hunter with a stuffed deer head or I decide to swap it out with Paperback Swap (the secret to loving books and not being in the poorhouse) and then I get to spend another twenty minutes combing through the website to pick out the next book. Either way, life is good. But finishing Commencement depressed me because I had to put down my new four best friends and I already knew what I was going to get Sally as a baby gift. Also finishing Commencement depressed me because admittedly, if there was any flaw to this book, it was its sort of pat ending. For a book so in tune with all the random and horrible and beautiful messiness of life, I was surprised by how easily it all tied together at the end. Or maybe I was just really upset it was over. I don't want to describe these people, I want you to discover them for yourself. Just know, if you pick up Commencement, for the next few days, you're going to have four new amazing friends and you're going to be sad to say goodbye to them at the end.

I'd be hard pressed to think of a more perfect book for me to have just finished at the start of this blog, Sarah and my experiment in Los Angeles literacy. Well. Maybe The Beautiful and the Damned. But only for the title.