here I am!

Here I am.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I'm blogging here now. I mean, not exclusively. Just sometimes.

tomorrow!

I read Jon Krakauer's account of a deadly expedition to the top of Mt. Everest in an attempt to calm my nerves about my impending departure for India.

It didn't work.

Not a bad read though, all the same.

my mom's famous friend

Everybody has that cool friend from way back when they brag about knowing, no matter how well they may know that friend now. Elisabeth Bumiller is my mom's that friend. They wrote together for the Walnut Hills' Chatterbox (the name of the newspaper that somehow still lives on today despite its...weirdness) and then Liz went on to work for the Washington Post and the New York Times. Whenever her bylines show up in the Times, my mom gets all excited and starts talking about when they were both writers! It's very cute. In the 80s, Liz's husband, also a writer, was sent to Delhi to be the the South Asian bureau chief for the Washington Post and she came along for the ride, writing the occasional human interest piece about India and researching what would eventually become this book. It's a bit dry and journalist-y, but not enough to detract from how fascinating these stories are.

And not enough to detract me from my sheer and utter panic about leaving on Friday. FRIDAY.

A Proper English Novel

I'm not sure what I expected going into this one. I knew the story dealt with clones, organ harvesting and boarding school, so I suppose I was anticipating more Stephen King than Edith Wharton. What I got was a proper 19th century English novel, a perfect contemporary example of the form. Ishiguro offers up a lot of lessons for writers here about creating and sustaining a believable voice, collating events into a coherent narrative, and using dialogue to establish character development. He also somehow manages to spin a tale about sex, diabolical post-war experimentation, and yes, organ harvesting, without spilling a single drop of blood. James Wood reviews it better than I can here.

Imperial Head Trip

I read Imperial Bedrooms on my Kindle because I liked the idea that I could want something and then have it, immediately, for 9.99. This is a feeling I've addressed here before, the Kindle as one of the few venues in this world that allows for instant gratification. It turned out to be fitting. The characters in BEE's universe exist in a place where impulse is king, the satisfaction of even the most ephemeral whims their sole driving force. Like all Ellis's books, it went down quick and easy, left me feeling vaguely dirty, not least because it's set in a Los Angeles that does not feel altogether fictional. Because I spend a great deal of time in the locations his characters frequent, around people like the ones he writes about, the horror of the story felt more plausible than I perhaps would have liked.

feeling bossy

Jen (1:46pm): Stop what you are doing, go to a bookstore and buy One Day by David Nicholls. I'm only putting it down now to text you and regrettably meet someone for coffee. I can't stop laughing and crying, it's so wonderful. Read it read it read it. Ok, that's all, I have 20 pgs left but had to tell you immediately, couldn't wait to blog it.
Sarah (2:46pm): Haha I have it on reserve at the library!
Sarah (2:46pm): I'm so excited to read it.
Jen (4:09pm): Oh my god you will love it so much.

"'What are you going to do with your life?' In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer. The future rose up ahead of her, a succession of empty days, each more daunting and unknowable than the one before. How would she ever fill them all?
She began walking again, south towards The Mound. 'Live each day as if it's your last,' that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to simply try and be good and courageous and bold and to make a difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Go out there with your passion and your electric typewriter and work hard at...something. Change lives through art maybe. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance."

sarah, read this immediately

Because when I read it, it was a little like when you read this, except instead of being in Koreatown, I was trapped in my very large walk in closet (what I have decided, in the spirit of optimism, to start calling my apartment) waiting for the cable guy to come.

I want to know her and be her friend and say mean things about celebrities with her and talk about how much being an assistant sucks and how dating in new york sucks even more than being an assistant. You should come hang out with us when this happens.

don't fuck it up, brad pitt

The Imperfectionists made me:
1. Wish I had followed that vague in-the-back-of-my-head whim freshman year to switch into the journalism school at Northwestern, even though the whim had more to do with my lack of getting cast in anything worthwhile and less to do with being the next Christiane Amanpour.
2. Wish that if I ever write a novel, my first go is as good as this.
3. Wish that this lovely collection of loosely bound vignettes detailing the lives of various staffers at an international newspaper based in Rome wasn't already being made into a movie. Because it's too much and too good for that.
4. Wish my subway stop was always a little farther away so I didn't have to put this down and get up.

this is hilarious

Every now and then, Nora Ephron is good for something other than raising my romantic expectations.

it's my birthday and I'll blog if I want to

After the Infinite Jest debacle, I needed something readable and The Girl Who Played With Fire fit the bill, even if it contained enough confusing Sweedish names to make me think I was reading something more dense than it actually was.

But The Lovers. Oh, The Lovers. In the form of this short Vendela Vida novel, I got one of my best birthday presents of all this year: a really good cry.

infinite something

I surrender.

Life is too short to read Infinite Jest. Especially on vacation in Istanbul.

but it's such a nice cover

Sometimes there are books you judge by their covers. Or titles. Or attractive 27 year old Italian physicist authors (see here). This was all three. And of course, as I should have known, that turned out to be a bad idea. Attractive 27 year old Italian physicists should stick to physics and not writing. Especially not writing about two broken people whose inability to connect makes me unable to describe them as "a pair." Starting out with the individual incidents that encouraged our two protagonists to go inward, there was so much potential, but by the final pages, it was all I could do to keep from screaming at the book on the subway, "GET OVER IT, YOU PUSSIES. MAN THE FUCK UP AND GREET THE REAL WORLD."

flashbacks

I remember very little about my freshman year of college. I think I've blocked most of it out, especially the awful outdoor production of The Taming of the Shrew (I was Bianca. That's how off the production was.). I hung out with a group of girls from my dorm a lot, my roomie and the girls from the two rooms next to ours. One of those girls went to Columbine, a fact she didn't share verbally but was broadcast by the old high school tshirts she'd wear to bed. One of the few things I do remember is this group of girls went to see "Bowling for Columbine" some night on campus. She insisted she wanted to go, she felt she was up for it. After all, she hadn't even been at Columbine when the massacre happened, she was in the 8th grade. But the movie upset her more than she expected, especially the cavalier reactions of her fellow students. We spent the evening in her room, listening to her rant and cry. I think I remember this moment because it was one of the first times I understood how much growing up sucks. Your friends will be upset about things that are bigger than losing a soccer game or getting an A- on a test and you can't fix these things by treating them to a frappucino. The point of this is, when I saw this book, Columbine, at Jackson McNally, I immediately purchased it, thinking about that past moment. I also was intrigued by the book's style, hearkening back to In Cold Blood. It didn't let me down. I was so drawn into this story about two young men, about a community, about the media, about a police force struggling to handle the unhandleable. Fascinating and moving and somehow, entirely judgment free. Obviously, I'll never understand what my friend was going through that night freshman year, but I appreciate having a better understanding.

eff travel books

When I woke up this morning, noticing the hour was way too early for a day when only the truly unlucky have work (and for that, you can thank my great great great great uncle or something or other, John Logan. Let's hear it for my fancy wasp relatives!), my first thought wasn't, "Balls, when will I learn to sleep in?" or "Sweet, 'Saved by the Bell' reruns start at 7am on tbs" but "oh good, I can finish A Fine Balance." And I did. And it was amazing. The owner of Idlewild Books, the most amazing travel bookstore in NY (and possibly my 2nd favorite bookstore in NY...but god, who are we kidding? that'd be like asking a mother to pick her favorite child!), pointed me towards this book, promising that it would give me an understanding of India no travel guide ever could. It gave me that and so much more. The heartbreaking randomness of events have never been more beautifully drawn than in Mistry's work. The coming together and coming apart of four seemingly random people in an unnamed Indian town in the 70's makes for one of the more compelling books I have read this year, if not in my lifetime. Between that and running into a friend of a friend last night who happens to be Indian and raved about how beautiful (if unbearably hot) Chennai is, I'm feeling a whole lot better about this whole thang.

Paxil for the Soul

Ah, self-pity. The 3rd great American past time, just under self-loathing and buying things on credit. I have a nice enough life and yet I spend a greater portion of my time than I want to admit wondering how things could have been different, and if they were different if maybe they wouldn't be just a tiny bit better? Mostly I do this out loud to my boyfriend while we are both trying to sleep. One night, sick of listening to me go on about what might have been had I not quit ballet lessons when I was 11, he rolled over. "Status Anxiety. Alain de Botton." he said "It's time now." In this book, de Botton briefly sketches out the evolution of status hierarchy across the world, from the Romans to the Amazon to turn-of-the-century France up to now. He explains why we want status (we want to feel loved, cared about, noticed, significant) and compares it to the desire for a lover (whom we seek out for all the same reasons). Modern Western signifiers of status - money made, not inherited, elite jobs, security- are largely arbitrary and entirely meaningless when held up against the only actual truth there is: in 1,000 years no one will know any of us by name. Solutions to status anxiety include realizing the relative insignificance of your own accomplishments, failures and ambitions , reading Gertrude Stein and Tolstoy (in particular the Death of Ivan Ilych) , and the understanding that "success" is a word with no objective meaning, and nobody else's life will make you any happier than your own. These are things we all know, but they sound so much clearer and more believable when explained by an intelligent man with a British accent.

Vampires are so 2009

Edward Cullen? Please. Sexy werewolves? Pah! Gay psychopaths who murder fifteen year old boys so they can turn them into love zombies? Yes please. In Zombie, Oates offers up the tale of a young serial killer, Q___ P___ living in a small college town working as a caretaker for an international students' dorm. In his off hours he fantasizes about anal sex with submissive corpses, and drafts a plan to lure a high school student into the back of his van so that he can lobotomize him. Ultimately, the plan works, minus the lobotomizing part. The cops find the body, Quentin is questioned and- thanks to the influence of his professor father and an expensive lawyer - released. The end. Oates tells the story from the point of view of QP, relating his murders and strategies in the same tone you or I might use to talk about a trip to the grocery store. After about fifty pages his thoughts start to make an odd sort of sense. This is what Oates does best, create characters who claw their way into your head to fatten themselves up on your brain. You realize what's happening to you but you're powerless to stop it, though really you won't even try. Oates is a master hypnotist when she wants to be. Finishing Zombie was like surfacing after being under water for just a minute too long. The world felt newer, shinier somehow, but also more sinister, pregnant now with the promise of eventual death.

hare krishna

Fun fact for the three of you reading this blog who don't me: I'm impulsive. Shocking, I know. Impulsive people tend to be found dancing on bars in the wee hours of the night or, I don't know, hitchhiking places (which I have actually done once but it was with my professor in Turkey and I was panicked the whole time). I don't have the trademarks of an impulsive person and yet, when it comes to big life decisions, I go with my gut. Sometimes this works out and sometimes this does not. My latest impulsive move? Summer plans to volunteer at an orphanage in India. Because, I don't know, the more yoga I do, the more I want to go to India. Because I like working with kids. Because I like good karma. Because I want to be the kind of person who can go volunteer at an orphanage in India (it sounds way better at dinner parties than "um, I dunno, just working and stuff until school starts"). So now that it's official, now that money has exchanged hands, flights have been booked and the game is on, I'm reading up on my summer home. And I'm getting panicky. In Holy Cow, an Australian journalist finds enlightenment when she is forced to move to Delhi to be closer to her husband. She test drives literally every religion and learns a great deal about herself. And on that hand, I'm excited about my upcoming trip. But then there's the other hand, the swelteringly hot polluted hand. That hand has me nervous. But I can't blame MacDonald for not having an enlightenment spiritual or compelling enough to calm my nerves. Even the Dali Lama wouldn't be able to do that.

doing homer proud

The best book makes the world around you disappear. This book made my sister's entire graduation weekend disappear, which I mean as a compliment to Soli and not a disparagement to my sister, of whom I am insanely proud. This book made bickering parents, boring graduation speakers, a 3-hour airport delay, my mother's insistence that you really don't need dessert tonight, do you? and a sunburnt back all disappear. The second I put it down, I wanted to pick it up again and let Soli's Vietnam wash over me. But I was really tired, so I played brickbreaker on my blackberry instead.

Like the Grown-Up Stephen King

That is what everyone says about Joyce Carol Oates and I guess that is true, but grown-up isn't always better, and in this case I would probably have been better off rereading Cujo. I mean, I like JCO but sometimes I wonder if that is because I know I am supposed to like her. She's written more books than anybody, she's probably going to win a Nobel Prize, she discovered Jonathan Safran Foer (who, say what you will, authored Eating Animals which absolves him of all sins in my book) blah blah blah it's like, I KNOW she's great, but still sometimes she just...misses. In this one, a 16-year-old girl from South Jersey finds herself entangled in a warped relationship with a wealthy septuagenarian and...I don't know. You can probably guess what happens if you have ever read anything else by this woman. It's like, FINE, or whatever and the writing is beautiful but she's no Elif Batuman, whose website is here if you want to ogle.

not everyone needs an autobiography

Ever since my first trip to Disney World, I have been a sucker for autographed things. So when I saw an autographed copy of The Bedwetter at my favorite Los Angeles landmark, Book Soup, this weekend, I found myself purchasing it because...why not? Maybe Sarah Silverman has a new joke or two and her old ones are pretty funny. I still chuckle about the jewish doctor rape although rape is not funny, boys and girls, although my mother's obsession with a doctor marrying someone in my family (if only our dog hadn't died) is. I read this in about 3 hours while my plane was delayed at the airport and that is precisely how much time I spent thinking about it as well. So maybe I can sell it on ebay or something. Anybody want Sarah Silverman's autograph?

having it all?

I'm sorry, it's really hard for me to feel any sympathy for a polygamist who cheats on his wives. Cause....really? REALLY? Four ladies isn't enough for you, fictional douchebag? Udall draws such compelling characters, but the sun around which this little solar system orbits sucks. He sucks a lot. And in an annoying way. There's nothing enjoyable about hating Golden, it's not like hating Iago and still being fascinated by him. Golden is every annoying husband cliche and I found myself skipping past chapters focusing on his plight to get to any other character at all, even the weird guy with fireworks or the annoying kids.

That said, this book has such a good title, so if that's what we're judging things by, rock on, Lonely Polygamist.

the organic grass is always greener

I seem to live perpetually in the past. I hated living in Cincinnati until I went to college and then suddenly, I was a Reds fan, a Bengals fan and seriously considering the possibility of becoming one of the World's Fattest Ladies by living off of Graeter's mocha chocolate chip. In Los Angeles, I lamented my loss of the Chicago theater scene and the beautiful lakefront, even though by senior year, I was so checked out on Northwestern, I tried to convince my parents (in vain) to let me graduate early. And now, in New York, I have become a west coast hippie. I yelled at my mom for letting the water run while she was brushing her teeth a few weeks ago. Seriously. I'm that girl. And that girl reads philosophy books about ethical eating. On public transit wearing vegan footwear and carrying a canvas bag of greenmarket veggies. It's ok, I kind of hate me too.

That said, really really interesting book. Except I officially can't go grocery shopping now without getting a migraine. Did you know that a farmer in new york using a special heat lamp to start tomato growth a month earlier so he can sell them at a farmers market uses more gasoline than a truck driving tomatoes from florida to new york? So environmentally, option b is more ethical. But what about the treatment of the workers in Florida? Point for option a! But who is growing them organically which is not necessarily more ethical anyway!!! AND SHOULD WE EVEN BE EATING TOMATOES WHEN THEY ARE NOT IN SEASON??

My head is going to explode like a Florida tomato picked when green and then ripened to a nice red by the time it reaches the grocery stores two blocks from my apartment which I ethically walk to.

The Possessed (Sort of)

Reading Elif Batuman’s the Possessed, in which the author somehow chronicles the 6 years she spent studying Russian literature as a grad student in Stanford without ever once being even a little bit boring. Spent the whole evening reading after work at Novel Café, Koreatown’s version of a cozy little restaurant on UCLA’s grounds. This one, 20 miles away from it’s sister, has been outfitted with:

6 giant screened televisions on which various basketball games play

A piano, bench occupied by a bemused looking 20-something blonde woman

A handful of very attractive waitresses who, despite being different ethnicities, all look like slightly different versions of one another. Like the pianist, they seem puzzled as to where they are and why.

Leather-backed chairs that look like they should be comfortable but are not.

It is more an idea of an American café than an actual place. I order a vegetable salad, which is good, and a side of roasted potatoes, which is not, though this fact is balanced out by the fact that my waitress forgets to add them to the bill. No matter what you order, the server will bring out a porcelain tureen of tortilla chips and salsa. After that, you will be basically ignored. Living in K-town is like traveling to a different country and viewing my own through the wrong end of a telescope.

The book is wonderful. I laugh out loud enough times that I begin to wonder what the group of men across from me can possibly think. At 24, I have become the crazy old woman I always knew lived inside of me. On another note, I’m choosing classes at USC tomorrow and its beginning to become real that soon I will be teaching undergraduates how to write. How can I teach? I’m not done being taught yet.

Bleak Stuff

“…at a certain point, we’re either gonna have to put away childish things and discipline ourselves about how much time do I spend being passively entertained? And how much time do I spend doing stuff that actually isn’t all that much fun minute by minute, but that builds certain muscles in me as a grown-up and a human being? And if we don’t do that, then a) as individuals, we’re gonna die, and b) the culture’s gonna grind to a halt. Because we’re gonna get so interested in entertainment that we’re not gonna want to do the work that generates the income that buys the products that pays for the advertising that disseminates the entertainment. It just seems to me like it’s gonna be this very cool thing. Where the country could very well shut down and die, and it won’t be anybody else doin’ it to us, we will have done it to ourselves.”

-David Foster Wallace from Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself

Mistakes We Knew We Were Making

On the bookshelf opposite the bed where I normally sleep, there is a lovely limited edition copy of Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel. It was recommended to me by someone whose opinion I value highly, and the first 30 pages promise a wealth of surprising insight rendered in the kind of prose that makes me want to not only be a better writer, but a better person. In my inbox is a series of emails from Kevin consisting entirely of quotes from David Lipsky's new book "Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself," a memoir about following David Foster Wallace across the country on a signing tour. Here is a sample quote, in which DFW discusses his fame from Infinite Jest:

"There's an important distinction between--I've actually gotten a lot saner about this. Some of this stuff is nice. But I also realize this is a big, difficult book. Whether the book is really any good, nobody's gonna know for a couple of years. So a lot of this stuff, it's nice, I would like to get laid out of it a couple of times, which has not in fact happened. I didn't get laid on this tour. The thing about fame is interesting, although I would have liked to get laid on the tour and I did not."

I'm on a non-fiction bent lately and I've been itching to read both of those. And so of course I read something else. I don't know why. Perhaps it had to do with my insurmountable attraction to books with covers like shiny pieces of candy. I'd read the article "How To Get Divorced by 30" is based on once upon a long time ago, and it made me chuckle a little bit in the same way New Yorker cartoons sometimes do. A mental "heh heh." Like that. Apparently some enterprising editor read it too and pounced, and, unfortunately, together with the author produced this book. On the one hand, yes, I am a bitter literary agency assistant/aspiring writer with no book deal to speak of. On the other hand: there is something to be said for being semi-literate before deciding to write and publish a memoir with your actual name on it.

going together like peanut butter and something that isn't jelly

When I read two books in a row, both good books, but I am too lazy to blog about the first one until I'm blogging about the next one, I am in the tricky position of try to tie them together. Even though I don't have to. You're not my teacher. I have no thesis. My thesis is, Jen is a friggin' rockstar. Bam. But because I'm a nerdy student, I want to connect these two books anyway. So first, we have Orange is the New Black and if that had been the cover of the book at Barnes and Noble, probably wouldn't have bought it cause I do judge books by their covers. And second, Israel is Real. Both non-fiction (check), both about groups of people (check), both brought on unexpected reactions (check).

Orange is the New Black has been written about in a few newspapers and magazines lately and because I developed from my father a taste for voyeur literature (that is, if a book starts with Confessions Of... or The True Story of..., we don't care if it's Kate Gosselin's face on the cover, chances are, we will read it), the idea of reading a book about this young woman who idiotically ran drugs for her girlfriend in her 20s and then realized, hmm, bad idea, turned her life around and ended up in jail for it ten years later was immensely appealing. But while I was expecting my typical voyeur read, "oooh this is what prison is life, badass," I found myself being blown away by what's really a story about learning to ask other people for help, a lesson I can maybe sort of sometimes hear.

AND THAT WAS THE LESSON IN MY COUSIN'S TORAH PORTION LAST WEEKEND AT HIS BAR MITZVAH WHICH BRINGS US TO BOOK TWO! OH SNAP. Excellent transition, self. This is a blog about books and not politics, so I won't go into detail about my thoughts on Israel, as an American Jew, as a Jew, as an American, as someone who assumes relatives died in the Holocaust because apparently some of them were Czech, as someone who definitely went on an indoctrinating trip to Israel in the 6th grade with my temple but spent most of it trying to keep my cds from melting and flirting with a boy from home (I think that was the first and last Jew I've ever hit on for those of you keeping score at home). It's a complex issue. But suffice it to say, I've never seen it as black and white and have always been frustarated by the fact that sometimes I feel my temple and fellow Jews are asking me to. Nothing is as simple as, "I was born Jewish and therefore anything Israel does is a-ok in my eyes." Or at least it's not to me. And that's why I found this book fascinating. Cohen discusses the history of Israel and how, at one point when the Temple stood, Judaism was a temple-centric religion. Everything took place there, everything was for there. When it was destroyed, some scholars made it a book-centric religion, allowing us to wander the globe but retain our Judaism. And then somewhere along the line, Zionism decided to bring it back and make it temple-centric again. It's a really fascinating study of Judaism and Zionism and Israel and why American Jews feel so conflicted about Israel. I'm glad I read it. But I'm also still ok that my Birthright ability expires in 2 months and I haven't done shit about it.


(yes, what I write on the blog is slightly more insane when I write from Cincinnati. there's something in the air here. or it's all the sugar from Graeters.)

Los Angeles Still Reads Books

LA Times Festival of Books is this weekend! Yay!

If you live in Los Angeles and you're going, you should come say hi to me. I'll be that girl in the audience asking too many questions after the panel discussions and annoying the moderators.

Well alright

I'm thinking this blog should be called "Jen still reads books" or "We still read books, only Jen reads real ones and Sarah reads shitty manuscripts for work that will never be published so she won't subject you to reviews about them because probably they would just be endless tirades, and nobody likes to read those. She gets it. You have your own problems to deal with." But that would overstretch blogspot's word limit, and we can't have that, now can we? All I can say is: omg, grad school starting in 5 months. Really hope I still have a working, literate brain at that point. Anyway, one of the bright spots of working at a commercial book-to-film agency, along with access to the fed-ex account, is that every once in a while I discover that we represent an author I actually like. For example, this guy Patrick DeWitt. He wrote a book called Ablutions about the slow disintegration of an alcoholic bartender working on the Sunset Strip. It is brutal and ugly and beautiful and very real. I saw the author speak at the LA Times Festival of Books last year and you can see the truth of every word of the book in the lines in his face. Guy writes like Bukowski if Bukowski were less of a narcissist, more of a poet. Made me feel ok about living in Los Angeles, like beautiful art can come from here. I hope that's true, though I doubt it a lot of the time.

better with age?

For those of you keeping score at home who are wondering where Sarah is, I'd like to remind you that she has a boyfriend and a real(er) job, whereas I spend 1/4 of my day on the subway. So. This week, I read Another Country! James Baldwin is a famous African-American writer who I had never heard of until he was mentioned in Stew's musical, "Passing Strange," because sometimes the public school system fails. And then my literary beloved, Jonathan Lethem, listed Another Country as influential in his writing of The Fortress of Solitude, so I figured it was worth a read. I was right. It's a massive meditation on all the...unwanteds, so to speak, of New York. Not exactly the homeless people sleeping on the subway, but the people who didn't quite fit into society in the 1960s....and let's be honest, today too, to a certain degree. I'll be honest though, the whole time I was reading it, I couldn't wait to read it in another ten years. It's like when I played Anne Frank when I was 17. Being 14 made sense three years later, but I would have sucked if I had been cast when I was 14. The people in this book are in their mid to late 20s and I think I'm too closely aligned to them to fully appreciate how brilliant Baldwin's writing is. I'm too busy feeling kinship and empathy. So I happily placed it on my bookshelf and look forward to picking it up in a few years, after it has had a chance to breath.


Also, totally unrelated to books unless you count Us Weekly and Star, but here are my two favorite things this week:
The Original and the Equally-Funny-But-For-Different-Reasons Parody. I have watched both too many times for them to be as hilarious as they still are.

on a roll!

This is awesome. I don't usually post about the mediocre books, the ones I end up skimming as I people watch on the subway. Sometimes I finish them, sometimes I don't, but I don't usually bother posting about them because...why? Hey guess what, Sarah, I read another sort of ok book. Next time you're at Barnes and Noble, pick it up, read the back, get bored halfway through the synopsis, put it down and go browse US Weekly instead (am I the only one who has started reading this rag again because of Sandra Bullock? oh god I am.). But FOUR AWESOME BOOKS IN A ROW. AWESOME. And with the knowledge that grad school is a-comin' (!!!), my To Read Pile now has a due date, so I can focus on reading books about accounting for the theater and labor relations (seriously, I will soon know these things!). Therefore, I am happy that as I'm plugging along, the books are this good. Clearly, I have good taste.

Oh right, Never Let Me Go. This book reminds me of Caryl Churchill's A Number, another work that ponders that moral implications of cloning by introducing clones to us as soulful human beings. Except I really liked this book and I just appreciated A Number because Churchill...doesn't really do it for me (please don't make me return my Pretentious Theater Snot membership card). The constantly growing realization of everything this book is about makes it impossible to put down, even after you put it down. When I started reading it on the subway the other day, the man sitting next to me freaked out. "Oh my God, I just finished that book! And...wow. What do you think? Cause like, it's so...Orwellian, right? Or maybe not. But....wow." To which I responded, "I am one chapter in but um, it's cool. I think." But now I understand his stammering.

Side note, this is being made into a movie with Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield (Shannon's boyfriend, Sarah) and I actually have hope it will be awesome because this casting seems so ridiculously on the money.

well, don't I feel unorginal

This week I read two books that I am convinced were written by people who have met me and possibly also stalked me. Even though one is copyrighted 1958 and takes place in France where I have spent approximately 15 days in my entire life total. These are stories of optimistic young women who say the wrong thing and often do the wrong thing as well and yet, it all works out in the end. Mostly. Thanks for the recommendation on Him Her Him Again The End of Him, Sarah. In the three days I spent reading it, I recommended it to three people. Cause, like you said, every girl has to go through her Eugene. If you don't know what I mean, read the book and you will.

Seriously, my shoulder hurts.

Museum of Innocence is going to stay with me for a long time and not just because I have a sore shoulder from carrying all 529 pages of it around New York. This is the story of a decade-long love or infatuation, depending on your own personal beliefs, in Istanbul that is finally commemorated with a Museum of Innocence, a collection of little trinkets our hero picks up over these years spent with the object of his affection. Here's the thing.... I don't know if this was a book about love or lust or infatuation or obsession or what. It's sort of like the end of "Before Sunrise" or "Before Sunset"-do you think they'll end up together or not? And just like I think something new at the end of each of those movies every time I see them, my reading of this book is probably going to vary day to day depending on my mood and my life and my everything. I think that only makes it better. Sarah, please read this so we can talk about it because I really want to talk about it but I don't want to say anything about it because I don't want to ruin it and like..it's so good.

Not A Particularly Apt Title

So here's something that blows about being a morning person in a family of regular-time persons: waking up at 630am and having nothing to do because it's Ohio and even if there was something to do, nothing's in walking distance. It's raining and I just saw someone using an umbrella to walk across their yard and get their newspaper, which, incidentally, I could read, but it's the Cincinnati Enquirer and I'm already caught up on where all the fish frys are this weekend. But hey, good news is, gives me plenty of time to eat peanut butter from the jar (note to self: add peanut butter to parental grocery shopping list. also girl scout cookies.) and write about David Foster Wallace.

OH MY GOD SOMEBODY WOKE UP. GIVE ME YOUR CAR KEYS.

But back to the business at hand. The highlight of this book of "essays and arguments" is a tie between the essay discussing the Illinois State Fair and the dissection of cruise ships and the people that love them. I am partial to the state fair episode if only because my mother likes to tell the story of how, in a moment of working mother guilt, she took me, age 4, and my sister, age 1.5, to the Ohio State Fair. We arrived and she hustled us into the 4-H tent, where I promptly turned, looked at her and said, "Why are we here, Mom? We're not farmers." So clearly, I have a soft spot for the odd man out at the state fair. But then again you can make another equally hilarious essay out of the footnotes in his cruise ship episode, so.... We'll say it's a draw. And a must-read.

Thanks for the recommendation, Andy! This thank you is primarily a trap to see if you're actually still reading this blog or if you just skimmed it that one time to mollify me on gchat.


ADDENDUM, ADDED AT 918AM: When I got into my Dad's car to drive to the gym, he was listening to the TITANIC soundtrack.

Awesome.

If you're feeling sad and lonely...

Reconnecting with Franz Kafka for the first time since English AP probably would have been a better idea not during a week when I already felt detached and alienated. Also, reading Kafka on the subway is weird. But at least now I can say "Kafka-esque" and feel like only half a poser.

Psychic City- Yacht

I just danced to this all by myself in my room for a little longer than I planned to. Hope you do too.

how the crap do I compete with puppies?

Blah blah blah this week I read some Nathaniel West. Blah blah blah even all those decades ago, he nailed the differences between New York and Los Angeles and while I'm glad I read this not living in LA, I'm not sure living in NY was any better. Blah blah blah his descriptive power is amazing. Blah blah blah what took me so long to discover him? Blah blah blah who cares what I am saying I want to watch that puppy again!!!!!

PUPPY!!!!!!!

Maybe Nobody Reads Books, But Everybody Loves Puppies

Thanks Justin.

Girls (and Boys) Gone Wild

So I joined a book club. And let's be honest, I joined a book club to meet cute boys who read good books and instead, found myself in a room of middle aged ladies and one gay dude from Houston who swears he doesn't know Sarah, which means he's the crappiest gay dude from Houston ever. Essentially what I'm saying is, I have no idea how to meet men. But I'm not as much of a social trainwreck as the folk from this month's book club selection! Yay! Here's to not being Amish!

But seriously, this book is fascinating, as are any and all books about those subsects of humanity that somehow manage to participate in our world and yet not. This is a pretty even-handed discussion of the Amish and their tradition of Rumspringa, when teenagers "run wild" prior to settling down and becoming baptized in the Church. The writing is peppered with real life stories, some that seem too crazy to be true. And on one hand, I pity these people so much especially because their scholing ends in 8th grade, because, y'know, learning highfalutin' things like literature just make you think you're better than your kinsmen. But on the other hand, to grow up with that sort of community? That's sort of special.

But if I had to take a buggy to get everywhere, I'd go batshit.

Yummy

So I picked this book up because it had ice cream cones on the cover and I had two hours to kill. Oh, and, also, because, yum:
That is Jonah Lehrer and he is younger and hotter and smarter than you. Also, married. BOO.
Ok, but the point is, that reading this book was a random decision I made that turned out to be exactly the right one. It's based on the premise that, despite what scientists used to think, rationality doesn't always trump emotion when it comes to making the right choices. In truth, the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that we reason with, and that we use to understand rule-based behavior), when left to its own devices pretty much always makes the WRONG choice, picks the more expensive wine even if the cheaper one tastes better, overthinks at the grocery store and buys the wrong strawberry jam, and so on. It's when we don't think that we often make the right choice, because our brain knows intuitively what's best for us. Our subconscious looks out for our well-being far better than our conscious mind could ever hope to. Most of the studies Lehrer cites are food-based which is probably the number 2 reason I loved this book (for number 1, please see above.)

I tried to explain what How We Decide was about to my boyfriend and he assumed it was a ripoff of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and I was all "Perish the thought." Because that is not what it is. That is not what it is at all. Rather, it's a sort of guide book on how to most productively use emotion to guide thought. Lehrer explains how we can use our brain to control the way we feel and how those feelings play out in our day-to-day engagement with the world. The most important chapter, for me, was the one in which Lehrer explains how failure = learning. As in, our brain only figures out how to do things right by failing over and over again. We've been programmed to think of failure as a bad thing, something that is singularly detrimental to societal progress. I am pretty good at failing, so it was kind of nice to find out that actually I am paving the way for our advancement as a society.

You're welcome.

Faaaaabulous

When one of my favorite playwrights/screenwriters writes a book of essays with my favorite candy on the cover, it is obviously a must-read. Paul Rudnick reminds me a lot of me as a small child: mouthy, FABULOUS and consisting entirely on a diet of candy. Except I grew up into a useless twentysomething and he grew up to write a bunch of awesome plays and the screenplay for ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES. His essays are off the chain hilarious, his depiction of Hollywood dead on (SISTER ACT was originally his screenplay and the path from how it went from his sassy movie starring Bette Midler to a lame Whoopi Goldberg flick makes for excellent essay fodder) and his fictional pieces about an elderly man in the Village who sticks his nose where it doesn't belong are equally entertaining. I want to hang out with him and eat marshmallow peeps all the day long.

Ah, To Be a Literary Mistress

Last week, I heard Jonathan Lethem speak. And when I say I heard Jonathan Lethem speak, I mean, I listened for 45 min, fell in love and spent the remaining 15 starring at his wedding ring, debating if I could be a literary mistress and what kind of hotels he'd put me up in while I waited for him to escape his wife's clutches. And then I realized, that's probably not a good moral path and I sadly walked into the cold New York night back to my apartment, where I picked up the next book of his in my To Read Pile. Motherless Brookln is good but it's no Chronic City, that is to say, it's no book worth participating in adultery for.

All that said, should we change our blog title to "Lethem's Ladies"? I'm just thinking....

In the Darkness

I lost two days of my life to this book. Not in a bad way, just- it kept me from the tasks one must perform to sustain one's facade as a functional member of society, like sleeping, and eating, and leaving the house. Have you read it yet? Well, why not? Seriously, go find a copy (they are literally everywhere right now), open to the first page and resign yourself to a 1-2 day gap in your existence. I promise you, it will be worth it.

I'm not a big thriller reader now, probably because I am a huge snob, but I was once. In my early teens I devoured Stephen King, Dean Koontz, any six-by-eight inch paperback I could find with giant, raised glossy letters and a picture of something ominous gracing its cover. And I loved them. Somewhere in there I stopped reading Peter Straub and started name-dropping Deleuze and so it went. Reading Shutter Island felt like coming home, reading a book not because of the title or the author but simply because once I started, I could not stop. The writing is intelligent but unobscure, well-informed without being dense. It lends itself singularly to the screen and, for once, I am breathlessly awaiting the movie version of the book. Faulkner, DeLillo, Berger and Tolstoy, I'll always love you, but that doesn't mean I won't cheat every once in a while.

First of all...

I would just like to say that I saw Joshua Ferris read from The Unnamed at Skylight books tonight. Here is the text exchange that took place between me and Kevin immediately after.

Me: I want to make out with his beard

Kevin: He has a beard! Wtf. I bet its sum sex thing.

Me: He is either a high school nerd who grew up hot and started sexing all the girls.

Me: Or the high school hot guy who realized he could get girls via art.

Kevin: He prolly was one of those guys who thrived in hs but didn't bekum 2 attached bc he has smart parents.

Me: Nailed it.

Kevin: U shuld hav asked him why the main guy didn't just amputate his legs.

Meh.

What's more disappointing, picking up a random book and finding it to be lackluster or reading a book you expect to be great and finding it to be mediocre? The Unnamed showed Ferris' ability to understand the minutiae of daily life and translate it into something fascinating is still strong. Unfortunately, he fucks up the simplicity of his appeal by giving his leading man a disease of walking - he just starts walking and can't stop until he falls down from exhaustion. Interesting conceit, but somehow, not as interesting as the scenes where he maneuvers his relationship with his daughter. If it ain't broke, Joshua Ferris, don't fix it.

All the Same

I've always loved history. I grew up on a steady diet of historical fiction novels, tempered by Babysitter's Club and Sweet Valley High (because it is important to understand what is culturally relevant today as well!), I double majored in history in college and find myself spending far too much time now reading biographies and nonfiction books about random historical subsects I really have no reason to know anything about. I think this love of history stems from the odd comfort to be derived from the fact that nothing changes, not really. And while The Group is technically historical fiction in that it takes places in the 1930's, it could essentially be about a group of girls graduating from Vassar today except their squalid flats would be in Astoria and not the West Village (ohhh to live in a time when living in downtown manhattan was the utmost of frugality). I don't know that I necessarily liked all of these girls but I certainly recognized them. The girl married to the abusive theater artist who she supported financially while he hurled insults to her face and cheated behind her back. The girl who loses her virginity to the man who tells her from the start he doesn't want a relationship and still, she finds herself sobbing for him while trying on a wedding dress for a wedding to somebody else. The gung ho working girl who is told by her first boss that this really isn't the right field for her. Yeah...I think we're all pretty well acquanted with these ladies. Maybe this is a time where the inevitability of history's repeating itself isn't such a comfort.

You Don't Love Me Yet

::phone rings::
Me: "mrrllo?"
Blocked number: "Hello? Sarah?"
Me: "What?"
Blocked number: "This is Chris. Your name is in my book but I don't remember where I met you."
Me: "What?"
Chris: "Are you from Los Angeles?"
Me: "Yes? No. I don't...who?"
Chris (sadly): "Oh well. Take care then."
(hangs up)

This happened to me at 7:45 this morning. Chris, whoever you are, if I was rude to you I'm sorry but you woke me up in the middle of a very strange and wonderful dream. At first I thought maybe you were part of it, and it was disappointing to find out that you weren't. Also, I mean, what? Who does that? Still, if you were going to give me money or something maybe you should call back at a more reasonable hour. I promise I will be nicer.

The thing about Jonathan Lethem books is that, invariably, while I am in the middle of one of them, things like this happen to me. Halfway through Chronic City, my dog got the hiccups. She had them until I finished the book. She had never had them before and she has not had them since. Right you guys? I know.

The exchange above is something that might as well have taken place in You Don't Love Me Yet, a Pynchonesque novel about a bunch of late 20-somethings in Silverlake whose motto is "You can't be deep without a surface." Rather than the post-culture-apocalypse-malaise that say, Bret Easton Ellis' characters wander about in, these characters fully embrace their shallow existences, according extraordinary weight to the most ephemeral of things: hook-ups, jobs in experimental art galleries, shows at warehouse parties, etc. etc. It's not a perfect book- I don't think it's possible to write a great novel about music (talking:music::dancing:architecture...you know) but I seem to have a penchant for stories about skinny, arty, directionless girls melting into their late twenties on L.A.'s east side. Complete coincidence, I am sure. Besides, because it is Lethem there are plenty of lovely images to steal: "the bleachy morning" that is the "exact temperature of a sleeping body," for one. A perfect little novel from one of those Saturday afternoons when the rain offers up an excuse for not doing anything at all.

Ok, soo...

I suck at blogging. Clearly. Bursts of energy followed by prolonged periods of lassitude pretty much define me, which is why I feel a lot of sorry for whatever child I eventually end up raising. Hopefully it learns to forage for food early on. Anyway. In happier news, my boss got me a kindle for Christmas! This is awesome because it means I get my favorite thing in the world: instant gratification. I want a book? I have a book! Immediately. (Along with a $9.99 credit charge. Alas, the model is not yet perfect.) Over Christmas break I read two that you must go out and read right away, even if it means you have to go to a Barnes and Noble and sit in the cafe and page through a real book like a sucker. Enjoy your paper cuts, plebe. (NOTE: I AM JUST KIDDING. I LOVE REAL BOOKS. LIKE, I LOVE THEM. AND THE WAY THEY SMELL.)

The first one was Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer which sort of turned the world of food upside down for me. Did you know factory farming is the number one contributor to global warming? And that some pig farms create pits of manure the size of small lakes that can make surrounding regions literally uninhabitable, sickening nearby residents and poisoning the air? Foer manages to get across the absolute evil of the factory farming industry without making you feel like he's lecturing. Instead, he experiences each new revelation alongside the reader, examining each new fact from a variety of angles and bringing up the same arguments you'll probably think to yourself ("but meat is so tasty/such a major part of community and friendship/I'll just eat free range chickens") and systematically defeating them. I read this book on the flight home to Texas a few days before Christmas which turned out to be a mistake. ("Sarah, just eat the Turkey. Come on. It's not really meat. What's wrong with you?"- my grandmother)

The second was called Too Big To Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin. Despite the author's inability to form a non-prosaic sentence, the story behind the collapse of the American financial system is pretty fascinating, and also really, really scary. It's also really complex, so I won't try to summarize it here, but I feel like everybody affected in any way by the current recession owes it to themselves to read this book.

Post-Apocalyptic Book Club

I joined a book club! The first book they're reading is The Road which did not make me very excited because...a man and his son on a road in a burned out shell of civilization sounds like a pretty downbeat 300 pages. And I love me some Oprah but I get judgy on her book club. Reading Oprah Book Club selections make me feel like a suburban housewife. And yet... it's amazing. It's somehow life affirming and frightening all at once. I am proud to be a member of any book club that encourages the reading of novels like this.