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