Wrapped Up in Books

here I am!

2010-09-03T03:41:00.000-07:00

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2010-08-08T22:27:00.000-07:00

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

tomorrow!

2010-07-08T11:56:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-07T12:40:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-06T10:41:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-06T10:13:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-05T13:47:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-03T05:39:00.001-07:00

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

2010-06-30T12:31:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-29T15:27:00.001-07:00

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

2010-06-26T15:34:00.001-07:00

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

2010-06-19T16:50:00.001-07:00

I surrender.

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

but it's such a nice cover

2010-06-06T14:36:00.001-07:00

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

2010-06-04T11:21:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-31T04:27:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-27T12:48:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-27T11:44:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-26T17:35:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-23T16:38:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-21T00:46:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-12T13:16:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-05-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-06T18:03:00.001-07:00

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)

2010-05-03T23:20:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-01T12:58:00.000-07:00

“…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

2010-04-29T13:42:00.001-07:00

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

2010-04-24T04:16:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-23T10:25:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-22T17:35:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-04-10T07:17:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-04-02T06:36:00.001-07:00

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

2010-03-27T09:53:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-03-20T07:02:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-13T04:45:00.001-08:00

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...

2010-03-06T18:00:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-25T19:38:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-02-25T07:27:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-24T18:15:00.001-08:00

Thanks Justin.

Girls (and Boys) Gone Wild

2010-02-18T06:52:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-16T15:15:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-09T15:15:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-05T05:39:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-04T23:18:00.000-08:00

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...

2010-02-04T23:00:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-01-30T07:02:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-20T09:04:00.000-08:00

::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...

2010-01-08T00:36:00.001-08:00

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

2010-01-07T15:38:00.000-08:00

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.

Mind. Blown.

2009-12-30T12:16:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-12-25T15:31:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-12-19T04:22:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-12T14:41:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-28T17:02:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-27T19:44:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-14T04:38:00.001-08:00

-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

2009-11-09T08:35:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-28T17:46:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-10-21T08:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-14T18:55:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-10-12T14:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-10T19:26:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-04T18:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-30T12:08:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-26T21:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-25T15:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

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'.

2009-09-17T23:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-13T23:24:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-13T22:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-06T16:40:00.001-07:00

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?

2009-09-03T08:23:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-02T18:14:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-23T20:42:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

Here's why.

What's Farsi for "Cajones"?

2009-08-22T21:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-20T13:04:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-08-17T11:01:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-08-13T10:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

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

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

The Gangsters

2009-08-12T16:52:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-10T17:13:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-09T01:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-07T22:53:00.000-07:00

“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

2009-08-05T10:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-03T09:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-28T10:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-26T23:30:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-23T12:31:00.000-07:00

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.