While it's true I've slacked off completely with reading for the past couple of months -- in fact, I replaced all creative activity with things like curtain shopping and chair assembly -- I have so enjoyed this little project and the life it took on.
Actually, YIBR started as a New Year's resolution last year; I had a horrible habit of reading books I loved and then completely forgetting about them when someone asked me for a recommendation. So I promised myself I would document everything I read for one year... little did I know how much fun it would be. It was a bit of a labor of love at times, when I just wanted to read whatever was next and I couldn't, because the rule was no moving on to the next book before the current one was reviewed and posted. It was also, surprisingly, a team effort.
But mostly, it was a fantastic conversation starter, a charming little insight into my friends, and a way to spread the literary love.
Not everyone agreed with my reviews, and that was awesome.
Everyone had an opinion on one book or another, and that was doubly awesome.
By the second half of the year, nearly everything I read came from one of your recommendations, and you guys were reading things based on what other readers had to say.
I love books.
I love imagination.
I love the possibility.
And I'm excited to see what will get read next year -- thanks, my fellow bookworms, for being nerdy with me. Here's our recap:
Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan
The Man of My Dreams, Curtis Sittenfeld
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
The Shack, William P. Young
The Associate, John Grisham
The Lost City of Z, David Grann
Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert
This Is Where I Leave You, Jonathan Tropper
The Fig Eater, Jody Shields
Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
A Reliable Wife, Robert Goolrick
Dear John, Nicholas Sparks
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
The Heretic's Daughter, Kathleen Kent
The Kindness of Strangers, Katrina Kittle
How Did You Get This Number, Sloane Crosley
The Girl Who Played With Fire, Stieg Larsson
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
The Book of Joe, Jonathan Tropper
On Writing, Stephen King
The Castaways, Elin Hilderbrand
When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time To Go Home, Erma Bombeck
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman
Water For Elephants, Sara Gruen
Friday, December 31, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Lunch Ladies
As most of you know by now, I rejoined the workforce and normal-pant-wearing society about a month ago, when I took a grown up job. No drawstring flannel allowed, true, but coming to an office has its perks. Like, they pay me to be here. And like a genuinely lovely group of women to work with every day. I’ve dubbed my aisle of cubes Sorority Row; there are a dozen or so smart, sharp, strangely attractive girls in my immediate vicinity, and I get to admire the pretty high heels sadly missing when my office was the dining room table and my coworkers were my dad and the bunny killer.
There are downsides, though, I do have to say. Having spent the past few years out of the general public (not quite recluse status, but significantly more than the average girl’s allotted time in pajama bottoms), I’d forgotten -- if I’d ever known, I blocked it out -- about the frightening trend running through the intestinal systems of young office-working girls everywhere.
Today, having lunch in the cafeteria with some of my sparkly new friends, the conversation naturally (?) turned to having to use a public restroom when you have to... you know. You know.
“I never do. I can’t.” The Funny One.
“But what if you have to? I mean, come on, sometimes you have to.” The Tiny One.
“How is that possible, exactly? How do you... hold back?” The Baby One.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” explains TFO, helpfully. “You just close your eyes for a few seconds, squeeze everything, and wait. Eventually the feeling passes.”
She looked at us expectantly, waiting for the agreeable nods that show a speaker her audience is with her, understanding and commiserative. I was fascinated -- by her willpower, her freakish muscular control, and the very fact that these delicate, ladylike girls were in fact having an in depth conversation -- at the lunch table -- about crap.
“So, if you wait long enough, it just goes away? Like hunger pains?” The Blonde One.
“Exactly like that.”
“But... I mean, that’s just like... it’s like... Pooperexia.” Me, just trying to take it all in.
Mind you, we are the only table of girls in the entire cafeteria. The IT guys (who will tell you they “play cards” at the same table every day, very manly like. Look closer. Those are Uno cards, man.) turned to stare. The Analyst guys (not a one of them outside the khaki Dockers and bland plaid button down uniform they’ve so perfected) did the same. Part of it was, as I said, we’re the only girls in the room and those boys are genuinely struggling with feelings of fascination and fear to begin with. The other part of it was probably the loud shrieking sound I make when I really get to laughing. And believe me, I was laughing. She’s not called The Funny One for nothing.
And the bad thing is I was laughing so hard -- that squealing, snorty, red-faced, ugly kind of laughing -- that it made me, I mean, kind of, I sort of had to... you know.
There are downsides, though, I do have to say. Having spent the past few years out of the general public (not quite recluse status, but significantly more than the average girl’s allotted time in pajama bottoms), I’d forgotten -- if I’d ever known, I blocked it out -- about the frightening trend running through the intestinal systems of young office-working girls everywhere.
Today, having lunch in the cafeteria with some of my sparkly new friends, the conversation naturally (?) turned to having to use a public restroom when you have to... you know. You know.
“I never do. I can’t.” The Funny One.
“But what if you have to? I mean, come on, sometimes you have to.” The Tiny One.
“How is that possible, exactly? How do you... hold back?” The Baby One.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” explains TFO, helpfully. “You just close your eyes for a few seconds, squeeze everything, and wait. Eventually the feeling passes.”
She looked at us expectantly, waiting for the agreeable nods that show a speaker her audience is with her, understanding and commiserative. I was fascinated -- by her willpower, her freakish muscular control, and the very fact that these delicate, ladylike girls were in fact having an in depth conversation -- at the lunch table -- about crap.
“So, if you wait long enough, it just goes away? Like hunger pains?” The Blonde One.
“Exactly like that.”
“But... I mean, that’s just like... it’s like... Pooperexia.” Me, just trying to take it all in.
Mind you, we are the only table of girls in the entire cafeteria. The IT guys (who will tell you they “play cards” at the same table every day, very manly like. Look closer. Those are Uno cards, man.) turned to stare. The Analyst guys (not a one of them outside the khaki Dockers and bland plaid button down uniform they’ve so perfected) did the same. Part of it was, as I said, we’re the only girls in the room and those boys are genuinely struggling with feelings of fascination and fear to begin with. The other part of it was probably the loud shrieking sound I make when I really get to laughing. And believe me, I was laughing. She’s not called The Funny One for nothing.
And the bad thing is I was laughing so hard -- that squealing, snorty, red-faced, ugly kind of laughing -- that it made me, I mean, kind of, I sort of had to... you know.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Year in (Book) Review: Water for Elephants
This one is so long overdue I can barely remember what I wanted to say, let alone how to make it eloquent and articulate. I read Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants mostly because one of my most trusted recommenders said I should, and also a little because Ms. Gruen was kind enough to write a blurb for my mentor’s latest book, because my mentor was brave enough to simply reach out and ask her. I’m all for continuing the cycle of good author karma.
The long and short of it: if you haven’t already, go read this book. Right now. Go. Now. Seriously, now, since the movie trailer is beginning to circulate (the film comes out in the spring) and I am a huge proponent of book first, movie second. Even in the best book-to-film adaptations, you lose the details that give a story its life, and you lose the ability to let the characters form their own shape and appearance in the expanses of your imagination.
All that being said, it’s a charming, lovely tale about two of my favorite things – people in love and lovable animals. That’s a lot of love going on there in that sentence. Told in memory and flashback from Gruen’s now-senior narrator, we are taken along during a very life-altering turn of events in his young life. We meet the people, and the creatures, he meets, we feel the sadness and the hope and the lust he feels, and we believe in the happy endings he dares to believe in. It’s got all kinds of exciting, sometimes downright tense things going on, and while it’s a quick read, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable one. And at its core it’s a book about second chances and following your heart. It’s a hopeful book. I can't imagine anything nicer to say about a book, really.
The long and short of it: if you haven’t already, go read this book. Right now. Go. Now. Seriously, now, since the movie trailer is beginning to circulate (the film comes out in the spring) and I am a huge proponent of book first, movie second. Even in the best book-to-film adaptations, you lose the details that give a story its life, and you lose the ability to let the characters form their own shape and appearance in the expanses of your imagination.
All that being said, it’s a charming, lovely tale about two of my favorite things – people in love and lovable animals. That’s a lot of love going on there in that sentence. Told in memory and flashback from Gruen’s now-senior narrator, we are taken along during a very life-altering turn of events in his young life. We meet the people, and the creatures, he meets, we feel the sadness and the hope and the lust he feels, and we believe in the happy endings he dares to believe in. It’s got all kinds of exciting, sometimes downright tense things going on, and while it’s a quick read, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable one. And at its core it’s a book about second chances and following your heart. It’s a hopeful book. I can't imagine anything nicer to say about a book, really.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Note to Fatty McPlumpy
Okay. I know. It’s inexcusable. And I, therefore, have no excuse. But tonight, as I sat on the couch watching meaningless TV and pretending that if I put ice cubes in my wine it only counts as half a glass, I thought... huh. Maybe I should do something even the teensy tiniest bit creative, no? Crazy thought. But just maybe. Maybe. Particularly since I was supposed to spend the evening with my beloved writers’ group, and my mass amounts of wussiness kept me from driving the snowy streets back to Dayton for the evening, just maybe I could use the designated time to actually do what it was designated for, and create something.
Here’s the problem.
I’m not creative.
Seriously. Every ounce of any creative energy I might’ve ever possessed seems to have seeped out of me. I don’t even know if I can call it writer’s block – it’s more like everything block. The problem? I sold out. Yes, I sold my soul to the man, and all for a CRV. And an apartment all to myself, decked out in Ikea’s finest offerings and filled with absolutely no one but me. I can’t lie, people, I think it may have been worth it. But now I spend my days writing and editing boring stuff for other people (whom I like very, very much, I do have to say)(well, no, I don’t have to say, but I am saying it, because I actually really mean it) and when I get home at the end of a very long, very very cold day, I can’t find what it takes to be an artist. I can find what it takes to heat up a Lean Cuisine and crack a Stella, but that’s as far as I get. And also, Lean Cuisine my ass, because I’m getting fat. Like, call me Pudgy McFatterson fat. It can’t be impossible to work and not get fat, right? Right?
Help me. You're my only hope. I know there are artistic, busy, skinny employed people who read this, who have found a way to get shit done and still be happily creative. Unless you all got tired of waiting for me to come back and found other, more interesting (read: actually written) blogs to follow. What’s the key?
Monday, October 18, 2010
Year in (Book) Review: The Imperfectionists
A few months ago, one of my beloved book junkie friends forwarded me a link to a book about to launch, with the note that it had received the most rave write-up in The New York Times Book Review -- by no less than Christopher Buckley -- she'd ever read. (Wow. Alliteration overload. I kind of like it. I'm keeping it. Obviously, since you're reading it.) So I ran out and bought it, because I pretty much run out and buy whatever Ariel tells me to (she's super fashionable, to boot), and saved it for my beach trip. (Much better vacation choice than the last amazing, disturbing book I tried to read while relaxing.)
Not that you all need me to confirm that the folks over there at the NYTBR know what they're talking about, but yes. This was amazing stuff.
Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists is a collection of intertwined short stories, giving readers the tiniest, most intimate insight into the lives of a collection of newspaper people. Interspersed into their stories is the overriding thread of how the newspaper, an Italian-based international daily that's floundering, to put it kindly, came to be. Some of the stories are overtly heartbreaking and some of them are unexpectedly hysterical, but most of them just do an incredible job of putting you right into the lives, or a snapshot of a moment of them, anyway, of ordinary, flawed, wonderful people. They are familiar, and recognizable, and empathetic, and us. Good things happen to them, bad things, sometimes nothing much happens to them at all and it's still riveting.
Even more riveting, I think, is the author's still-very-young life. This is his debut novel (awesome, no pressure on the rest of us there, Tom) and it's insanely good. Check out his background and acknowledge that we're all a little less cool than he is.
This one makes top five for the year so far, for anyone who's keeping track. And if anyone keeping track could let me know that would be so helpful, since I'm not.
Not that you all need me to confirm that the folks over there at the NYTBR know what they're talking about, but yes. This was amazing stuff.
Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists is a collection of intertwined short stories, giving readers the tiniest, most intimate insight into the lives of a collection of newspaper people. Interspersed into their stories is the overriding thread of how the newspaper, an Italian-based international daily that's floundering, to put it kindly, came to be. Some of the stories are overtly heartbreaking and some of them are unexpectedly hysterical, but most of them just do an incredible job of putting you right into the lives, or a snapshot of a moment of them, anyway, of ordinary, flawed, wonderful people. They are familiar, and recognizable, and empathetic, and us. Good things happen to them, bad things, sometimes nothing much happens to them at all and it's still riveting.
Even more riveting, I think, is the author's still-very-young life. This is his debut novel (awesome, no pressure on the rest of us there, Tom) and it's insanely good. Check out his background and acknowledge that we're all a little less cool than he is.
This one makes top five for the year so far, for anyone who's keeping track. And if anyone keeping track could let me know that would be so helpful, since I'm not.
Year in (Book) Review: In Cold Blood
I read Breakfast at Tiffany's a few years ago, because I so adore the perfect, classic movie. It's on my list of those films that stop me midstream whenever it's on. I have to stop and watch. (Side note: By that "midstream" standard, I discovered today Top Gun is also one of those movies. Huh. Did not know that about myself.) So, being the literary girl I am, I thought it was important to read the short story that gave us Holly Golightly and Moon River and Cat. It was the first thing I'd ever read by Capote, though I knew quite a bit about him from both of the biographical movies that came out around the same time a few years ago. (Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Oscar for his portrayal of Capote, and he was absolutely brilliant. But in terms of the overall movie, I actually liked Infamous better. I don't remember why. It was a long time ago. You'll just have to take my word for it.) He was quite a character, that's for sure.
Either way, both of those films highlighted the time in Capote's life he spent researching and writing In Cold Blood. I'm almost at a loss for words. (That's never true.) Everything I write sounds like me. I don't know if that makes sense to people who don't write, but it basically comes down to this, and I think everyone can back me up on this one: if you want to write interesting, believable characters, they have to sound interesting and believable. It doesn't matter if they're real people or not. Which means whenever I try to write anyone who's not thirtysdflasfh year old spectacle with a chip on her shoulder and a penchant for melodrama, I'm screwed. So the idea that the same person who penned Breakfast at Tiffany's could also write the journalistic explosion that is this book floors me. But maybe that's just it -- it barely feels journalistic. It feels like you're reading a novel, with characters and a plot written by one of the most talented writers, ever. He can describe everything from the Clutter family farmhouse to the size of the hands of the woman who works at the post office in their torn-apart town, and they seem equally important to the story. It's a horrible story, to be sure, although in this day and age I feel like we're almost immune to it. Just as I was finishing the story, a man in Connecticut was finally convicted for the brutal, unthinkable murder of a mother and her two daughters -- the family's father was able to escape and survive -- in a case that drew obvious comparisons to this one. It was even worse. Why does everything have to keep getting worse? What does that say about people today? What was I talking about?
I think it's important to read books that the world deems historically important. I don't think it's important to like them all, but it's important to read them. This is unquestionably one of those books.
Either way, both of those films highlighted the time in Capote's life he spent researching and writing In Cold Blood. I'm almost at a loss for words. (That's never true.) Everything I write sounds like me. I don't know if that makes sense to people who don't write, but it basically comes down to this, and I think everyone can back me up on this one: if you want to write interesting, believable characters, they have to sound interesting and believable. It doesn't matter if they're real people or not. Which means whenever I try to write anyone who's not thirtysdflasfh year old spectacle with a chip on her shoulder and a penchant for melodrama, I'm screwed. So the idea that the same person who penned Breakfast at Tiffany's could also write the journalistic explosion that is this book floors me. But maybe that's just it -- it barely feels journalistic. It feels like you're reading a novel, with characters and a plot written by one of the most talented writers, ever. He can describe everything from the Clutter family farmhouse to the size of the hands of the woman who works at the post office in their torn-apart town, and they seem equally important to the story. It's a horrible story, to be sure, although in this day and age I feel like we're almost immune to it. Just as I was finishing the story, a man in Connecticut was finally convicted for the brutal, unthinkable murder of a mother and her two daughters -- the family's father was able to escape and survive -- in a case that drew obvious comparisons to this one. It was even worse. Why does everything have to keep getting worse? What does that say about people today? What was I talking about?
I think it's important to read books that the world deems historically important. I don't think it's important to like them all, but it's important to read them. This is unquestionably one of those books.
Year in (Book) Review: When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home
Okay. I get that chances are slim anyone will run out and pick this one up. I'm not even actually sure you could. It's super old. But there was an old tattered paperback copy of it in the cottage on vacation last month, and I picked it up to leaf through it. Such a good decision.
Erma Bombeck is my hero. She's like the pre-David Sedaris.
She had me cracking up laughing, she never wrote anything that was more than five or six pages (some were barely one), and one of her chapters was titled "Centerville, Oh." When I am old and married and have lots of kids (one out of three ain't... well, yes, it is. It's bad.) I will use them lovingly for target practice, just like Ms. Bombeck. So consider yourself warned, future husband and unborn children. I'm very excited to get to make fun of you.
Erma Bombeck is my hero. She's like the pre-David Sedaris.
She had me cracking up laughing, she never wrote anything that was more than five or six pages (some were barely one), and one of her chapters was titled "Centerville, Oh." When I am old and married and have lots of kids (one out of three ain't... well, yes, it is. It's bad.) I will use them lovingly for target practice, just like Ms. Bombeck. So consider yourself warned, future husband and unborn children. I'm very excited to get to make fun of you.
Monday, October 4, 2010
The Sisterhood Code of Silence
How do you blog about a Code of Silence, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. You, if you are me, are a rat and you blog about pretty much anything. Unfortunately for you, if you are me, most of the ratting out to be done is on yourself. So, no one really cares if you blog about it.
It was Homecoming at my alma mater this weekend, and I met up with a bunch of my sorority sisters for an evening of nostalgic fun. I haven't been back to Bowling Green since a year or so after I graduated. Even the billboards were the same. Sort of creepy, but also comforting. The girls, however, have gotten nothing but better.
Ways you know the weekend has gotten away from you:
The afternoon begins with DG4 telling you "you should blog about this" in reference to fun things like people who sing curse words anywhere other than rap songs. (FYI, she was against it.) The evening ends with DGs1-6* begging you "for the love of God don't blog about this" in reference to everything that happened after around 9pm.
There was a serious discussion at one point about DG1's camel toe.
You check in to the hotel (a term I use loosely) and immediately check for bedbugs. DG2 refuses to put her suitcase on the floor for fear of things jumping into it. When you get home that night (another term I use loosely), DGs2, 5 and 6 sleep on the floor.
DGs1 and 3 hump the anchor. Oddly, this happens before any drinking has started.
DG2 accidentally orders a beer the size of her head -- literally -- at lunch, and officially declares her night over before it has begun.
It was Homecoming at my alma mater this weekend, and I met up with a bunch of my sorority sisters for an evening of nostalgic fun. I haven't been back to Bowling Green since a year or so after I graduated. Even the billboards were the same. Sort of creepy, but also comforting. The girls, however, have gotten nothing but better.
Ways you know the weekend has gotten away from you:
The afternoon begins with DG4 telling you "you should blog about this" in reference to fun things like people who sing curse words anywhere other than rap songs. (FYI, she was against it.) The evening ends with DGs1-6* begging you "for the love of God don't blog about this" in reference to everything that happened after around 9pm.
There was a serious discussion at one point about DG1's camel toe.
You check in to the hotel (a term I use loosely) and immediately check for bedbugs. DG2 refuses to put her suitcase on the floor for fear of things jumping into it. When you get home that night (another term I use loosely), DGs2, 5 and 6 sleep on the floor.
DGs1 and 3 hump the anchor. Oddly, this happens before any drinking has started.
DG2 accidentally orders a beer the size of her head -- literally -- at lunch, and officially declares her night over before it has begun.
You visit the sorority house, find your composite (in the study, on the third floor, where old DG pictures go to die and young DGs go to laugh at the bad hair and makeup choices), and get invited to an after-hours party at the Delt house. Just like old times.
The nineteen year old who invites you to the house party is overheard having the following phone conversation: "I'm sitting here with some alumnae... they found scrapbooks of themselves and they're telling funny stories about when they were in the house... I invited them to the Delt party... I mean, yeah, they're old, but don't worry, they seem cool." Slightly less like old times.
DG1 finds an adorable picture of DG5 in an old scrapbook. In it, DG5 is laughing and clapping. And has a bow in her hair. DG1 passes the photo around. DG6 notices something strange going on in the background of the photo. DG3 turns a strange shade of pink, and explains that the scene in the background -- two DGs in a compromising position on a folding table in a classroom surrounded by people -- is in fact her Sneak. (Sneak is when the pledges find out dirt on all the seniors, then crash chapter one night and reenact what they learned, and everyone has to guess which senior they're making fun of. Some are really innocent -- our Homecoming queen that year got engaged and walked around with bridal magazines all the time. Some, as DG3 discovered, involve the naughtiest of numbers.)
You make a meant-to-be-funny comment about "cougaring the shit out of that town" on Facebook earlier in the week. DGs3 and 4 make good on it. (For what it's worth, those kids wanted to be cougared. They were literally begging for it. And by "it", I mean for us to buy them alcohol.)
When you leave for the night, there are two people in your room. When you wake up the next morning, there are four. Two of whom are unnameable.
At 3:00 on Monday afternoon, you notice there is still a black bar stamp on the back of your hand. Which means it's probably still somewhere on your face.
*These numbers are arbitrary and made up and really just for fun. So don't bother trying to figure out who I'm talking about.
The nineteen year old who invites you to the house party is overheard having the following phone conversation: "I'm sitting here with some alumnae... they found scrapbooks of themselves and they're telling funny stories about when they were in the house... I invited them to the Delt party... I mean, yeah, they're old, but don't worry, they seem cool." Slightly less like old times.
DG1 finds an adorable picture of DG5 in an old scrapbook. In it, DG5 is laughing and clapping. And has a bow in her hair. DG1 passes the photo around. DG6 notices something strange going on in the background of the photo. DG3 turns a strange shade of pink, and explains that the scene in the background -- two DGs in a compromising position on a folding table in a classroom surrounded by people -- is in fact her Sneak. (Sneak is when the pledges find out dirt on all the seniors, then crash chapter one night and reenact what they learned, and everyone has to guess which senior they're making fun of. Some are really innocent -- our Homecoming queen that year got engaged and walked around with bridal magazines all the time. Some, as DG3 discovered, involve the naughtiest of numbers.)
You make a meant-to-be-funny comment about "cougaring the shit out of that town" on Facebook earlier in the week. DGs3 and 4 make good on it. (For what it's worth, those kids wanted to be cougared. They were literally begging for it. And by "it", I mean for us to buy them alcohol.)
When you leave for the night, there are two people in your room. When you wake up the next morning, there are four. Two of whom are unnameable.
At 3:00 on Monday afternoon, you notice there is still a black bar stamp on the back of your hand. Which means it's probably still somewhere on your face.
*These numbers are arbitrary and made up and really just for fun. So don't bother trying to figure out who I'm talking about.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Today's Story Brought To You By Planned Parenthood
Some things are just not funny. I won't drag us all down by naming them, but there are a few -- a very few -- things in the world that even I can't be irreverent toward.
I would have thought abortion was one of those things. But this morning, abortion became funny. Or, more accurately, the lack of one particular abortion became funny.
*Before I continue, a note. I do not care how you feel about abortion. I know exactly how I feel about it, and that seems like all I need to know on the matter. No one -- okay, no one who reads this crap, anyway -- cares.
As a writer, I eavesdrop. It's innate. I can't help it. I don't do it on purpose and if you give me enough dirty looks, I'll probably stop. If you get up and move to another table I definitely will, because I'm too lazy to pick up all my shit and move with you. It's not even that hard these days, eavesdropping. People have outlandishly personal conversations so loud they must want other people to hear them. Ride a New Jersey transit train some time. It. Will. Shock. You. In fact, I challenge you to spend an afternoon in any public place and not overhear the intimate details of a perfect stranger's life.
This one, though. This one was a doozy. Here is today's story.
Two kids -- probably late teens, early twenties; I'm of the age nowadays where that qualifies you as a kid, and also where I say things like nowadays -- caught my attention when she showed up to the coffee shop, a few minutes after him, looking nervous and guilty. Or maybe I was projecting. I was supposed to be working. He stood up quickly when she walked in and gave her a big, tight hug. By the time they settled back down into their chairs she had her arms wrapped protectively around her belly, he was clearly trying not to cry, and I wasn't trying at all to hide how enthralled I was.
He took her hands and asked her how she felt. She shrugged and I think she said "fine." Her head was down and I desperately wanted to ask her to tuck her hair behind her ears so it didn't block me out so much. I was afraid that might be overstepping my boundaries so I just scooted my chair closer instead.
"Man. I wish I coulda been there with you." Boy.
"Yeah. Well, my mom woulda freaked. Plus it seemed dumb for you to just sit in some waiting room." Girl. I'm noting -- taking actual notes at this point -- that Girl is not making eye contact with Boy.
"Did it hurt?" His earnestness was heartbreaking. And kind of hot, in a sensitive, emo way.
"Well... no." I'm suspicious of her, and not just because her sensitive, emo boyfriend is clearly too good for her. He's trying hard to get her to look at him. That hair is like the Iron Fucking Curtain. When he takes her by the chin and lifts her face gently, I am fairly sure I'm not the only one in the place who let out an audible "ohh." But I might've been. Mine was pretty loud.
"It kills me you had to go through this. I'm so sorry. We'll be more careful from now on. But it's all behind us now, right? It's over. I love you so much." Girl says nothing in response to this. Girl is an asshole.
"Girl?" Obviously, he doesn't call her Girl. I am protecting her, and protection is clearly something that has been lacking up to this point in her young, promiscuous life. By now, Boy is starting to sense something is off. Boy may be sensitive, but Boy is not too bright.
"Girl?" This time he says it with a little more insistence, and he's taken his hands off of hers. "It's over, right? I mean, you did it? You did do it, right? You went through with it, right?" Boy is less sensitive-seeming now, and more desperate. Angry desperate. Not hot.
"I tried."
I'm going to give you a few moments here to consider what you think might have been an appropriate second part of Girl's response.
I couldn't go through with it? Makes sense.
I realized I wanted to have your baby? Perfectly romantic.
I'm not morally comfortable with the lifelong ramifications to both my mental and emotional state, as well as my physical wellbeing, when it comes to making a decision of this magnitude? Seems a little lofty for this Girl, but feasible, I suppose.
Instead, she offered up this gem:
"It didn't take."
It didn't take. I missed the next few interchanges, my mind reeling to figure out what they're talking about. Clearly they weren't talking about what I thought they were talking about, right? Because "it didn't take" does not fit into the vernacular of what I thought they were talking about. All I could think was "Run, Boy, run." I tried so hard to think it into Boy's mind that I probably looked like I was trying to abort something of my own.
If they were characters, I would have to concern myself with all kinds of details at this point. Why did she change her mind? Did she ever intend to go through with it in the first place? How, exactly, does she plan on getting away with convincing him it's possible for this sort of thing to not take, like some feeble, failed attempt at a backyard garden? But they're not characters. Not my characters, anyway. And so they're going to have to sort their own shit out. I plan on going back to that coffee shop in about nine months, just to see how the story ends.
I would have thought abortion was one of those things. But this morning, abortion became funny. Or, more accurately, the lack of one particular abortion became funny.
*Before I continue, a note. I do not care how you feel about abortion. I know exactly how I feel about it, and that seems like all I need to know on the matter. No one -- okay, no one who reads this crap, anyway -- cares.
As a writer, I eavesdrop. It's innate. I can't help it. I don't do it on purpose and if you give me enough dirty looks, I'll probably stop. If you get up and move to another table I definitely will, because I'm too lazy to pick up all my shit and move with you. It's not even that hard these days, eavesdropping. People have outlandishly personal conversations so loud they must want other people to hear them. Ride a New Jersey transit train some time. It. Will. Shock. You. In fact, I challenge you to spend an afternoon in any public place and not overhear the intimate details of a perfect stranger's life.
This one, though. This one was a doozy. Here is today's story.
Two kids -- probably late teens, early twenties; I'm of the age nowadays where that qualifies you as a kid, and also where I say things like nowadays -- caught my attention when she showed up to the coffee shop, a few minutes after him, looking nervous and guilty. Or maybe I was projecting. I was supposed to be working. He stood up quickly when she walked in and gave her a big, tight hug. By the time they settled back down into their chairs she had her arms wrapped protectively around her belly, he was clearly trying not to cry, and I wasn't trying at all to hide how enthralled I was.
He took her hands and asked her how she felt. She shrugged and I think she said "fine." Her head was down and I desperately wanted to ask her to tuck her hair behind her ears so it didn't block me out so much. I was afraid that might be overstepping my boundaries so I just scooted my chair closer instead.
"Man. I wish I coulda been there with you." Boy.
"Yeah. Well, my mom woulda freaked. Plus it seemed dumb for you to just sit in some waiting room." Girl. I'm noting -- taking actual notes at this point -- that Girl is not making eye contact with Boy.
"Did it hurt?" His earnestness was heartbreaking. And kind of hot, in a sensitive, emo way.
"Well... no." I'm suspicious of her, and not just because her sensitive, emo boyfriend is clearly too good for her. He's trying hard to get her to look at him. That hair is like the Iron Fucking Curtain. When he takes her by the chin and lifts her face gently, I am fairly sure I'm not the only one in the place who let out an audible "ohh." But I might've been. Mine was pretty loud.
"It kills me you had to go through this. I'm so sorry. We'll be more careful from now on. But it's all behind us now, right? It's over. I love you so much." Girl says nothing in response to this. Girl is an asshole.
"Girl?" Obviously, he doesn't call her Girl. I am protecting her, and protection is clearly something that has been lacking up to this point in her young, promiscuous life. By now, Boy is starting to sense something is off. Boy may be sensitive, but Boy is not too bright.
"Girl?" This time he says it with a little more insistence, and he's taken his hands off of hers. "It's over, right? I mean, you did it? You did do it, right? You went through with it, right?" Boy is less sensitive-seeming now, and more desperate. Angry desperate. Not hot.
"I tried."
I'm going to give you a few moments here to consider what you think might have been an appropriate second part of Girl's response.
I couldn't go through with it? Makes sense.
I realized I wanted to have your baby? Perfectly romantic.
I'm not morally comfortable with the lifelong ramifications to both my mental and emotional state, as well as my physical wellbeing, when it comes to making a decision of this magnitude? Seems a little lofty for this Girl, but feasible, I suppose.
Instead, she offered up this gem:
"It didn't take."
It didn't take. I missed the next few interchanges, my mind reeling to figure out what they're talking about. Clearly they weren't talking about what I thought they were talking about, right? Because "it didn't take" does not fit into the vernacular of what I thought they were talking about. All I could think was "Run, Boy, run." I tried so hard to think it into Boy's mind that I probably looked like I was trying to abort something of my own.
If they were characters, I would have to concern myself with all kinds of details at this point. Why did she change her mind? Did she ever intend to go through with it in the first place? How, exactly, does she plan on getting away with convincing him it's possible for this sort of thing to not take, like some feeble, failed attempt at a backyard garden? But they're not characters. Not my characters, anyway. And so they're going to have to sort their own shit out. I plan on going back to that coffee shop in about nine months, just to see how the story ends.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Year in (Book) Review: The Castaways
Sometimes, it's been noted, I make strange choices. Like reading a devastating, poignant book about child abuse while relaxing on holiday. This time, though, I think I hit the nail on the vacation-appropriate head.
Elin Hilderbrand's The Castaways is easy to read, enjoyable, and just the right kind of fluffy for when you need to zone in and out every few pages. As do all her books, it takes place on the island of Nantucket, so already it's hard to imagine how it could be anything less than fun. Unlike all her books, it starts off with dead people. So, while she's frothy beach reading, she also packs a little punch.
My only criticism would be that there are a few too many people to mentally juggle, particularly when you're lying on sand. The Castaways is a group of friends -- eight, to be exact; four couples -- and their children. That's a lot of main characters to keep track of, and I spent more time than I would have liked trying to remember who belonged with whom.
Two thumbs up if you're looking for a good travel book, something that will keep you engaged and interested and then leave you alone.
Elin Hilderbrand's The Castaways is easy to read, enjoyable, and just the right kind of fluffy for when you need to zone in and out every few pages. As do all her books, it takes place on the island of Nantucket, so already it's hard to imagine how it could be anything less than fun. Unlike all her books, it starts off with dead people. So, while she's frothy beach reading, she also packs a little punch.
My only criticism would be that there are a few too many people to mentally juggle, particularly when you're lying on sand. The Castaways is a group of friends -- eight, to be exact; four couples -- and their children. That's a lot of main characters to keep track of, and I spent more time than I would have liked trying to remember who belonged with whom.
Two thumbs up if you're looking for a good travel book, something that will keep you engaged and interested and then leave you alone.
Year in (Book) Review: On Writing
One of the most important elements of these little book reviews, up to this point, has been all-inclusiveness. I think, thematically and hypothetically, what I review can be read by anyone. If you're a guy and you want to read The Heretic's Daughter, or a lit snob secretly reading Dear John, who are we, fellow bookworms, to judge? (Okay, I'm totally going to judge you for the Dear John one. It's so bad.)
This one might be the exception, and it makes me kind of sad. I've just finished Stephen King's On Writing, and I was none too happy about it. My gauge for a good book is that I'll read the first two thirds of it as quickly as my eyes and sleep will let me, then slow down almost to a standstill for the final third, simply because I don't want it to end. This has little to do with the caliber of author or of the writing -- I followed this pattern with the finale of the Twilight series in exactly the same way I have done with every F. Scott Fitzgerald book.
Some books, apparently, have just an imperceptible amount of crack sprinkled in the pages. This is the only way to explain Twilight. It is not a particularly well written book series, really, and the story is just weird. And yet, could you put it down? Well, I don't care if you could or not. I could not. I read, in my bed, unfed and unshowered and unimpressed by world events, for four days straight.
That is how I felt about King's memoir: half history, half mechanics ... like I could -- should -- snort the pages. Like I would -- could -- eat the words right off the page.
Perhaps the most surprising part to me? That Stephen King at one point weighed in upwards of 215 pounds. That, even in the times when he was by his own estimation light, he weighed nearly 170. Those are probably not the parts of the story he was hoping his readers would cling to. But it's almost like everything else he writes is so prolific, so profound and perfectly creative and inspiring and earth-shattering, that something as simple as realizing that Stephen King is not, as I might have imagined him had I ever taken the time to imagine him, a wimpy, minuscule kind of guy. Go fucking figure. Also, and my regular readers won't be surprised by this at all, I love, I mean LOVE, that he says fuck. A lot. All the time. For absolutely no reason. Just because there are people in the world -- people like me and people like Stephen fucking King -- who say fuck a lot. We aren't unintelligent. We aren't even uneducated. We just say fuck a lot because it fits and it sits so comfortably on the tongue.
I don't know how a book on the craft of writing will fit into the literary genre of you, my intelligent and well-read friends, who are either not writers or huge fans of the science fiction/horror genres. There are a lot -- millions, literally -- of insanely excellent books to read, and it's sadly impossible to get to them all. But this is a great book. It's a great insight to how a genius writer makes his genius work.
This one might be the exception, and it makes me kind of sad. I've just finished Stephen King's On Writing, and I was none too happy about it. My gauge for a good book is that I'll read the first two thirds of it as quickly as my eyes and sleep will let me, then slow down almost to a standstill for the final third, simply because I don't want it to end. This has little to do with the caliber of author or of the writing -- I followed this pattern with the finale of the Twilight series in exactly the same way I have done with every F. Scott Fitzgerald book.
Some books, apparently, have just an imperceptible amount of crack sprinkled in the pages. This is the only way to explain Twilight. It is not a particularly well written book series, really, and the story is just weird. And yet, could you put it down? Well, I don't care if you could or not. I could not. I read, in my bed, unfed and unshowered and unimpressed by world events, for four days straight.
That is how I felt about King's memoir: half history, half mechanics ... like I could -- should -- snort the pages. Like I would -- could -- eat the words right off the page.
Perhaps the most surprising part to me? That Stephen King at one point weighed in upwards of 215 pounds. That, even in the times when he was by his own estimation light, he weighed nearly 170. Those are probably not the parts of the story he was hoping his readers would cling to. But it's almost like everything else he writes is so prolific, so profound and perfectly creative and inspiring and earth-shattering, that something as simple as realizing that Stephen King is not, as I might have imagined him had I ever taken the time to imagine him, a wimpy, minuscule kind of guy. Go fucking figure. Also, and my regular readers won't be surprised by this at all, I love, I mean LOVE, that he says fuck. A lot. All the time. For absolutely no reason. Just because there are people in the world -- people like me and people like Stephen fucking King -- who say fuck a lot. We aren't unintelligent. We aren't even uneducated. We just say fuck a lot because it fits and it sits so comfortably on the tongue.
I don't know how a book on the craft of writing will fit into the literary genre of you, my intelligent and well-read friends, who are either not writers or huge fans of the science fiction/horror genres. There are a lot -- millions, literally -- of insanely excellent books to read, and it's sadly impossible to get to them all. But this is a great book. It's a great insight to how a genius writer makes his genius work.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The LSG Explains It All
The cute thing about being the LSG in your group of friends (that's the Last Single Girl, you silly) is that you get to impress all your Old Saggy Married Friends with your dating prowess and general knowledge of the MSG. (Modern Single Guy. Please try to keep up or this will take forever.)
The most recent example of this came at a Dayton Dragons game, with one of my old (she is thirty three days older than me and looks every minute of it)(nothing on her sags, though, dammit) married friends and her seven year old son. The baseball game, a present from me to the little boy, fell on the night after what we were trying to decide was a third date or not. You know ... the third date. I'm paraphrasing, of course, and in some places just totally making shit up, but the conversation went something like this:
"Third date, huh?" OSMF.
"Oh yeah. I mean, sort of. I think. Third ... ish." Me.
We promptly set about trying to determine exactly which date number I was on. Really, though, if you read between the lines, we were trying to determine whether or not I'm a slut. I'll summarize.
First date: Group date. To a karaoke bar. (Everyone who has ever heard me sing is cracking up or cringing for me right now.) Turns out, I later learned, he had no idea who I was, what I was doing there, or that there was a setup happening. Call me old-fashioned but I'm not tallying this one up in the date category.
Second date: Just the two of us, after he politely called me up on the phone to invite me to drinks and dinner. Totally a date. By every definition, a really nice date.
Third date: This is where things start to get murky. Another big group, to a Reds game. Somewhere in upwards of 100 degrees, and mass amounts of sweat was produced by all. Kind of a date, but mostly just me and a girlfriend knocking small children out of the way so we could hog the mister fans.
Next few dates: Actually a combination of evenings, taking place at the wine bar below the yoga studio where I have a mad crush on my new yoga instructor. Seriously, she's beautiful and flexible and spiritual. I love her. Love her. A few of these nights ended, very late, with him giving me funny looks because all I could talk about was my adorable yoga instructor.
Somewhere around maybe the sixth date: I climbed his tree. This is not, as my dirtier-minded friends assumed, and as you probably did as well you dirty-minded reader, a euphemism. I actually climbed his tree. He mentioned cutting it down, he did some grilling, we went to Krogers like an old married couple, I inexplicably climbed a tree, it was my favorite night so far.
So now OSMF is up to date, you're up to date, let's continue. I should mention here this particular OSMF was responsible for the initial set up, so she's practically gloating. And right now, while her seven year old is distracted by baseball and an inconceivable amount of food, she gives me the look.
"Awww. That's really cute. I'm so happy for you." I thank her. She keeps giving me the look. "So...?"
"So what?" I love playing dumb. Or not, since she hits me hard in the arm.
"I knew it." I don't know how she thinks she knew it, but apparently, she did. Now she's really gloating. "So can I see pictures of him on Facebook?" This is not where I expect her line of questioning to go, and I am momentarily taken aback.
"Facebook?"
"Did you change your status?"
"Whaaaat? I'm not his Facebook friend, for fuck's sake." It's like she just accused me of having a casual heroin habit. My voice gets so high-pitched the plastic Bud Light bottle the man next to me is holding threatens to crack. Bud Light man gives me a look of his own, one that says I probably shouldn't say "fuck" in the presence of a seven year old.
OSMF looks at me with obvious and -- if we're being honest, here, which clearly we are -- understandable confusion. Skepticism, you may even say.
"So... wait a sec. You guys --"
"Yep."
"I mean, like, all the w --"
"Mmm hmm."
"And which date was it again?"
"Five and three quarters, I believe." I say this with the celibate pride of the well-disciplined and self-controlled.
"But ... you won't Facebook friend him?"
"Noooo. God no. He'll think I'm a clingy stalker."
"Okay."
The nice thing about having lifelong friends is that they get you. And also, they are so generally worn out by you that they just can't muster the strength to ask for clarification.
There you have it. A brief glimpse into the perplexing world of the LSG, and her appropriate non-use of the Friend Request Button. If there is anything else I can help you understand, please do not hesitate to ask.
The most recent example of this came at a Dayton Dragons game, with one of my old (she is thirty three days older than me and looks every minute of it)(nothing on her sags, though, dammit) married friends and her seven year old son. The baseball game, a present from me to the little boy, fell on the night after what we were trying to decide was a third date or not. You know ... the third date. I'm paraphrasing, of course, and in some places just totally making shit up, but the conversation went something like this:
"Third date, huh?" OSMF.
"Oh yeah. I mean, sort of. I think. Third ... ish." Me.
We promptly set about trying to determine exactly which date number I was on. Really, though, if you read between the lines, we were trying to determine whether or not I'm a slut. I'll summarize.
First date: Group date. To a karaoke bar. (Everyone who has ever heard me sing is cracking up or cringing for me right now.) Turns out, I later learned, he had no idea who I was, what I was doing there, or that there was a setup happening. Call me old-fashioned but I'm not tallying this one up in the date category.
Second date: Just the two of us, after he politely called me up on the phone to invite me to drinks and dinner. Totally a date. By every definition, a really nice date.
Third date: This is where things start to get murky. Another big group, to a Reds game. Somewhere in upwards of 100 degrees, and mass amounts of sweat was produced by all. Kind of a date, but mostly just me and a girlfriend knocking small children out of the way so we could hog the mister fans.
Next few dates: Actually a combination of evenings, taking place at the wine bar below the yoga studio where I have a mad crush on my new yoga instructor. Seriously, she's beautiful and flexible and spiritual. I love her. Love her. A few of these nights ended, very late, with him giving me funny looks because all I could talk about was my adorable yoga instructor.
Somewhere around maybe the sixth date: I climbed his tree. This is not, as my dirtier-minded friends assumed, and as you probably did as well you dirty-minded reader, a euphemism. I actually climbed his tree. He mentioned cutting it down, he did some grilling, we went to Krogers like an old married couple, I inexplicably climbed a tree, it was my favorite night so far.
So now OSMF is up to date, you're up to date, let's continue. I should mention here this particular OSMF was responsible for the initial set up, so she's practically gloating. And right now, while her seven year old is distracted by baseball and an inconceivable amount of food, she gives me the look.
"Awww. That's really cute. I'm so happy for you." I thank her. She keeps giving me the look. "So...?"
"So what?" I love playing dumb. Or not, since she hits me hard in the arm.
"I knew it." I don't know how she thinks she knew it, but apparently, she did. Now she's really gloating. "So can I see pictures of him on Facebook?" This is not where I expect her line of questioning to go, and I am momentarily taken aback.
"Facebook?"
"Did you change your status?"
"Whaaaat? I'm not his Facebook friend, for fuck's sake." It's like she just accused me of having a casual heroin habit. My voice gets so high-pitched the plastic Bud Light bottle the man next to me is holding threatens to crack. Bud Light man gives me a look of his own, one that says I probably shouldn't say "fuck" in the presence of a seven year old.
OSMF looks at me with obvious and -- if we're being honest, here, which clearly we are -- understandable confusion. Skepticism, you may even say.
"So... wait a sec. You guys --"
"Yep."
"I mean, like, all the w --"
"Mmm hmm."
"And which date was it again?"
"Five and three quarters, I believe." I say this with the celibate pride of the well-disciplined and self-controlled.
"But ... you won't Facebook friend him?"
"Noooo. God no. He'll think I'm a clingy stalker."
"Okay."
The nice thing about having lifelong friends is that they get you. And also, they are so generally worn out by you that they just can't muster the strength to ask for clarification.
There you have it. A brief glimpse into the perplexing world of the LSG, and her appropriate non-use of the Friend Request Button. If there is anything else I can help you understand, please do not hesitate to ask.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Year in (Book) Review: The Book of Joe
Jonathan Tropper makes me wish I was a dude. Or, at least, he makes me wish I could, sometimes, write like one.
The Book of Joe is actually my second Tropper book of the year, the first being This Is Where I Leave You, which made me fall a little bit in love with him. The Book of Joe confirmed, if it's not love, it's at least a pretty serious crush.
This was actually an earlier book, and it felt like it. He has my propensity for sometimes being just thiiiis much too clever with his turns of phrase. For using eighteen words where six might work, as it were. But, the thing is, he is clever. He writes some really funny, really biting, occasionally unexpected stuff.
Quick synopsis (by request, since apparently I rarely ever actually say much about what the book is about, and some of you would like the elevator pitch): Joe is a guy in his mid-thirties who has recently hit the big time with his debut novel. He's rolling in money, driving a great car, and sort of a little bit miserable. When his father falls ill, he heads out of New York and back to the small New England town he's not returned to in nearly seventeen years. Because, teensy weensy detail, the book he wrote was about said small New England town, and most of the people in it, and it was ... let's say, unflattering. Chaos inevitably ensues. There you have it.
Every once in a while throughout his novel Tropper sounds a little bit like a guy trying not to write a guys' book, and gives in to a sort of sappy tone of predictability. Still, it's nice to hear a guy writing about a guy and not being afraid to include some fear, some serious self-doubt, and some true, childhood love that has (almost) nothing to do with sex. His characters are well thought out and lovable, even the idiots, and he lets you care about them all. I don't know what the male equivalent of chick lit is called, but this is a shining example of it.
The Book of Joe is actually my second Tropper book of the year, the first being This Is Where I Leave You, which made me fall a little bit in love with him. The Book of Joe confirmed, if it's not love, it's at least a pretty serious crush.
This was actually an earlier book, and it felt like it. He has my propensity for sometimes being just thiiiis much too clever with his turns of phrase. For using eighteen words where six might work, as it were. But, the thing is, he is clever. He writes some really funny, really biting, occasionally unexpected stuff.
Quick synopsis (by request, since apparently I rarely ever actually say much about what the book is about, and some of you would like the elevator pitch): Joe is a guy in his mid-thirties who has recently hit the big time with his debut novel. He's rolling in money, driving a great car, and sort of a little bit miserable. When his father falls ill, he heads out of New York and back to the small New England town he's not returned to in nearly seventeen years. Because, teensy weensy detail, the book he wrote was about said small New England town, and most of the people in it, and it was ... let's say, unflattering. Chaos inevitably ensues. There you have it.
Every once in a while throughout his novel Tropper sounds a little bit like a guy trying not to write a guys' book, and gives in to a sort of sappy tone of predictability. Still, it's nice to hear a guy writing about a guy and not being afraid to include some fear, some serious self-doubt, and some true, childhood love that has (almost) nothing to do with sex. His characters are well thought out and lovable, even the idiots, and he lets you care about them all. I don't know what the male equivalent of chick lit is called, but this is a shining example of it.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Year in (Book) Review: Olive Kitteridge
Continuing in my summer long style of reading some really beautiful, and sometimes somewhat slow, narratives, I stepped up to the big leagues with Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning novelistic collection of short stories, Olive Kitteridge.
At last month's Antioch Writers' Workshop, Strout's name hung in the air; she'd been one of the guests in attendance two years ago -- the same year she published Olive Kitteridge -- and people seemed to speak her name in rather reverent, hushed tones. People say my name loudly and often as the butt of a joke, so I was intrigued.
Olive is a quiet book, centering around -- wait for it -- an aging small town retired teacher named Olive Kitteridge. Some of the stories are about Olive and her family -- her kind husband and her troubled only child son -- and in others, she's merely a background player for the folks who come and go in and out of her little world.
I have a tremendous respect for the art of the short story; it's a deceptively difficult thing to create an entire, complex story in a limited number of pages. Strout handles it beautifully, weaving together a really lovely tale from a lot of different lives and stories. I just love Strout's approach to voice and language -- it's something I've been concentrating on a lot lately ... since all my characters sound suspiciously just like me.
Perhaps the only negative I might assign to Strout's book is, well, just that -- it's a little negative, for a complete lack of a more interesting or inspired word. I feel a little about Olive the way I would about Angela Lansbury -- my mom used to watch Murder She Wrote and, without fail, would comment that if she ever saw that woman ambling into town, she'd hightail it out -- you can be pretty certain that once she shows up, something bad is going to happen. Within the hour. I just wish Ms. Strout had given us a little more of the positive side of the Kitteridges and their neighbors -- I don't think the nostalgic, almost melancholy tone would have been lost.
At last month's Antioch Writers' Workshop, Strout's name hung in the air; she'd been one of the guests in attendance two years ago -- the same year she published Olive Kitteridge -- and people seemed to speak her name in rather reverent, hushed tones. People say my name loudly and often as the butt of a joke, so I was intrigued.
Olive is a quiet book, centering around -- wait for it -- an aging small town retired teacher named Olive Kitteridge. Some of the stories are about Olive and her family -- her kind husband and her troubled only child son -- and in others, she's merely a background player for the folks who come and go in and out of her little world.
I have a tremendous respect for the art of the short story; it's a deceptively difficult thing to create an entire, complex story in a limited number of pages. Strout handles it beautifully, weaving together a really lovely tale from a lot of different lives and stories. I just love Strout's approach to voice and language -- it's something I've been concentrating on a lot lately ... since all my characters sound suspiciously just like me.
Perhaps the only negative I might assign to Strout's book is, well, just that -- it's a little negative, for a complete lack of a more interesting or inspired word. I feel a little about Olive the way I would about Angela Lansbury -- my mom used to watch Murder She Wrote and, without fail, would comment that if she ever saw that woman ambling into town, she'd hightail it out -- you can be pretty certain that once she shows up, something bad is going to happen. Within the hour. I just wish Ms. Strout had given us a little more of the positive side of the Kitteridges and their neighbors -- I don't think the nostalgic, almost melancholy tone would have been lost.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Year in (Book) Review:The Girl Who Played with Fire
Second round with little Lisbeth and her cohorts.
I do have to say that I enjoyed this one more than the last one, which I did enjoy, and I do have to say that I have no good explanation as to why. A few theories: while the first of Larsson's trilogy revolved mostly around Kalle Blomkvist, which I cannot pronounce and therefore call him, simply, 'Mike,' Fire is a lot more Lisbeth, and she's a cool character. (Side note: you know how sometimes you get something stuck in your head, even when it's ridiculous? Somehow, my tiny blonde -- and so maybe sort of Swedish-looking? -- friend is the only human being I know over the age of eleven who is as tiny and as spunky as Lisbeth is described to be. And once I thought of that, now I can't picture anyone else in the movie in my head that plays as I read. Kim is neither apparently autistic, tattooed, or known to have killed anyone, so... yeah. Moving on.) Also, this one just felt more active to me. Not that Dragon Tattoo didn't keep things plowing forward, but this felt more like a thriller to me. More of a page turner. I hope it's a trend that continues through the Hornet's Nest and, if it should come to pass, the fourth book.
What I didn't love so much. The book begins with some interesting characters and happenings that go... absolutely nowhere. I don't like getting to the end of a book only to find out that the first third of it was filler. I don't think books should start with filler. That doesn't make much sense, now does it. The circumstances don't advance the plot at all, and they don't give us any information or insight into Lisbeth's personality that we haven't already been privy to from the first book. (Another side note: some people will tell you that you don't need to read the first one in order to enjoy the second. That may be true, but it is my opinion that you absolutely need the first one to really have any clear idea what or who you're reading about in the second. And also I don't really understand people who would read the second book in a trilogy without reading the first. Those people make me uneasy.)
I take some small issue with Larsson repeatedly handing his characters the tools -- skills, knowledge, and sometimes actual, literal tools -- they need to get out of the situations he puts them in. I sort of think if they can't get out of them themselves, maybe the writer has no business putting them there in the first place. But this is nitpicky, and probably unavoidable, and is why I don't write thrillers.
But, after some of the slower stories I've been reading lately -- some good, some eh -- this is a great way to get back to movement. He'll keep you up at night with the "one more chapter" syndrome, and that is, I would have to say, probably the best thing a writer can do.
(A final side note: Just Netflixed the Swedish film version of the first novel, which is supposed to be amazing. I'm a little freaked out, not completely sure I want to see some of those things played out in front of me, but I'll let you know if I recommend it! Anyone seen it yet who wants to weigh in before I watch?)
I do have to say that I enjoyed this one more than the last one, which I did enjoy, and I do have to say that I have no good explanation as to why. A few theories: while the first of Larsson's trilogy revolved mostly around Kalle Blomkvist, which I cannot pronounce and therefore call him, simply, 'Mike,' Fire is a lot more Lisbeth, and she's a cool character. (Side note: you know how sometimes you get something stuck in your head, even when it's ridiculous? Somehow, my tiny blonde -- and so maybe sort of Swedish-looking? -- friend is the only human being I know over the age of eleven who is as tiny and as spunky as Lisbeth is described to be. And once I thought of that, now I can't picture anyone else in the movie in my head that plays as I read. Kim is neither apparently autistic, tattooed, or known to have killed anyone, so... yeah. Moving on.) Also, this one just felt more active to me. Not that Dragon Tattoo didn't keep things plowing forward, but this felt more like a thriller to me. More of a page turner. I hope it's a trend that continues through the Hornet's Nest and, if it should come to pass, the fourth book.
What I didn't love so much. The book begins with some interesting characters and happenings that go... absolutely nowhere. I don't like getting to the end of a book only to find out that the first third of it was filler. I don't think books should start with filler. That doesn't make much sense, now does it. The circumstances don't advance the plot at all, and they don't give us any information or insight into Lisbeth's personality that we haven't already been privy to from the first book. (Another side note: some people will tell you that you don't need to read the first one in order to enjoy the second. That may be true, but it is my opinion that you absolutely need the first one to really have any clear idea what or who you're reading about in the second. And also I don't really understand people who would read the second book in a trilogy without reading the first. Those people make me uneasy.)
I take some small issue with Larsson repeatedly handing his characters the tools -- skills, knowledge, and sometimes actual, literal tools -- they need to get out of the situations he puts them in. I sort of think if they can't get out of them themselves, maybe the writer has no business putting them there in the first place. But this is nitpicky, and probably unavoidable, and is why I don't write thrillers.
But, after some of the slower stories I've been reading lately -- some good, some eh -- this is a great way to get back to movement. He'll keep you up at night with the "one more chapter" syndrome, and that is, I would have to say, probably the best thing a writer can do.
(A final side note: Just Netflixed the Swedish film version of the first novel, which is supposed to be amazing. I'm a little freaked out, not completely sure I want to see some of those things played out in front of me, but I'll let you know if I recommend it! Anyone seen it yet who wants to weigh in before I watch?)
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
It's Not You
I am famous in small circles and my own mind for my interesting choices of mates. I have no "type," I've always said, at least not physically anyway. I can get just as giddy over a preppy green eyed blond as I can over a dark and spiky haired artist. I don't much care for ugly, because it's not pretty, but I do have a soft spot for the nerds. The cute dorks. Always have. It's the four-eyed bookworm in me. It's intangible, as it probably is for a lot of people, but I like what I like and I know it when I see it and I can't imagine ever giving someone the chance to "grow" on me. Like algae. Or fungus. (Huh. Are algae and fungus the same thing?) Either way, ew.
The one thing I always thought bound a good number of my beloveds together was the complete and utter totality of their commitment issues. I get into a relationship and then stubbornly stay there, come hell or high water, even when, as one ex put it, we seem sort of doomed to be together. Together... but not married. Together ... but ... not really. Not so much. Like magnets, my clinginess and their complete lack thereof simultaneously attract and repel each other. It may not be going anywhere, or even particularly healthy, but I can count on it. It's just the nature of my type.
Now imagine the size of the hole blown into this theory last weekend, when not one but two of my exes got engaged. Neither of them to me.
I can't lie; that'll make you stop hard in your tracks. Particularly when "you" is "me" and "me" is way over this side of 30, childless, and whining on an endless loop to friends, God love 'em, who have long since stopped listening to me bitch about being old and childless. I always assumed I wasn't married to these particular guys because they had "issues committing." But if they're engaged...
Oh my God.
Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the commitmentphobe.
And maybe I'm just whining about it because I feel like I'm supposed to? I like guys. (Seriously. It was one kiss, drunk in a bar, so don't even go down that path.) And I like kids. I do. I don't like the idea of not being able to have them. But, even at this advanced age, I can't quite hear my biological clock. Maybe mine's on vibrate? I'm sure it's ticking, it must be, but it's not prompting me to action. I'm just sitting here, still single. Still old and childless.
But really, what's that action supposed to be? Am I to go after guys now like a heat seeking missile, just tracking down someone with a decent head of hair, a controlled beer paunch and some spare sperm? Am I to lower my standards, giving that sort of creepy guy who leers at me every time I go into CVS a chance? (Mind you, he doesn't work there. He's just always there. And he doesn't have a decent head of hair or any control over that gut.) And a chance at what, exactly? Oy.
It's been a retrospective week. A sort of sad one, even. Not because I was supposed to marry either of these guys, because apparently I wasn't. While it's hard not to feel just a little left behind, I trust -- I hope, anyway -- that they have found just the right person for them. I would love for them to be happy and content and have lots of little exes.*
It's just that ... if it's me, I think I'm sort of screwed. I think I can fix anything else but that.
*This is not a completely accurate statement. In fact, it's an outright lie. I tried to be PC but I feel badly about being dishonest. This should read something more along the lines of: I believe completely that one of them has found the right person, and I couldn't be happier for him. He's my friend. One of my best. Our relationship has changed dramatically and continuously in the seven or so years since we met, but I think it's grown and shifted into what it was meant to be. A really great friendship. He's still a shit sometimes and doesn't call me when he's supposed to (you were supposed to call me last week) but he cares about me. He cares to know me and stay in my life and I truly, deeply hope his beautiful young wife-to-be will as well. The other one ... the other one. Not so much. That's all I have to say about the other one.
The one thing I always thought bound a good number of my beloveds together was the complete and utter totality of their commitment issues. I get into a relationship and then stubbornly stay there, come hell or high water, even when, as one ex put it, we seem sort of doomed to be together. Together... but not married. Together ... but ... not really. Not so much. Like magnets, my clinginess and their complete lack thereof simultaneously attract and repel each other. It may not be going anywhere, or even particularly healthy, but I can count on it. It's just the nature of my type.
Now imagine the size of the hole blown into this theory last weekend, when not one but two of my exes got engaged. Neither of them to me.
I can't lie; that'll make you stop hard in your tracks. Particularly when "you" is "me" and "me" is way over this side of 30, childless, and whining on an endless loop to friends, God love 'em, who have long since stopped listening to me bitch about being old and childless. I always assumed I wasn't married to these particular guys because they had "issues committing." But if they're engaged...
Oh my God.
Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the commitmentphobe.
And maybe I'm just whining about it because I feel like I'm supposed to? I like guys. (Seriously. It was one kiss, drunk in a bar, so don't even go down that path.) And I like kids. I do. I don't like the idea of not being able to have them. But, even at this advanced age, I can't quite hear my biological clock. Maybe mine's on vibrate? I'm sure it's ticking, it must be, but it's not prompting me to action. I'm just sitting here, still single. Still old and childless.
But really, what's that action supposed to be? Am I to go after guys now like a heat seeking missile, just tracking down someone with a decent head of hair, a controlled beer paunch and some spare sperm? Am I to lower my standards, giving that sort of creepy guy who leers at me every time I go into CVS a chance? (Mind you, he doesn't work there. He's just always there. And he doesn't have a decent head of hair or any control over that gut.) And a chance at what, exactly? Oy.
It's been a retrospective week. A sort of sad one, even. Not because I was supposed to marry either of these guys, because apparently I wasn't. While it's hard not to feel just a little left behind, I trust -- I hope, anyway -- that they have found just the right person for them. I would love for them to be happy and content and have lots of little exes.*
It's just that ... if it's me, I think I'm sort of screwed. I think I can fix anything else but that.
*This is not a completely accurate statement. In fact, it's an outright lie. I tried to be PC but I feel badly about being dishonest. This should read something more along the lines of: I believe completely that one of them has found the right person, and I couldn't be happier for him. He's my friend. One of my best. Our relationship has changed dramatically and continuously in the seven or so years since we met, but I think it's grown and shifted into what it was meant to be. A really great friendship. He's still a shit sometimes and doesn't call me when he's supposed to (you were supposed to call me last week) but he cares about me. He cares to know me and stay in my life and I truly, deeply hope his beautiful young wife-to-be will as well. The other one ... the other one. Not so much. That's all I have to say about the other one.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Year in (Book) Review: How Did You Get This Number
I have a healthy sense of irony, I think. I get that saying anything even remotely critical of a girl who writes about every trite and trivial thing happening in her life may make your eyebrows go up. I get it. So if I sound critical, just realize it's really nothing more than envy.
That's what Sloane Crosley does in her second book of personal essays, How Did You Get This Number -- she writes about every trite and trivial thing. Only what is trite and trivial in her life would land in the "five coolest things ever to happen to me" column in my life. Her first collection, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, came out a few years ago and had much the same impact on me as this one: insane jealousy that people live much cooler lives than me and therefore have more, and wackier, stories to tell.
I will compare her to David Sedaris, which is truly the highest compliment I can pay to an essayist. Indeed, every night after bathtime when it's time to say my prayers, He (God, not David) hears something from me along the lines of, "Dear God, please oh please oh please let someone compare me someday to David Sedaris." Sometimes it comes before my plea for a rich, gorgeous husband and a new pair of Louboutins and sometimes it comes after, but it's usually tucked comfortably in the middle.
The only times I got annoyed with Ms. Crosley were the moments she seemed to be veering down one path and then, ooh ... something shiny ... and she was off in another direction. I would rather read (and write, I guess, is probably really what I'm saying) a million short, tight stories than a rambling one that could probably be really funny except that you completely lost me and I have no idea what you're talking about so instead of laughing at/with/potAYto/potAHto you I'm just annoyed with you for talking too much. Again, ironic, I know. I know.
I do have to concede, though, this would have made a much better beach book than a heartwarming, beautifully executed tale about child sexual abuse. You can pick it up, put it down, read it quickly, skim, all attributes of a book destined to be resort reading. Not much meat, and that's okay, because who wants meat on the beach?
Actually, I'm going to tell you all to go get it, and read it, and then report back to me what you liked and what you didn't, so that when I start writing my own book I'll know what you want. Okay, go.
That's what Sloane Crosley does in her second book of personal essays, How Did You Get This Number -- she writes about every trite and trivial thing. Only what is trite and trivial in her life would land in the "five coolest things ever to happen to me" column in my life. Her first collection, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, came out a few years ago and had much the same impact on me as this one: insane jealousy that people live much cooler lives than me and therefore have more, and wackier, stories to tell.
I will compare her to David Sedaris, which is truly the highest compliment I can pay to an essayist. Indeed, every night after bathtime when it's time to say my prayers, He (God, not David) hears something from me along the lines of, "Dear God, please oh please oh please let someone compare me someday to David Sedaris." Sometimes it comes before my plea for a rich, gorgeous husband and a new pair of Louboutins and sometimes it comes after, but it's usually tucked comfortably in the middle.
The only times I got annoyed with Ms. Crosley were the moments she seemed to be veering down one path and then, ooh ... something shiny ... and she was off in another direction. I would rather read (and write, I guess, is probably really what I'm saying) a million short, tight stories than a rambling one that could probably be really funny except that you completely lost me and I have no idea what you're talking about so instead of laughing at/with/potAYto/potAHto you I'm just annoyed with you for talking too much. Again, ironic, I know. I know.
I do have to concede, though, this would have made a much better beach book than a heartwarming, beautifully executed tale about child sexual abuse. You can pick it up, put it down, read it quickly, skim, all attributes of a book destined to be resort reading. Not much meat, and that's okay, because who wants meat on the beach?
Actually, I'm going to tell you all to go get it, and read it, and then report back to me what you liked and what you didn't, so that when I start writing my own book I'll know what you want. Okay, go.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
ADDENDUM TO Year in (Book) Review: The Kindness of Strangers
It took me a long time to read this book, because I knew I would have to write a review.
It's not that I shied away from the subject matter or that I'd heard anything less than praise for the novel. It's that I pinky-promised myself last January I would review every single book I read, even the embarrassing ones. No skipping, no matter what -- if it got read, it got reviewed.
It just never crossed my mind that I would read a book by someone I know. In this case, it's not even just someone I know, but a former English teacher and current writing mentor. How the hell do you do a book review on your writing mentor? I can't even bring myself to call her anything other than Miss Kittle and she hasn't been my teacher since like 1991. We're practically the same age. And still, there is reverence given where there is reverence due.
That being said, I feel a need to reassure you that it's an honest review. She can't grade me anymore. If I hadn't liked the book, a lot or a little, I would have told you. It is an exceptionally well-crafted story. Phew.
It's not that I shied away from the subject matter or that I'd heard anything less than praise for the novel. It's that I pinky-promised myself last January I would review every single book I read, even the embarrassing ones. No skipping, no matter what -- if it got read, it got reviewed.
It just never crossed my mind that I would read a book by someone I know. In this case, it's not even just someone I know, but a former English teacher and current writing mentor. How the hell do you do a book review on your writing mentor? I can't even bring myself to call her anything other than Miss Kittle and she hasn't been my teacher since like 1991. We're practically the same age. And still, there is reverence given where there is reverence due.
That being said, I feel a need to reassure you that it's an honest review. She can't grade me anymore. If I hadn't liked the book, a lot or a little, I would have told you. It is an exceptionally well-crafted story. Phew.
Year in (Book) Review: The Kindness of Strangers
Imagine the darkest thing you can that could happen to a child. Now, take it one shade deeper into blackness -- into the unimaginable, really -- and that's what we're asked to deal with in Katrina Kittle's The Kindness of Strangers. The name and the book jacket are lighthearted and lovely. The life of its youngest main character is anything but.
In turn, fortunately, Kittle's telling of his story is anything but bleak. It's impossible, I would have to believe, to write about crimes against children in an honest and raw way without making your readers very, very uncomfortable. I choose to write about things like bikini waxes gone bad and ill-behaved house pets, so clearly she has a level of maturity I've not yet found. But she tackles the issue head on, without ever tiptoeing around it or doing a disservice to her characters by not making us, as readers here by choice, go through the same crises they must face.
She leaves you guessing, nearly to the end, who you can root for and who you should spit on. Much in the same way middle-schooler Jordan wants so much to believe in the best in people, even in really, really bad people, Kittle makes us want that too. She sweeps us up in his adolescent need for normalcy and family, and reminds us those are needs we never outgrow.
It's a beautiful telling of an ugly truth.
Side note: Because I frequently make inexplicable and suspect choices, I read this book on vacation. While I highly recommend reading the book, I equally highly recommend not reading it on a beach. It just feels weird.
In turn, fortunately, Kittle's telling of his story is anything but bleak. It's impossible, I would have to believe, to write about crimes against children in an honest and raw way without making your readers very, very uncomfortable. I choose to write about things like bikini waxes gone bad and ill-behaved house pets, so clearly she has a level of maturity I've not yet found. But she tackles the issue head on, without ever tiptoeing around it or doing a disservice to her characters by not making us, as readers here by choice, go through the same crises they must face.
She leaves you guessing, nearly to the end, who you can root for and who you should spit on. Much in the same way middle-schooler Jordan wants so much to believe in the best in people, even in really, really bad people, Kittle makes us want that too. She sweeps us up in his adolescent need for normalcy and family, and reminds us those are needs we never outgrow.
It's a beautiful telling of an ugly truth.
Side note: Because I frequently make inexplicable and suspect choices, I read this book on vacation. While I highly recommend reading the book, I equally highly recommend not reading it on a beach. It just feels weird.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Year in (Book) Review: The Heretic's Daughter
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Favorite book of the year (so far) goes to the hauntingly beautiful writing of Kathleen Kent in The Heretic's Daughter. Recommended to me by my writing partner (and I use that term loosely, since in between our brief flashes of brilliance we spend most of our time gossiping and talking about her charmingly frustrating four year old), it is the first book in a long time that's kept me up way past my bedtime, because I just had to have one more chapter in me before I closed my eyes.
First, the backstory. Ms. Kent, as many of us do, grew up with stories of her ancestors. One in particular was Martha Carrier, who would have been her grandmother nine times back or something like that. One of the most prominent figures in the infamous Salem witch trials of the late 1600s, Martha was hung for being outspoken, critical of the judiciary process she was held slave to, and for generally not being well-liked by her neighbors. That's pretty much all it took in those days, in that town. The author was so fascinated by the stories that she spent a significant amount of time researching both the trials themselves and her own family's involvement. She dug through historical research, myriad archives and transcripts, and her family's memories. The result is her debut novel, and I think it is really lovely.
Told from the fictional perspective of Martha's young daughter (the daughter was real, just the storytelling was imagined), Kent brings to life an absolutely beautiful and devastatingly harsh time. Fear of Indian attacks ran rampant. Smallpox swept unceremoniously through households and towns and killed in indiscriminant multitudes. The Puritanical life was barren. But, as Kent gently reminds us, families were close to and dependent upon one another, and kids were, as they will always be, kids. Sarah, our narrator, is equal parts stubborn -- like her mother -- and sarcastically observant of the iniquities of the time. She witnesses, and experiences first hand, some of the worst atrocities our country has been responsible for committing against our own. It was terrifying, and Kent does justice to the enormity of the situation, without ever once being flowery or overly stylistic. She stays true to the voice and nature of her characters, and since they wouldn't be melodramatic in the telling of their tale, neither is Kent.
She writes poetically, effortlessly. It's a distinctive style and specific to the era, but she never forces anything on her readers. It flows, and she paints. They say that an actor has to respect whomever it is that they are portraying, even if the audience sees an evil tyrant or a selfish drunk ... both of whom appear in The Heretic's Daughter. Somehow, though, all of Kent's characters are beloved and heartwarming ... well, okay, maybe not all of them, but the main ones, anyway -- even the most fatally flawed of the bunch.
It's a slow unfolding, so if you're looking for action, action, action you should probably put this one on hold for now. But if you decide to pick it up, and I hope, hope, hope you will, have a computer close by -- I found myself repeatedly needing to Wikipedia the people and circumstances she was describing, because it was so unbelievable to me that this stuff really happened. It really did.
First, the backstory. Ms. Kent, as many of us do, grew up with stories of her ancestors. One in particular was Martha Carrier, who would have been her grandmother nine times back or something like that. One of the most prominent figures in the infamous Salem witch trials of the late 1600s, Martha was hung for being outspoken, critical of the judiciary process she was held slave to, and for generally not being well-liked by her neighbors. That's pretty much all it took in those days, in that town. The author was so fascinated by the stories that she spent a significant amount of time researching both the trials themselves and her own family's involvement. She dug through historical research, myriad archives and transcripts, and her family's memories. The result is her debut novel, and I think it is really lovely.
Told from the fictional perspective of Martha's young daughter (the daughter was real, just the storytelling was imagined), Kent brings to life an absolutely beautiful and devastatingly harsh time. Fear of Indian attacks ran rampant. Smallpox swept unceremoniously through households and towns and killed in indiscriminant multitudes. The Puritanical life was barren. But, as Kent gently reminds us, families were close to and dependent upon one another, and kids were, as they will always be, kids. Sarah, our narrator, is equal parts stubborn -- like her mother -- and sarcastically observant of the iniquities of the time. She witnesses, and experiences first hand, some of the worst atrocities our country has been responsible for committing against our own. It was terrifying, and Kent does justice to the enormity of the situation, without ever once being flowery or overly stylistic. She stays true to the voice and nature of her characters, and since they wouldn't be melodramatic in the telling of their tale, neither is Kent.
She writes poetically, effortlessly. It's a distinctive style and specific to the era, but she never forces anything on her readers. It flows, and she paints. They say that an actor has to respect whomever it is that they are portraying, even if the audience sees an evil tyrant or a selfish drunk ... both of whom appear in The Heretic's Daughter. Somehow, though, all of Kent's characters are beloved and heartwarming ... well, okay, maybe not all of them, but the main ones, anyway -- even the most fatally flawed of the bunch.
It's a slow unfolding, so if you're looking for action, action, action you should probably put this one on hold for now. But if you decide to pick it up, and I hope, hope, hope you will, have a computer close by -- I found myself repeatedly needing to Wikipedia the people and circumstances she was describing, because it was so unbelievable to me that this stuff really happened. It really did.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Year in (Book) Review:The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
First of all, I love -- and I mean passionately LOVE -- that we live in a country where there can be buzz and hype and controversy surrounding a book, of all things. That a tiny little square of paper and ink can spark debate and invoke emotion and make people think. That we're educated enough to appreciate things others write, whether or not we agree. You will nearly never hear me talk about politics, or religion, or things of that ilk -- the former because I couldn't give two hoots and the latter because I hoot very deeply -- but I will go on record as saying that I feel blessed and proud to live in a place where any old person can read any old thing they want to. It's a gift we take for granted, and if you ever question whether or not our military is fighting for things that matter, please try to imagine a little girl somewhere who can't fathom being able or allowed to read anything at all, let alone something controversial or question-inspiring.
And, as soon as I climb down off of this here unexpectedly high horse, I'll get back to the business of book reviews. Giddy up.
I know I'm a little behind the times on this one. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first in a trilogy by Stieg Larsson, and the third book has just been released in hardback. So, I've got some catching up to do, but I wanted to start at the beginning. Surprisingly, while I've heard tons of buzz about the series, I knew nearly nothing about the book itself. Which caught me a bit off guard, and I'm still trying to decide if that's a bad thing or a very good one.
The back cover of the book talks about a murder mystery (ooh...), love story (ahh...), and financial intrigue (o... a... wtf?) White collar crime is hardly the stuff of legendary drama, I thought to myself, but maybe there will be enough murder and enough love to make up for it. There was.
Larsson started off a bit slowly, honestly, and I was a little concerned that I was in for another dud. (I've learned, the hard way that a lot of buzz around a book does not necessarily indicate a good book. Just a buzzed about one.) It picked up though, fairly quickly and in a big way. The title character -- who, interestingly enough, is a key player but not actually the main character, at least in this one -- is a tiny little punk girl who finds herself helping out a disgraced journalist on a case he's been hired to write about. The characters are well-developed and believable, even with their eccentricities and outlandishness, the relationships are fantastic, the pace is great, and I'm looking quite forward to the next one. Word of warning, though, and perhaps a bit of a spoiler: the book goes to some dark places, much darker than you would expect a book about "financial intrigue" to go. I'm not sure how I hadn't heard that at all and so it was really jarring, but again -- good or bad? I wouldn't have wanted any details -- and I won't give you any -- but I think I might have liked a little heads up. So there's yours.
Hoping to read the second book over the Fourth of July holiday -- nothing says love your country like tales of murder and woe!
Interesting little aside: Author Stieg Larsson, Swedish himself, as are the characters and most of the settings of his book, led a very interesting life, most of which was not as a writer but an activist. He lived for several decades with a woman with whom he protested and did activisty type things. He died, very suddenly of a heart attack, having written his trilogy but not published it. The success of the three books came after his death, but because he had no will, under Swedish law his profits and estate have gone to his next of kin -- in this case his father and brother. To date, his life partner of over thirty years has been given absolutely nothing from them. But ... she has Larsson's laptop ... which contains the fourth script in this insanely popular and profitable series. Now that's an intriguing story, my friends.
And, as soon as I climb down off of this here unexpectedly high horse, I'll get back to the business of book reviews. Giddy up.
I know I'm a little behind the times on this one. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first in a trilogy by Stieg Larsson, and the third book has just been released in hardback. So, I've got some catching up to do, but I wanted to start at the beginning. Surprisingly, while I've heard tons of buzz about the series, I knew nearly nothing about the book itself. Which caught me a bit off guard, and I'm still trying to decide if that's a bad thing or a very good one.
The back cover of the book talks about a murder mystery (ooh...), love story (ahh...), and financial intrigue (o... a... wtf?) White collar crime is hardly the stuff of legendary drama, I thought to myself, but maybe there will be enough murder and enough love to make up for it. There was.
Larsson started off a bit slowly, honestly, and I was a little concerned that I was in for another dud. (I've learned, the hard way that a lot of buzz around a book does not necessarily indicate a good book. Just a buzzed about one.) It picked up though, fairly quickly and in a big way. The title character -- who, interestingly enough, is a key player but not actually the main character, at least in this one -- is a tiny little punk girl who finds herself helping out a disgraced journalist on a case he's been hired to write about. The characters are well-developed and believable, even with their eccentricities and outlandishness, the relationships are fantastic, the pace is great, and I'm looking quite forward to the next one. Word of warning, though, and perhaps a bit of a spoiler: the book goes to some dark places, much darker than you would expect a book about "financial intrigue" to go. I'm not sure how I hadn't heard that at all and so it was really jarring, but again -- good or bad? I wouldn't have wanted any details -- and I won't give you any -- but I think I might have liked a little heads up. So there's yours.
Hoping to read the second book over the Fourth of July holiday -- nothing says love your country like tales of murder and woe!
Interesting little aside: Author Stieg Larsson, Swedish himself, as are the characters and most of the settings of his book, led a very interesting life, most of which was not as a writer but an activist. He lived for several decades with a woman with whom he protested and did activisty type things. He died, very suddenly of a heart attack, having written his trilogy but not published it. The success of the three books came after his death, but because he had no will, under Swedish law his profits and estate have gone to his next of kin -- in this case his father and brother. To date, his life partner of over thirty years has been given absolutely nothing from them. But ... she has Larsson's laptop ... which contains the fourth script in this insanely popular and profitable series. Now that's an intriguing story, my friends.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Year in (Book) Review: Dear John
I'm in a pickle, people. I know I'm going to get a good chunk of you all riled up about this one, and I'm bracing myself for the pickle-throwing storm. That may well be the most bizarre thing I've ever written, but you know what I mean.
I have long since claimed to be open-minded about the books I read. I will happily say I read trash, and I revel in it; I soak it up just as thoroughly as I can absorb my favorite Austen or genius Fitzgerald or any one of those lovable Bronte girls. Just like with film, there's a place for everything. I just watched Rachel Getting Married (Brilliant. Brilliant.) and then Pineapple Express. (Brilliant. What?) I can watch anything, read anything... As Long As It's Well Done.
How, then, do I deal with a blah book, that people happen to love? And there's no doubt that this guy is feeling the love, hard core. By the tens of millions, as women flock to the shelves to line his pockets with more money than God and the Queen combined. (I say with near certainty that no man has ever read a Nicholas Sparks book. Not even the gay ones.)
I picked up Dear John at my sister's house. (I won't say which sister, so I'm not technically outing her.) It violated my first rules of literature, which is to never read a book with movie stars on the cover. If the movie version of a book that I want to read has already come out, I will scour the back of the bookstore until I find the original book cover. But, being the literary non-snob that I am, I thought I'd give it a go. It's summer, and it seemed like a nice, summery romance.
Here's where I will give him credit. The story takes place in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I absolutely love Wilmington, North Carolina. I've been in love there, and had my heart broken there. So far, I'm on board.
That might be kind of it. The rest is ... tepid. I can't say bad, I guess. I've read some books -- not many, but some -- that I fully blame for the dumbing down of America. This wasn't that. It was just a moderately readable story, with mildly interesting characters. I had a really hard time buying into the love story that the book revolves around, not because it was relatively unfeasible (which it was) but because I just don't think he worked hard enough to make me buy it. Two young people fall in love in just a matter of days, and that's it. Now, I am hopelessly, happily romantic enough to want to believe that. But I'm world-weary enough to need some proof that, after a mere matter of hours, two people can find a love that will sustain distance and conflict and, in this case, a national tragedy and a handful of personal ones. It just wasn't there. Sparks was lazy and, I think, a little arrogant in assuming that his readers would just go along with whatever he told them, and however little he told them, without putting in the work to create an engaging, believable, heart-wrenching love. And, clearly, he was right in assuming that, since he's sold roughly a bazillion copies of this book. And the film rights.
I just can't get over the notion that it's simply not that well written. And I'm glad I didn't spend money on either one.
I'm sure I've ignited some sparks with this one -- and yes, my pun was intentional -- so I'd love, truly, to hear from some of you guys that read him a lot.
What am I missing?
I have long since claimed to be open-minded about the books I read. I will happily say I read trash, and I revel in it; I soak it up just as thoroughly as I can absorb my favorite Austen or genius Fitzgerald or any one of those lovable Bronte girls. Just like with film, there's a place for everything. I just watched Rachel Getting Married (Brilliant. Brilliant.) and then Pineapple Express. (Brilliant. What?) I can watch anything, read anything... As Long As It's Well Done.
How, then, do I deal with a blah book, that people happen to love? And there's no doubt that this guy is feeling the love, hard core. By the tens of millions, as women flock to the shelves to line his pockets with more money than God and the Queen combined. (I say with near certainty that no man has ever read a Nicholas Sparks book. Not even the gay ones.)
I picked up Dear John at my sister's house. (I won't say which sister, so I'm not technically outing her.) It violated my first rules of literature, which is to never read a book with movie stars on the cover. If the movie version of a book that I want to read has already come out, I will scour the back of the bookstore until I find the original book cover. But, being the literary non-snob that I am, I thought I'd give it a go. It's summer, and it seemed like a nice, summery romance.
Here's where I will give him credit. The story takes place in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I absolutely love Wilmington, North Carolina. I've been in love there, and had my heart broken there. So far, I'm on board.
That might be kind of it. The rest is ... tepid. I can't say bad, I guess. I've read some books -- not many, but some -- that I fully blame for the dumbing down of America. This wasn't that. It was just a moderately readable story, with mildly interesting characters. I had a really hard time buying into the love story that the book revolves around, not because it was relatively unfeasible (which it was) but because I just don't think he worked hard enough to make me buy it. Two young people fall in love in just a matter of days, and that's it. Now, I am hopelessly, happily romantic enough to want to believe that. But I'm world-weary enough to need some proof that, after a mere matter of hours, two people can find a love that will sustain distance and conflict and, in this case, a national tragedy and a handful of personal ones. It just wasn't there. Sparks was lazy and, I think, a little arrogant in assuming that his readers would just go along with whatever he told them, and however little he told them, without putting in the work to create an engaging, believable, heart-wrenching love. And, clearly, he was right in assuming that, since he's sold roughly a bazillion copies of this book. And the film rights.
I just can't get over the notion that it's simply not that well written. And I'm glad I didn't spend money on either one.
I'm sure I've ignited some sparks with this one -- and yes, my pun was intentional -- so I'd love, truly, to hear from some of you guys that read him a lot.
What am I missing?
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Worse Than Dead Bunnies
This damn dog is going to be the death of me. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration (although she did step on my foot this morning and it really, really hurts) but it's no exaggeration at all that she may very well get me booted from the family-friendly neighborhood.
I'll explain.
Yesterday morning, I patted myself on the back the whole hour long drive (another exaggeration) to my writers' date. (A new friend of mine from my writing class and I have been meeting every morning to sit and write. I'm flying along and it feels amazing to watch this piece get longer and longer. Not necessarily better and better, or more and more interesting, but for now we'll take long as a victory.)
On the way home I went to the gym.
Once I got home I polished off two projects and delivered them, before deadline, to happy little clients.
So, I thought mid-afternoon, I shall reward myself. I shall put on a bikini and sit in the sun and read my book, with my (parent's) beloved dog by my side. So I did. I even got a giant Diet Coke to take in the backyard with me, just to sweeten the deal.
It was bliss. Idyllic. The very picture of why people live in the suburbs.
For approximately five minutes.
It wasn't the bunnies that distracted her this time. It wasn't the incessant barking of the little shit dog that our neighbors tied to a tree and left outside for, apparently, ever.
It was the TruGreen guy.
Now, when Cokie went absolutely ballistic and started barking at the fence, I probably should have paid attention. The problem is, Cokie is the little dog who barked wolf, and she goes ballistic when the mailman drives by. When anyone drives by. When a butterfly flitters past. When nothing flitters past. So I let her bark, because that's what she does. She barks. I was reading and baking and sipping and wasn't to be bothered.
This is probably an important time to mention a seemingly unrelated fact, which is that I hate tan lines. More on that in a moment.
But even for Cokie this was sounding a bit extreme, so I forced myself to lift my heavy head and lower my heavy book, and to my surprise there was a man standing there. Creepy. Holding some kind of a hose. Disturbing. More disturbing though was the sudden lack of barking. "This seems backwards," I thought, as I stared up at this hose-wielding stranger who was standing in my backyard -- inside my fenced in backyard -- "Shouldn't Cokie be barking more when the intruder has infiltrated her space?"
"I'm here to spray the stuff." Seriously, dude?
So I got up, tied the loose straps of my bathing suit around my back, and responded in the only way possible, "That's what she said."
Hose Boy had left the gate open. The dog was gone. Some protector she was. I bolted out (another exaggeration. I sort of loped. That dog really does drive me nuts.) to the front yard just in time to catch Cokie's rear end hightailing it around the far side of the next door neighbor's yard. I won't bore you with the details, but chase ensued. I ran, she ran. She ran way faster than me.
Finally I went inside -- Hose Boy was still in the backyard, I'm fairly certain either casing the joint or peeing in our bushes -- and grabbed a leash, some cheese, and a pair of flip flops. When you put flip flops on, you have to look down at what you're doing. You know, to get your toes in there right. When I looked down, I didn't see toes. I saw boobs.
At some point, in the midst of my dog run that spanned several neighbors' yards, my bathing suit top had fallen down. I don't know when. I don't know where. I do know that Hose Boy didn't mention it. Or even seem to notice, which I found oddly insulting.
At the same moment that I decided I would never be able to leave the house again Cokie came meandering into the back yard -- Hose Boy gone, gate still open -- and settled down on the back porch, with a strangely smug "mission accomplished" look on her face.
Stupid dog. Stupid Hose Boy.
I'll explain.
Yesterday morning, I patted myself on the back the whole hour long drive (another exaggeration) to my writers' date. (A new friend of mine from my writing class and I have been meeting every morning to sit and write. I'm flying along and it feels amazing to watch this piece get longer and longer. Not necessarily better and better, or more and more interesting, but for now we'll take long as a victory.)
On the way home I went to the gym.
Once I got home I polished off two projects and delivered them, before deadline, to happy little clients.
So, I thought mid-afternoon, I shall reward myself. I shall put on a bikini and sit in the sun and read my book, with my (parent's) beloved dog by my side. So I did. I even got a giant Diet Coke to take in the backyard with me, just to sweeten the deal.
It was bliss. Idyllic. The very picture of why people live in the suburbs.
For approximately five minutes.
It wasn't the bunnies that distracted her this time. It wasn't the incessant barking of the little shit dog that our neighbors tied to a tree and left outside for, apparently, ever.
It was the TruGreen guy.
Now, when Cokie went absolutely ballistic and started barking at the fence, I probably should have paid attention. The problem is, Cokie is the little dog who barked wolf, and she goes ballistic when the mailman drives by. When anyone drives by. When a butterfly flitters past. When nothing flitters past. So I let her bark, because that's what she does. She barks. I was reading and baking and sipping and wasn't to be bothered.
This is probably an important time to mention a seemingly unrelated fact, which is that I hate tan lines. More on that in a moment.
But even for Cokie this was sounding a bit extreme, so I forced myself to lift my heavy head and lower my heavy book, and to my surprise there was a man standing there. Creepy. Holding some kind of a hose. Disturbing. More disturbing though was the sudden lack of barking. "This seems backwards," I thought, as I stared up at this hose-wielding stranger who was standing in my backyard -- inside my fenced in backyard -- "Shouldn't Cokie be barking more when the intruder has infiltrated her space?"
"I'm here to spray the stuff." Seriously, dude?
So I got up, tied the loose straps of my bathing suit around my back, and responded in the only way possible, "That's what she said."
Hose Boy had left the gate open. The dog was gone. Some protector she was. I bolted out (another exaggeration. I sort of loped. That dog really does drive me nuts.) to the front yard just in time to catch Cokie's rear end hightailing it around the far side of the next door neighbor's yard. I won't bore you with the details, but chase ensued. I ran, she ran. She ran way faster than me.
Finally I went inside -- Hose Boy was still in the backyard, I'm fairly certain either casing the joint or peeing in our bushes -- and grabbed a leash, some cheese, and a pair of flip flops. When you put flip flops on, you have to look down at what you're doing. You know, to get your toes in there right. When I looked down, I didn't see toes. I saw boobs.
At some point, in the midst of my dog run that spanned several neighbors' yards, my bathing suit top had fallen down. I don't know when. I don't know where. I do know that Hose Boy didn't mention it. Or even seem to notice, which I found oddly insulting.
At the same moment that I decided I would never be able to leave the house again Cokie came meandering into the back yard -- Hose Boy gone, gate still open -- and settled down on the back porch, with a strangely smug "mission accomplished" look on her face.
Stupid dog. Stupid Hose Boy.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Year in (Book) Review: A Reliable Wife
Now this is what I meant by creepy in a good way. A Reliable Wife, Robert Goolrick's debut novel, was recommended to me by the reliable Abigail, and she didn't let me down. (She's, well, reliable like that.)
The story revolves around a young woman, an older man, and the intertwining of their lives in ways both plotted and not so much. It's the early 1900s, it's winter -- Wisconsin-style, so, like, seriously winter -- and we know right off the bat that things, both between these two and about each of them individually, are not as they seem.
Goolrick does a wonderful job of bringing these tragically damaged characters to life, and achieving the very difficult task of making them both relatable and empathetic. As is the case with all good suspense stories, there is a melancholy undertone and a sense of foreboding that carries readers through a good chunk of the book; we're left to constantly wait for the proverbial other shoe to drop on one or both of our protagonists. It aims for equal parts harrowing and hopeful. And I think A Reliable Wife succeeds where The Fig Eater failed, by managing to be dark without the heaviness, and stylistic without being tedious. I didn't always love some of his writing choices -- there's a purposeful amount of repetition that got on my nerves every once in a while -- but the story and the characters reel you in and the language stays fluid and forward-pushing.
The twists and turns, while perhaps not entirely surprising, will keep you engaged and will shake up your idea of whom you'd most like to root for -- and against.
The story revolves around a young woman, an older man, and the intertwining of their lives in ways both plotted and not so much. It's the early 1900s, it's winter -- Wisconsin-style, so, like, seriously winter -- and we know right off the bat that things, both between these two and about each of them individually, are not as they seem.
Goolrick does a wonderful job of bringing these tragically damaged characters to life, and achieving the very difficult task of making them both relatable and empathetic. As is the case with all good suspense stories, there is a melancholy undertone and a sense of foreboding that carries readers through a good chunk of the book; we're left to constantly wait for the proverbial other shoe to drop on one or both of our protagonists. It aims for equal parts harrowing and hopeful. And I think A Reliable Wife succeeds where The Fig Eater failed, by managing to be dark without the heaviness, and stylistic without being tedious. I didn't always love some of his writing choices -- there's a purposeful amount of repetition that got on my nerves every once in a while -- but the story and the characters reel you in and the language stays fluid and forward-pushing.
The twists and turns, while perhaps not entirely surprising, will keep you engaged and will shake up your idea of whom you'd most like to root for -- and against.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Friday Night Light
I wish you were here with me now.
I wish you could see what I see.
Green.
Two cats lolling. Shooting me dirty looks when I hit the keys too hard and shake the chair.
The sun still doing its part to keep the sky blue and the clouds white, even as it dips below the treeline and prepares for rest. It's the most magical kind of light, I think. You probably do, too.
I wish you could hear what I hear.
Din.
The nothingness that is really something, really life just outside the city.
Strains of the season's first ice cream truck melody as it turns a corner somewhere nearby, and elicits the muscle memory our faces store from childhood -- perked ears, wide, bright eyes and a perfectly shaped "o" as our mouths suck in the air and let out the sound of happy surprise.
The birds calling to one another, making plans for the holiday weekend ahead. The whippoorwill, flirting with the cardinal, eyeing the sparrow.
Laughter and chatter and people happy to be around one another. Happy to be where they are. Happy to be here.
I wish you could feel what I feel.
At ease.
The peace, the calm, the promise of summer in the air.
Relaxed.
Restless too. Ready for what's next. Another city, another chapter. Another beer.
I wish you could breathe what I breathe.
Freshness.
The air is different here, really. It's crisp and it's perfumed and it makes you want more of it. I could tell you about the flowers that force your head back and your nostrils open, make you pull deeply in so the fragrance enters you physically, except I don't know the names of very many flowers.
Someone's grill, smoky and thick and meaty.
It's just a backyard. There are millions of them. They've all got windchimes and neighbors and porch swings and beer bottles. I like to think that right now, right this minute, they're all warm and cool at the same time. They all hold the secret to good times and good things to come, to summer soaking in and time slowing down. And they're all lit, just like this.
I wish you would want what I want, to be here, with me, now.
I wish you could see what I see.
Green.
Two cats lolling. Shooting me dirty looks when I hit the keys too hard and shake the chair.
The sun still doing its part to keep the sky blue and the clouds white, even as it dips below the treeline and prepares for rest. It's the most magical kind of light, I think. You probably do, too.
I wish you could hear what I hear.
Din.
The nothingness that is really something, really life just outside the city.
Strains of the season's first ice cream truck melody as it turns a corner somewhere nearby, and elicits the muscle memory our faces store from childhood -- perked ears, wide, bright eyes and a perfectly shaped "o" as our mouths suck in the air and let out the sound of happy surprise.
The birds calling to one another, making plans for the holiday weekend ahead. The whippoorwill, flirting with the cardinal, eyeing the sparrow.
Laughter and chatter and people happy to be around one another. Happy to be where they are. Happy to be here.
I wish you could feel what I feel.
At ease.
The peace, the calm, the promise of summer in the air.
Relaxed.
Restless too. Ready for what's next. Another city, another chapter. Another beer.
I wish you could breathe what I breathe.
Freshness.
The air is different here, really. It's crisp and it's perfumed and it makes you want more of it. I could tell you about the flowers that force your head back and your nostrils open, make you pull deeply in so the fragrance enters you physically, except I don't know the names of very many flowers.
Someone's grill, smoky and thick and meaty.
It's just a backyard. There are millions of them. They've all got windchimes and neighbors and porch swings and beer bottles. I like to think that right now, right this minute, they're all warm and cool at the same time. They all hold the secret to good times and good things to come, to summer soaking in and time slowing down. And they're all lit, just like this.
I wish you would want what I want, to be here, with me, now.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Year in (Book) Review: Bridget Jones's Diary
Okay, first things first: everyone must, from this sentence forward, read the rest of this book review in a British accent. It makes everything more fun, and if Renee Zellweger can do it, surely you can too. I will try to sprinkle in a few fun English words like "crikey" and "jolly." Actually I think crikey is Australian, so scratch that one. Anyhoo...
Such high hopes for this one. I picked up the Helen Fielding phenomenon at the library last week (because that's a practical, exemplary and safe low-budget thing to do), thinking to myself that I'd really like to write a funny book that would become a funny movie and cast myself in it and just sit back and watch all my dreams come true. These are the ways I spend my days, for all curious. So I thought, again to myself, that perhaps it would behoove me to pick up a book that I wished I'd written that prompted a movie that I would have liked to be cast in. Enter Bridget, of course.
To preface, I thought this was one of the most perfect movies ever. It was superbly acted, hysterically funny, and made me feel better about my weight obsession, because, as the famous saying goes, weight obsession shared is weight obsession divided. Everyone knows a Bridget, loves her, pities her, exists as her in some small corner of their own life. I bloody well do. It was charming and poignant and exaggeratedly accurate.
And the book was... sort of those things. It's written as a diary (duh) so it's quick to read, full of shortcuts and abbreviations and observations that no one other than Bridget herself would actually say out loud. It's funny, but it doesn't pack the punch that the movie did. After a while, the shtick of the diary concept grows a little weary and what you're left with is a lot of clever turns of phrase and not much by way of an actual story. There's none of the drama of the Jones-Daniel-Darcy love triangle that is really the driving force of the film (although, funnily enough, both Hugh Grant and Colin Firth are mentioned in the book.) Her neuroticism is still sweet and lovable and laughable, but there never seems to be a point to it. Not that I need my grown-up stories to tie neatly together into some clear cut purpose with an Aesop ending, but when I'm several hundred pages in, even if I'm being entertained, I'd like there to be even the most trite of reasons for me to be there, to be reading along. (Ironic, I know, as the author of a blog entitled Note To Self which covers absolutely nothing of any significance, hardly ever. I'm working on it. And I'm not asking you to pay for it, either. Although this was a library book so technically I didn't pay for this book. Shit, and now I'm off point. I mean bollocks, now I'm off point.)
So, read it if you need something to make you laugh and not think at all and plan on zoning out for several paragraphs or pages at a time but want to still understand what's going on. Great beach book. Train book. Starts out strong, fizzles a bit, but if you love Bridget like I do, darlings, you'll be happy just to spend a little more time with her.
Such high hopes for this one. I picked up the Helen Fielding phenomenon at the library last week (because that's a practical, exemplary and safe low-budget thing to do), thinking to myself that I'd really like to write a funny book that would become a funny movie and cast myself in it and just sit back and watch all my dreams come true. These are the ways I spend my days, for all curious. So I thought, again to myself, that perhaps it would behoove me to pick up a book that I wished I'd written that prompted a movie that I would have liked to be cast in. Enter Bridget, of course.
To preface, I thought this was one of the most perfect movies ever. It was superbly acted, hysterically funny, and made me feel better about my weight obsession, because, as the famous saying goes, weight obsession shared is weight obsession divided. Everyone knows a Bridget, loves her, pities her, exists as her in some small corner of their own life. I bloody well do. It was charming and poignant and exaggeratedly accurate.
And the book was... sort of those things. It's written as a diary (duh) so it's quick to read, full of shortcuts and abbreviations and observations that no one other than Bridget herself would actually say out loud. It's funny, but it doesn't pack the punch that the movie did. After a while, the shtick of the diary concept grows a little weary and what you're left with is a lot of clever turns of phrase and not much by way of an actual story. There's none of the drama of the Jones-Daniel-Darcy love triangle that is really the driving force of the film (although, funnily enough, both Hugh Grant and Colin Firth are mentioned in the book.) Her neuroticism is still sweet and lovable and laughable, but there never seems to be a point to it. Not that I need my grown-up stories to tie neatly together into some clear cut purpose with an Aesop ending, but when I'm several hundred pages in, even if I'm being entertained, I'd like there to be even the most trite of reasons for me to be there, to be reading along. (Ironic, I know, as the author of a blog entitled Note To Self which covers absolutely nothing of any significance, hardly ever. I'm working on it. And I'm not asking you to pay for it, either. Although this was a library book so technically I didn't pay for this book. Shit, and now I'm off point. I mean bollocks, now I'm off point.)
So, read it if you need something to make you laugh and not think at all and plan on zoning out for several paragraphs or pages at a time but want to still understand what's going on. Great beach book. Train book. Starts out strong, fizzles a bit, but if you love Bridget like I do, darlings, you'll be happy just to spend a little more time with her.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Year in (Book) Review:The Fig Eater
I finished this book a few weeks ago, and have been stalling all this time on writing the review. Even for a master procrastinator like me, that's a long time. And I finally figured out why: I just didn't like it that much, and revisiting it didn't sound fun.
The concept of The Fig Eater and of the author's inspiration behind writing it were really what grabbed my attention. I'm taking a writing class right now and so I'm really attuned to prompts and observations and happenings in the world, big and small, that could spark an idea for a story. Somehow (she doesn't explain) the author learned about an old Sigmund Freud case, widely acknowledged as one of the doctor's most resounding failures, and became intrigued by the teenage subject. His patient was a young woman he dubbed Dora; Freud analyzed and diagnosed her with hysteria in her late teens. Ms. Shields explains that she was fascinated by the little tidbits of information available on the case and the sordid stories surrounding the girl, and let her imagination form the early 20th century Viennese world in which she lived. And, in the case of the novel she loosely ties to the story, died. In fact, the character of Dora never actually appears alive in the story; instead, the author tells the stories of those who knew her and those who are exploring the strange circumstances around her death. (All made up by the author.)
Shields is an artist and editor by trade; this was her first novel. It had a really interesting style to it, but in the end I just couldn't enjoy it. Or in the beginning. Suspense and mystery books are fun when there's an underlying, almost tangible feeling of... well, suspense. As a reader, you're waiting for something ominous to happen, and if a writer is doing their job well you turn each page expecting and anticipating something bad or scary or jaw-dropping to happen. I gave Shields the benefit of the doubt through the first fifty or so pages, but after awhile I started to fear that the suspense was never really going to build, and nothing shocking was ever really going to happen. I was right. She creates a dark, kind of bleakly melancholy feel, but not a good kind. I'm not sure what a good kind of bleak melancholy would feel like, but I trust that it exists. Just not here.
Lots of potential, little delivery. Started off slowly, fizzled slowly, died slowly.
The concept of The Fig Eater and of the author's inspiration behind writing it were really what grabbed my attention. I'm taking a writing class right now and so I'm really attuned to prompts and observations and happenings in the world, big and small, that could spark an idea for a story. Somehow (she doesn't explain) the author learned about an old Sigmund Freud case, widely acknowledged as one of the doctor's most resounding failures, and became intrigued by the teenage subject. His patient was a young woman he dubbed Dora; Freud analyzed and diagnosed her with hysteria in her late teens. Ms. Shields explains that she was fascinated by the little tidbits of information available on the case and the sordid stories surrounding the girl, and let her imagination form the early 20th century Viennese world in which she lived. And, in the case of the novel she loosely ties to the story, died. In fact, the character of Dora never actually appears alive in the story; instead, the author tells the stories of those who knew her and those who are exploring the strange circumstances around her death. (All made up by the author.)
Shields is an artist and editor by trade; this was her first novel. It had a really interesting style to it, but in the end I just couldn't enjoy it. Or in the beginning. Suspense and mystery books are fun when there's an underlying, almost tangible feeling of... well, suspense. As a reader, you're waiting for something ominous to happen, and if a writer is doing their job well you turn each page expecting and anticipating something bad or scary or jaw-dropping to happen. I gave Shields the benefit of the doubt through the first fifty or so pages, but after awhile I started to fear that the suspense was never really going to build, and nothing shocking was ever really going to happen. I was right. She creates a dark, kind of bleakly melancholy feel, but not a good kind. I'm not sure what a good kind of bleak melancholy would feel like, but I trust that it exists. Just not here.
Lots of potential, little delivery. Started off slowly, fizzled slowly, died slowly.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
I Miss The Rats.
All of New York's animal kingdom, really.
They seemed to be, at least for the most part, self-sufficient. There are the apartment mice that don't care for being rained on who will finagle their way indoors -- in one instance, into my closet door -- on less than pleasant days. Of course there are the Madison Square Park squirrels that will literally walk up and tap you on the shoulder, should you happen to be enjoying your Shake Shack burger on an afternoon when they've not yet lunched. And the pigeons. Don't even get me started on the pigeons.
But still, city critters are more or less on their own. I don't go out of my way to step on them or anything, but I don't feel any obligation to look after them. I certainly don't feel obligated to let one of them live in my closet.
Here, however, it's a different story. Things just appear furrier and snugglier and more in need of a sympathetic sucker here.
Late last night, I pulled out of my sister's driveway in the lovely burg of Lebanon, and cranked up the country for the 35 minute drive home. I got about 18 seconds into that drive when I had to screech on the brakes to avoid hitting the wild street gang of (I'm guesstimating) eight week old kittens. Smack in the middle of the road. On a very cold night -- we'd just moments ago listened to the local weather buffoon talk about taking care of your plants because of the frost warning. He mentioned nothing about small wayward cats, but weighing in at around an ounce a piece I was guessing they weren't going to fare any better than someone's petunias could.
So I called my sister, who reminded me that she just recently had to get rid of her beloved cat, because of the new baby. So I called my mom, who refused to answer her phone, but I'm guessing would have reminded me that she is already tending to my darling cat, has been for years now, and that asking her to house three more for a night would be, as we say in this neck of the woods, "pushing my luck." But I wasn't leaving them there. No way. Too cute and tiny and shivery; besides, one of them had already climbed up the back of my sweater and burrowed, claws first, into the warmth of my bra strap. I was hooked. (Sorry.)
Into the back of dad's car they went -- more specifically, into Cokie's dog crate. She would not be thrilled or particularly hospitable about it, I knew, but I was more worried about my allergy-ridden stepmother's reaction. Can you bring a litter of kittens home undetected? Not when you walk in the front door and immediately burst into tears, begging for compassion and forgiveness at your weak, animal-loving heart. They got kitten kibbles, some water, and spent a generally cozy night curled up together inside a dog's crate. I only went out to the garage two times to check on them. Okay, three. One per cat.
This morning dad was even kind enough to drive all the way back down to Lebanon with me to drop them off at the Humane Society, where I am certain (or certainly telling myself) that their distraught owners -- probably a pig-tailed and freckle-faced little girl and her gruff-yet-gentle farmer father -- will come to claim them amidst tears of joy and relief and gratitude. I bet they even give the little girl a lollipop. Heck, maybe even the farmer.
Home again, smiling happily at the mere thought of the child-kitten reunion about to take place. Just in time for the bunnies.
My parents have an eight year old Welsh Springer Spaniel whom I am sure will make countless future posts, for her overall cuteness and total lack of self control. Her name is Cokie, she is beautiful and smart and certifiably nuts. So much so that there's nothing unusual about her barking madly at the back door, even when there's nothing out there. We'll open the screen, watch her go tearing down the steps and out to the fence, and we'll laugh that she doesn't even seem to have the sense to be embarrassed at creating such a ruckus over something invented in her little dog brain.
Except for when it's real. Like, for instance, a real nest of five baby rabbits. As soon as we saw the mommy shoot across the backyard and Cokie NOT chase her, dad was out there in a flash. Cokie flashed just a bit faster and one of the little day-old runts is happily hopping through bunny heaven. I had to stay inside because the entire massacre was too much to take and, while he didn't come out and say it, I think dad was worried about having to pay my out-of-pocket therapy bills. The squeaking -- oh God, the squeaking -- will haunt me. The survivors got shoveled up and redeposited safely outside the fence, while momma watched from the neighbor's yard. Now I can't get anything done because I'm just staring out the window and waiting for her to come back.
You win some, you lose some in this rough life. But there's never a dull moment out here, protecting the Midwestern landscape from dangerous predators like Honda Pilots and maniacal dogs. It's exhausting. I feel like a pioneer.
They seemed to be, at least for the most part, self-sufficient. There are the apartment mice that don't care for being rained on who will finagle their way indoors -- in one instance, into my closet door -- on less than pleasant days. Of course there are the Madison Square Park squirrels that will literally walk up and tap you on the shoulder, should you happen to be enjoying your Shake Shack burger on an afternoon when they've not yet lunched. And the pigeons. Don't even get me started on the pigeons.
But still, city critters are more or less on their own. I don't go out of my way to step on them or anything, but I don't feel any obligation to look after them. I certainly don't feel obligated to let one of them live in my closet.
Here, however, it's a different story. Things just appear furrier and snugglier and more in need of a sympathetic sucker here.
Late last night, I pulled out of my sister's driveway in the lovely burg of Lebanon, and cranked up the country for the 35 minute drive home. I got about 18 seconds into that drive when I had to screech on the brakes to avoid hitting the wild street gang of (I'm guesstimating) eight week old kittens. Smack in the middle of the road. On a very cold night -- we'd just moments ago listened to the local weather buffoon talk about taking care of your plants because of the frost warning. He mentioned nothing about small wayward cats, but weighing in at around an ounce a piece I was guessing they weren't going to fare any better than someone's petunias could.
So I called my sister, who reminded me that she just recently had to get rid of her beloved cat, because of the new baby. So I called my mom, who refused to answer her phone, but I'm guessing would have reminded me that she is already tending to my darling cat, has been for years now, and that asking her to house three more for a night would be, as we say in this neck of the woods, "pushing my luck." But I wasn't leaving them there. No way. Too cute and tiny and shivery; besides, one of them had already climbed up the back of my sweater and burrowed, claws first, into the warmth of my bra strap. I was hooked. (Sorry.)
Into the back of dad's car they went -- more specifically, into Cokie's dog crate. She would not be thrilled or particularly hospitable about it, I knew, but I was more worried about my allergy-ridden stepmother's reaction. Can you bring a litter of kittens home undetected? Not when you walk in the front door and immediately burst into tears, begging for compassion and forgiveness at your weak, animal-loving heart. They got kitten kibbles, some water, and spent a generally cozy night curled up together inside a dog's crate. I only went out to the garage two times to check on them. Okay, three. One per cat.
This morning dad was even kind enough to drive all the way back down to Lebanon with me to drop them off at the Humane Society, where I am certain (or certainly telling myself) that their distraught owners -- probably a pig-tailed and freckle-faced little girl and her gruff-yet-gentle farmer father -- will come to claim them amidst tears of joy and relief and gratitude. I bet they even give the little girl a lollipop. Heck, maybe even the farmer.
Home again, smiling happily at the mere thought of the child-kitten reunion about to take place. Just in time for the bunnies.
My parents have an eight year old Welsh Springer Spaniel whom I am sure will make countless future posts, for her overall cuteness and total lack of self control. Her name is Cokie, she is beautiful and smart and certifiably nuts. So much so that there's nothing unusual about her barking madly at the back door, even when there's nothing out there. We'll open the screen, watch her go tearing down the steps and out to the fence, and we'll laugh that she doesn't even seem to have the sense to be embarrassed at creating such a ruckus over something invented in her little dog brain.
Except for when it's real. Like, for instance, a real nest of five baby rabbits. As soon as we saw the mommy shoot across the backyard and Cokie NOT chase her, dad was out there in a flash. Cokie flashed just a bit faster and one of the little day-old runts is happily hopping through bunny heaven. I had to stay inside because the entire massacre was too much to take and, while he didn't come out and say it, I think dad was worried about having to pay my out-of-pocket therapy bills. The squeaking -- oh God, the squeaking -- will haunt me. The survivors got shoveled up and redeposited safely outside the fence, while momma watched from the neighbor's yard. Now I can't get anything done because I'm just staring out the window and waiting for her to come back.
You win some, you lose some in this rough life. But there's never a dull moment out here, protecting the Midwestern landscape from dangerous predators like Honda Pilots and maniacal dogs. It's exhausting. I feel like a pioneer.
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