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.

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.

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.

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.

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.