There are more pretty Parisian remembrances, for another day when I’m not buried in a pile of missed mail and shredded toilet paper (from the Step Cats displays of displeasure at not being taken along) but for now, the plane reading:
To: Everything Is Going to Be Great, Rachel Shukert. It’s not often you feel the narrative arc of the protagonist grow from unlikeable to otherwise, when the author IS the protagonist, so thumbs up. (Book #22)
Fro: Most Talkative, Andy Cohen. I don’t watch the Housewives sagii, and I didn’t realize what kind of career he had prior, so it stands to reason I was more taken with everything B.H. (Before Housewives.) Companionable and fun. (Book #23)
I think clicky books make them go too fast. No atmospheric drag from page turning, maybe?
I stalled out three pages into Kavalier and Clay. I will give it another chance, probably, I am just coming to terms with the fact that I will never be as interested in fake people as real ones. I think this makes me not crazy.
So the realist’s happy compromise is reading true-talk from people famous for writing fantasy. Manhood for Amateurs was fine, at points poignant. Most especially:
The confirmed stick-in-the-mud will always fall victim to the interventions of other people acting on impulse, because if habit is his religion, then his Satan is change, and in the end, we are all prey to temptation.
And musing on the shrinking landscape for childhood adventure on the creation of future artists with wild imaginations is sad. It’s an argument for being an open-door parent*. Until I was 10, I could go as far as the stop sign at Route 44 when I was at Nancy and Frank’s, and this seems like boundary enough.
But though I see photos of San Francisco and remember the hills and hidden parks and houses wistfully, this book reminds me it’s best in photos. The “Berkeley” in it is thick and sticky like a movie theater floor.
In any event, taking a trip into man-mind is amusing for a couple of days (Book #20**), if only for the Legos.
*I also toy with letting the cats out when I’m not supervised. What’s the worst that could happen? They’re like 1940s sanitarium kids locked up in here.
**Book #21 was chick-lit, checked out on impulse.
Sara Benincasa, Agorafabulous! (Book #19)
I just started it, but I’m in. It continues the memoir trend, but sharp writing doesn’t necessarily need a fantasy plot to go with it, does it? (I have that Gadfly book on my list next for that.)
Troublingly, can we talk about how, by the end of Whateverland (A bizarre self-help confessional, good for a plane ride if you’re curious) I had come to the creeping realization that I have many of Martha Stewart’s daughter’s eccentricities, but that I am apparently accomplishing the heroic act of not indulging them.
YES, living with me could be MUCH worse. This is me, trying.
It’s not self help, it’s not a memoir, it’s…first-person advice as given by someone famous. “Do as I did, because why not? It worked out for me.” I’m in the middle of a streak of ‘em. Books #16 and #17, Kevin Smith and Mindy Kaling, are this genre, but sort of anti-hero adages?
They’re more similar than you’d think.
The problem with being a fan, is that if you know the canon, you know the canon. There wasn’t much in the Kevin Smith I didn’t know at least mostly. But I dig him, and it’s still nice to hang with him for a while.
“Video games scare me because they all seem to simulate situations I’d hate to be in, like war or stealing cars.”
Kaling’s was enjoyable, I read the whole thing on trains on Saturday, and Mel was right — I sped-clicked the weird last chapter, and felt okay about it. It was also inspirational. Write stuff, create stuff with your friends, because you never know. Huh. That’s almost the Smith Doctrine too. See? Companion reads, book club meeting over.
I’ve moved on to… I don’t even KNOW what this is. Whateverland by Martha Stewart’s daughter. Same genre, more bananas.
If nothing else, the streak confirms — I love people. On paper.
Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins.
I finished the Hunger Games trilogy today, adding Books # 12, 13, and 14 to the Challenge. The first book is legitimately stunning, and won’t let you go until you get to the last page. It’s enough to propel you through the rest. The plot momentum, the stakes of the whole series, the graphic gore, the political message… it’s amazing throughout, but the first book is all of that, in concentrate.
The hype isn’t misplaced. Creating a page-turner is a feat. Creating one with a lesson is impressive. Creating both and aiming it toward young adults? Pretty genius.
I don’t know that I would have liked it when it was demographically appropriate for me. It’s dark. And I don’t know that the message of war, peace, power, politics, trust, and survival would have really meant as much without the perspective of having lived, but hey. They make you read Siddhartha sophomore year, and that doesn’t mean much ‘til you’re older either.
For depth, for a complex female protagonist — the hype might feel the same, but this series is no Twilight.
Wonka lied. All you had to do was follow him and you’d be “in a world of pure imagination”? Apologies to the snozz berries, but we don’t all come equipped.
I don’t think I have any. None imaginations.
I am kind of creative — but that’s different from having imagination. I can come up with nonsense — but oh looky, science says that just makes you a liar.
Not only do naturally creative people cheat more than uncreative people, subjects cajoled into thinking outside of the box become cheaters, too. This suggests that the creative process isn’t just tied to dishonest behavior; it actually enables it.
Well, sure. If you can come up with a scheme, should it just go to waste? Let’s be reasonable.
What I cannot do, the imagining bit, is picture stuff. Sports radio might as well be in another language, I cannot make a scene in my head out of those words to save my life, and it’s not just because sports, BORING, I just can’t do it. I can’t read a fight scene and make sense of it either. My eyes blur and who hit who what now? That happened in The Hunger Games yesterday. (Book #12, finished in a day because who could put it down? Now on to the second in the series which seems to have a sophomore slump and too much romantical stuff, but.. I’m still in.)
The point is, Wonka better show me the money, or I’m sunk. No imagination.
And if science is right, he probably would have dumped me down the shoot with the bad eggs.
Saturdays are for recharging. Not resting, but rejuicing your culture-delivery devices and loading them with new stuff. It probably used to be called “Going to the library* and the record store,” but my way doesn’t need pants.
(Oh, PS — I finished #10, Five Men Who Broke My Heart last night. What month is this? I might make 50 this year…?)
I am allowed five clickies at a time. Which means, I have two weeks to read all of these:
The Devil in the Kitchen, Marco Pierre White
Backstage with Julia [Child], Nancy Verde Barr
Cooking for Kings, Ian Kelly (About the first “celebrity” chef. I am counting this as “History.”)
And just when I was going for the fiction button, my finger slipped and landed on travel.
At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig, John Gimlette (somehow 500 pages on travels through Paraguay.)
Fugitives and Refugees, Chuck Palahniuk (a walk through Portland, Oregon.) (Given the author, we will count as fiction.)
So there’s 11-15. Plus, courtesy of my Christmas Barnes & Noble gift card:
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? Mindy Kaling
Everything Is Going to Be Great, Rachel Shukurt
Letters From Backstage, Michael Kostroff
Whateverland, Alexis Stewart.
Aaand I think due to my bad [?] habit of pre-ordering books and forgetting I think a couple of them just dropped (Kevin Smith, Kambri Crews) and well, I might have to just quit life and sit here and read.
Speaking of Kambri, I’m halfway through the episode of “What’s My Name” featuring her — fascinating — AND Keith and the Girl (who are the reason I call my iPod, “My Friends” because they “live” in there and keep me company) celebrated their SEVENTH year podcasting this week.
That was the first piece of news from the outside world I got when I was done with Basic. “Keith and Chemda have been broken up for a year!” I’m very invested, t-shirt and all. (And currently downloading Keith’s “Happy to Serve You” CD.)
So. Incorrigible consumer of words, page and pod. It might look a little different from going to the mall on a Saturday and spending $2.50 of your allowance on this month’s Baby-sitters Club, but it really is just as good.
*Of course, all hail the library. I use it (the Army has a pretty slick one with clicky books) I just don’t go.) I’m contributing to the decline of civilization, aren’t I.
I know, I just got my own reading/glass/water/beach, but that doesn’t mean I won’t dive into Mel’s Dickensian* Vicariousity.
Honestly, the yellows, the sun, I’m drinking this in through my eyes and vacationing on the inside.
And reading. The Byrds know this — maybe from that Bible story — but sometimes you write, and sometimes you just think and look around and read. Crops and fallow. To everything, Turn 3x. (Don’t tell Chris Brown.)
I’m in the quiet consumption ebb.
And I think I have Illuminated on my clicky book, too. (I get it confused with Extremely Loud and Staggering Genius and clearly I need to straighten out my Important Contemporary Fiction drawer)
Maybe I’ll consume this one next.
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
I wouldn’t necessarily suggest this as a beach read but I found myself on the beach, champagne in hand (best vacation ever) laughing out loud at Alex’s English mistranslations and tearing up just a bit near the end with the story of Hirschel.
*Great Expectations, “Mrs. Joe went to church vicariously this year; that is to say Joe and I went.” I am Mrs. Joe.
For making it to the end of Monday, is climbing into bed before 8 to finish book #10.
Okay, to clicky through a dozenish pages before eyes slam shut.
Still a win.
Through nothing other than that aberration of vacation, I’m in the lead in the book challenge. (It will be short-lived, I’m sure.)
For my reward, a link to photos of our college production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia in 1998. And it is quite a prize.
I wasn’t in this play. I did something backstage, a job I can’t remember now. What I do remember is that I desperately wanted to play Thomasina, the millionth attempt in two to somehow, someway, be the ingenue.
And the million and one-th time I wasn’t. I have never been. Never the romantic lead, never the one with the dreamy costumes and passionate scenes, and never…that girl.
This production was in the last season of my “career.” I have well and fully retired from the need to be on stage, a need that ended up paying for college while ironically keeping me behind the scenes. Never the ingenue, never the character, and never really needed.
Arcadia. “The phrase translates as ‘and in Arcadia I am’, frequently rendered as ‘I [Death] too am in Arcadia’ or “Even in Arcadia I [Death] am’…a theme of the play, which falls under the category of chaos, is the irreversibility of time.”
But add in that time, that perspective, and it becomes quite clear. While being the ingenue is marvelous at the time, no one stays that. If it’s something you have, it’s something you will absolutely, inevitably lose. Time is irreversible. And youth don’t keep.
And in the wise words, “Actually, I think it’s better when you don’t know what you’re missing.”
Stiff Competition
25books2012:
Holy moly, people are stepping up their 25 Book Challenge game this year. Ranked:
- Zoe, I’m looking at you. Nine books already? Shit. Claim your reward.
- Abby revealed her competitive reading nature over dinner this weekend and I fully expect to be left in the dust once she’s in the…
