Snow and Strippers

Snowbound for days, you would reasonably assume that I did nothing but read pile after pile of books, gleefully thankful that my mini-van was undriveable, work unaccessible, and the outside world an unreachable, distant memory. Not so much.

During my houseboundness, I spent way too much time napping, a solid amount of hours watching DVDs (season 4 of LOST) and only a limited number of minutes churning through the tower of books that threatens to fall from my bedside table and crush me in the wee hours of the night before Frida has a chance to wake me up for her ass-crack-of-dawn pee.

When I wasn't sleeping or watching Matthew Fox (!!!), I read one highly recommendable work of fiction, The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III. A few years back, I risked alienating some of you by enthusiastically promoting Dubus's novel House of Sand and Fog, a book which, apparently, has the ability to really piss a lot of people off and provoke arguments among otherwise peaceable friends.

Good news! The Garden of Last Days threatens to do the exact same thing, and I know most of you will read it anyway. Like House of Sand and Fog, Dubus's new novel revolves around a circle of loosely connected characters whose fates intertwine by chance. Just as in the earlier novel, readers will love and hate these people, peeking through their fingers to watch as they repeatedly take steps to insure that their lives will be hopelessly screwed up. Yet even as we watch their lives devolve in a series of bad decisions, their stories are impossible to abandon.

The action takes place in Florida, in the three days preceding the 9/11/2001 attacks. A single mother struggling to save for a home and stuck without her usual babysitter must bring her three-year-old daughter to work with her at The Puma Club for Men, arranging for another of the dancers to watch her daughter. At the club that night is Bassam, a Muslim man preparing to sacrifice his life for his religion. Also in the audience is AJ, a young father whose wife has recently kicked him out of the house. The unlikely confluence of these individuals at this place on this night makes for an unforgettable, gripping read.

It's unlikely that many readers would expect to sympathize with a stripper, a wife-beater, and a 9/11 conspirator, and yet Dubus so completely realizes these characters' lives, their hopes, dreams, doubts, and passions, that it is impossible not to understand what motivates them and moves them to live as they do. Certain to inspire much discussion and thought, this is one of the most powerful novels I've read.

Yes, Indeed

It's a common misconception about librarians that we are hyper-organized, and while it's true that I organize my clothes by color (that's just practical!), I don't think of myself as being omniorganized. The best thing about getting older is the realization that there are some things that you can organize and some things that you either can't control, or that aren't worth it or would be spoiled by the effort.

If, for example, you have to move an 8-person hot tub to your house (insert smiley face here), it doesn't work to show up and figure it out as you go. You have to prepare: rent a huge flatbed, recruit a posse of manly-men who'd probably rather be doing just about anything else on a rainy Saturday afternoon, arrange a time and place to meet, and prepare some sort of grati-snack to thank them.

On the other hand, if you're cleaning out your closet and you find some dress shirts that your ex-boyfriend left behind to be mended while he was off cheating on you, it's best not to waste time enumerating the pros and cons of returning them versus donating them to the Goodwill or using them to clean up dog doo in the garage, but to just go ahead and slice the arms off with a sharp scissors. It's very satisfying, and if you sew up the bottoms of the sleeves, they make neat little wine bottle bags.

In Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up, Patricia Ryan Madson advocates the sleeve-slicing approach to life--not violence and vengeance, but spontaneous acts of thinking-on-your-feet that prohibit the blocks that arise when we try too hard to arrange the little pieces of our lives too carefully. I read Madson's book recently as a part of my training in improvisational theater and realized her ideas are applicable anywhere, not just on stage.

Throughout this short book, Madson offers numerous examples and strategies for adopting a more improvisational attitude to life. Showing up, paying attention, giving yourself permission to be average, and taking care of others are among the improvisational maxims that she introduces and promotes. My favorite is "make mistakes" since I'm already pretty good at it. "99.9 percent of the time, a mistake is just an unanticipated outcome giving us information. While we may bemoan a blunder, the real question to ask afterward is not, 'How on earth did I do that?' but rather, 'What comes next? What can I make of this?'" I can't think of a happier way to respond.

People often think that improv is about being funny, and while it often ends up being hilarious, the goal of improvisational actors is not to get laughs, but to think fast, forget inhibitions, support others, and most of all, to say yes to what is offered, whether it's on stage, at work, or in our personal lives. "Say yes to everything," Madson writes. "Saying yes is an act of courage and optimism. Accept all offers...when the answer to all questions is yes, you enter a new world, a world of action, possibility, and adventure...Humans long to connect," she writes. "Yes glues us together." And so do hot tubs! Come on over!

Commando in the Reading Room

As I mentioned a couple of blogs ago, I recently celebrated the anniversary of my birth, and with it, the expiration of a drivers' license that still had me living on H Street. You know, at my ex-husband's house.
I work in a library. I own hundreds of books. And yet on the one occasion when I most needed reading material, I forgot to bring any. That's right, ladies and gentlemen: I went to the DMV without a book. If you've ever been there, you know just how dire this situation was. However, you also know that once you've arrived and plucked your ticket from the Take-A-Number machine, there is no turning back. Because the only thing worse than going to the DMV is going to the DMV again.

With a 20-25 minute wait ahead of me, a hard plastic seat under me, and 10 days of driving on an expired license behind me, I was trapped in the austere hell that is the Department of Motor Vehicles. There is nothing to do there except text-message your friends (mine were all at work), read the imminent-death-warning posters on the walls (hydroplaning! sleepiness! unsecured loads!), and judge the clothes/children/mental health (hideous! stupid! bipolar!) of the other unfortunates around you.

If you've ever sat next to me in the theater or at a faculty meeting, you know that I have some "issues" with sitting still; i.e. I find it virtually impossible. I don't do "calm." It's one of the reasons I didn't love being a TV writer--even though I was sitting at table with brilliant, funny, naughty people, I was SITTING AT A TABLE for six or seven hours a day. It was my own little Guantanamo. I'm not trying to one-up anyone on the whole shitty-day-at-the-DMV scenario. I just want to offer some backstory to explain what happened next.

Before I approached the counter where the crabby woman (they're all crabby, but, ok, I get it) yelled at me for reading the wrong line on the eye test and then told me that the address of my brand new home does not exist, I did this: I got up. I took a look around in desperation. And then I did it. I took a Driver Guide from the pile and returned to my butt-numbing plastic chair. And I read The Guide. Page. By. Tedious. Page.

Unless you are insomniac or 15 1/2, I don't recommend this. It's as boring as reading the instruction manual for your new dishwasher, only a thousand times more boringer. Also, it will scare the crap out of you (39,000 bicyclists die annually! cough medicine can impair your thinking! there is no Patron Saint of Subarus!)

However, if you started driving 25 years ago, like some people I know, it is refreshing to learn of the changes in road law that have occurred since th 80s. For example, there is now a phenomenon called "graduated licensing." It involves a complex series of ages, times, dates, and familial relations intended to prevent today's 16 year olds from driving a carload of their friends to a kegger off Chuckanut Drive in the family's Pinto station wagon. For example.

Also, modern inventions such as text-messaging and roundabouts make an appearance. Apparently, you're not supposed to look at a teeny-tiny keyboard and type with your thumbs while operating a motor vehicle. Whatever. The old regulations are still there--the stuff about yielding to pedestrians and checking your blind spot and not letting your three-year-old grandson drive your car (see photo)--so it's still the same old fun-crushing crapload of rules. But it got me through 20 minutes. And it might do the same for you.

On the bright side, according to my driver's license, I now weigh 125 again.

I Was Told There Would Be No Math

A friend asked me recently how many hours a week I spend reading--this after a visit to my upstairs bathroom/library--and I approximated that I read about 10 hours a week. Afterward, I realized that I might have exaggerated--10 hours is over an hour a day--but then I thought about a typical day's reading: twenty minutes in the morning while I drink coffee and procrastinate about exercising; 20-30 minutes at work; and then I fall asleep each night after 20-30 minutes of bedtime reading.

Of the time I spend reading, about two-thirds is devoted to non-fiction, which is a dramatic reversal from just 10 years ago, when I read fiction almost exclusively. I credit the change to the rise in popularity and quality of memoirs, as well as the range of fascinating topics being approached by entertaining, funny writers like Sarah Vowell, Mary Roach, and Malcom Gladwell.

I still read fiction,of course, although I try to avoid the bestsellers since one of my purposes as a reader is to discover, read, and recommend books that others (especially my students) might not find or hear about on their own. Hence my excuse for not reading most of the Harry Potters or any of the Twilight books.

Anita Shreve is pretty well known, since her books have been picked by Oprah and made into movies. Nevertheless, she also writes about my favorite topics: disappearances and scandal! And her new novel, Testimony, is no exception. At an elite private boarding school, a scandal erupts when a videotape surfaces of a group of students having sex in a campus dorm room.

As the story of the night on tape unfolds, it becomes clear that there is more to the events in question than a group of drunk teenagers with access to a video camera. Told from the various perspectives of characters involved in or affected by the events in question, this story is gripping and highly readable, even as it is disturbing--not just because of what the teens themselves did, but because of how the adults in their lives are culpable for what they did and what happened afterward.

Fast-paced fiction of the kind Shreve is known for (The Pilot's Wife, The Last Time They Met, Eden Close) appeals to me not just for the escapist, entertaining value of it, but because contemporary fiction like Testimony keeps us in touch with the cultural zeitgeist. (And yes, I wrote that so I could use the word zeitgeist.) I think that's worth a few minutes a day.

Oh! Haveth Ye a Happy Day

I was born on Thanksgiving Day just over twenty years ago, and so the holiday has always been my favorite, despite the inevitable awkwardness of partisan politics and the looming fright of my mother’s jello mold salad. Although I don’t read much about history, I make an exception for books about the Pilgrims, turkey, and sea-tossed religious persecuties making their way to a new life. Also, how cool is it that the Massacusetts pilgrims designed a state seal with a naked guy on it?!?!

This year’s Birthday Book is Sarah Vowell's newest work of historical humor, The Wordy Shipmates, her personalized investigation into the lives, government, and bickering of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans, in particular John Winthrop, Roger Williams, and Anne Hutchinson. Before you nod off, remember this isn't any old history writer we're talking about here--it's Sarah Vowell, who time and again accomplishes the admirable Readability Trifecta of Smart/Funny/Unforgettable.

Vowell, an avowed “history geek,” has written previously about presidential assassination (Assassination Vacation) and myriad other topics of (mostly) American history (The Partly Cloudy Patriot). As in her previous works, the strength of The Wordy Shipmates is in her ability to find personal connections between those long gone and her own life and to comment on the past through the skeptical and witty lens of the present. She also has a knack for weaving in historical details that most of us would never encounter, unless we, too, spent hours combing through primary documents, and discovered events like The Great Molasses Flood of 1919.

Perhaps the best thing Vowell does for history in The Wordy Shipmates is humanize the lives and words of forebearers we might otherwise recall only in passing, as the part of Early U.S. History 101 where the cranky people with all the rules spoiled the fun for their neighbors. The Puritans were much more literary and intellectual than most of realize, and their ideas are worthy of our reconsideration. Delicious food for thought!

The Book I Was Going to Review

My friend Cameron and I recently began the Hundred Push-Up Challenge (a 6-week program that gradually increases your push-up max to one hundred consecutive p-u's) so I thought it would be interesting to read more about push-ups. Surprisingly, there is actually a book about push-ups, and sadly, I spent almost $20 and three hours on it.

When I began writing this blog, my intent was to review books that I recommend for other people, you know to enrich the lives of all who know me, blah blah blah. It was not my plan to read and review books that suck eggs.


However, after having wasted my time and money on this book, I think it's worth writing about just to clarify my criteria for recommendations: that is, what makes a book so good you want to cradle it in your arms everywhere you go, and what makes a book so bad you want to scoop it and chuck it like a dog turd into the yard of those neighbors who are always running their leaf blower while you're trying to take a nap?

Books Like Turds
I was intrigued by Ted Krup's book because hey! another exercise guru with something to teach me. I thought maybe his narrative would offer some suggestions about improving my push-up workouts, varying my technique, and how to maximize the effect of push-ups on my other sporting endeavors. But no. Krup's book is entirely about his personal exercise program, which consists entirely of doing push-ups: ONE THOUSAND A DAY EVERY DAY. As impressive as this, it's also ridiculous to advocate that anyone interrupt their life 10 times a day so they can do 100 push-ups. When would they have time for beer connaisseurship and dog training?

Using way more exclamation points than are necessary, Krup touts the benefits of push-ups, including awesome arms and shoulders, a tighter core, efficiency and affordability, weight management, and low risk of injury. He also claims they are "fun" and "addictive." Um, ok. But even though he creates an enthusiastic and positive case for his personal workout, he fails to acknowledge that most people don't follow this same regimen because a) they're not crazy and b) most of us actually enjoy, say, working out with friends, competing in races, and doing exercises that don't require us to lay on the floor with our faces six inches from whatever the dog brought in on her feet (shown here totally owning my reading chair).

Krup provides personalization--his own story--but doesn't offer any other examples of people who've attempted and enjoyed his program. Anecdotes connect readers to content, provide motivation, and help them see thewriter as a likeable person who is not just totally obsessed with his own wonderfulness. Even though I am convinced that Krup is a fit individual, and that this program enriches his life, and that push-ups are an awesome work out, he fails to provide any solid research or documentation, and the result is that he comes across as unpolished, under-informed, and self-obsessed. There. I got that off my chest. I'm going back to the other book I was reading, the one that doesn't suck.

Not That There's Anything Wrong With That

Among my responsibilities here at the high school (besides inspiring the young people of America and enforcing a strict No Ninja-Kicking policy) is serving as the advisor-elect of the under-construction GSA (a.k.a. Gay Straight Alliance). I don't know what my responsibilities are besides signing off on purchase order for rainbow t-shirts and making the library available for after-school meetings, but it's an honor to have been asked to take on the job, a position I may have been chosen for simply on the basis of my leather jacket.


Seriously, though, I'm assuming that the students who asked me to advise them did so because I maintain a gay-friendly collection in the library, adding books that address all sorts of relationships and complications that teenagers face. There is a TON of excellent young adult fiction available about gay characters--and it's not all After School Special-y "this is how I dealt with being gay" stuff. Much of it is about kids living through other issues--regular problems with parents, teachers, alien life forms, etc.--and they just happen to be gay.


The Screwed Up Life of Charlie the Second by Drew Ferguson is about being gay and surviving high school, but it isn't a "problem" novel. It also is not, alas, a Young Adult novel, and despite its incredibly funny, wise voice, lovable main character, and sweet love story, it won't be going in my library because it also contains quite a bit of explicitly explicit sex. Censorship? Maybe. I like to call it self-preservation. You wanna fight for Charlie, you come on down to farm country and argue the merits of the multiple naked guy-guy wrestling scenes to members of a community who just erected a giant "silo" in their new roundabout.


Charlie, who is tormented by his father, First, is pretty resilient and upbeat despite the odds, and when he falls in love with his soccer teammate Rob, his life gets immeasurably better, despite the initial, universal roller-coaster of he's cute-does he like me-he does-he doesn't-oh my god-he might that it takes for them to get together (territory we'll all recognize...some of us as a distant junior-high memory, others of us as, well, yesterday).

But Rob's mother's slow deterioration from ALS, Charlie's parents' marital troubles, and his teammates' harrassment and squeamishness complicate what might otherwise be a charmed coming-of-age for Charlie. Of course, without complications, there is no story. The beauty of any story, well-told, is that the particulars of those characters' complications are, nevertheless, universal. We meet. We are attracted. We wonder if it's mutual. We test the waters. We find out. We go swimming. We win the triathlon. Or we drown. Or, like Charlie, we finish somewhere in the middle of the pack--wet, with sore muscles, but a little bit of new knowledge we can apply to the the next race we enter.

Getting 'Er Done

The Myth of Multitasking: How “Doing it All” Gets Nothing Done. © 2008 by Dave Crenshaw.

Perhaps you’ve asked yourself, “Hey, what should I do now that I’ve been awakened at 2 a.m. by my sick dog and I’ve got all the barf cleaned up and now have insomnia?” Such was the question I asked my own self on Friday night after taking care of the residue Frida left on the floor after consuming what looked to be a plastic water bottle, part of a foam ball, and a significant portion of the cat’s food. Oh, the glamour of dog-momming.

So, in the hour that I lay awake, I read Dave Crenshaw’s short book, The Myth of Multitasking, which was completely doable, since it’s only 138 pages long and told as a parable (think Who Stole My Cheese; The One-Minute Manager, etc.).


The story illustrates Crenshaw’s position that multitasking is, for all its hype, an inefficient way to attempt tasks, run businesses, and relate to people. In fact, he argues, multi-tasking damages productivity and destroys relationships. We think we can do multiple things at one time, but in truth, we cannot, and what we call “multi-tasking” is actually “switch-tasking”—the process of constantly shifting our focus from one activity to another. Most switch-tasking occurs as we attempt to manage interruptions—phone calls, emails, IMs, people visiting our offices, dogs barfing when we're trying to sleep. All of this adds up to a huge loss in productivity—as much as 28% of the work day for the average person.

More important than the loss in productivity, however, is the damage that switch-tasking does to our relationships. (Ever been with someone who's texting while you're at the dinner table? Feels warm and cozy, huh?) “The people we live with and work with on a daily basis deserve our full attention,” Crenshaw writes. “When we give people segmented attention, piecemeal time, switching back and forth, the switching cost is higher than just the time involved. We end up damaging relationships.”

We’ve been led to believe that we can accomplish multiple tasks at a time, that it is better or more efficient to do many things at once, and that in order to stay on top of our many obligations, we must multi-task. Not so, Crenshaw argues. “No matter how effective you are at switch-tasking, you are still working less efficiently…you are going to take longer to get things done than the person who focuses on one attention-requiring activity at a time.” A simple experiment helps demonstrate this point, and Crenshaw includes additional worksheets and tips for making better use of your time...all day long, not just in the middle of the night.

Friday Night Lights Meets The Last Picture Show and They Get Really Wasted

My top five favorite current living writers in no particular order:
1. David Sedaris
2. Sarah Vowell
3. Steve Almond
4. Mary Roach
5. Dan Savage
These writers qualify because at any given time, if anyone of them publishes a new book, I will stop whatever I’m doing to purchase and read said publication, regardless of whether or not I’m reading something else or in the middle of towel-drying my dog.

Chuck Klosterman and Sarah Vowell are the two who’ve published most recently, and so I stopped everything I was doing (for the record, I was raking a small portion of the approximately 457 billion leaves that have accumulated in my front yard) and bought the Klosterman book and have been unable to anything productive for the last three days because I have been devouring it.

Downtown Owl follows three characters through the winter of 1984 as they pursue their lives in the teeny, tiny Owl, North Dakota. Mitch Hrlicka is a high school senior, a sometime-quarterback, who has his hate on for his football coach, who is certain has been inappropriate and unethical with some of his female students. Julia Rabia is new to town—a twenty-three year old history teacher who takes a job in rural Owl to get some work experience. She is befriended by Naomi, an older teacher, and the two of them end up bar-hopping nightly. Horace Jones is 73, drinks coffee daily with a group of other old Owl residents, and understands the truth clearly.

Through these three characters, we learn the history of Owl, its scandals past and present, and much about small-town 1980s culture. I liked this book for many, many reasons, but I loved it for passages like this:

"'Why do we get out of bed?' Mitch wondered. 'Is there any feeling any better that being in bed? What could possibly feel better than this? What is going to happen in the course of my day that will be an improvement over lying on something very soft, wearing only underwear, doing absolutely nothing, all by myself?' Every day, Mitch woke to this line of reasoning: Every day, the first move he made outside his sheets immediately destroyed the only flawless part of his existence."

And the best thing about it, as the reviewer for Entertainment Weekly wrote, is that it reads exactly like a Chuck Klosterman book--which is absolutely the perfect sentiment and just the right hook to grab a fan like me (and yes, that is a Scooby-Doo band-aid on my chin).

Very Naughty Things

Inspired by an early morning encounter at the gym (thanks, David and Dan!) I'm resurrecting my book-of-the-week correspondence with friends. In the olden days, I just emailed, but now I'm higher-teching it with a blog, hoping to replace my now-finished Building Blog and my all-but-abandoned Hollywood Blog, She Gives Good Story. Stay tuned, and if I burn out on the books, I haven't run out of b-blogging ideas, such as Belben's Berner Blog, body blog, biking blog, b-and-b blog, and blah blah blog.

This week's book recommendation, Vice: Very Naughty Things (And How to Do Them) is one of those that I read for my own personal pleasure but wouldn't add to my high school library even though I know it would be really popular with the kids, given that it deals with swinging, stripping, gambling, conspicuous consumption, lying, and cheating.

Author Peter Sagal, an NPR host, explores the seedy underbelly of not-illegal but still NSFW topics that I think secretly lots of people would like to know more about without, you know, actual experimentation. Sagal's examinations of such places as the Swingers Shack and his visit to a porn-movie set are intelligent, witty, and often very, very funny. Instead of a scientific, sociological or even tongue-in-cheek look at the activities he describes, Sagal personalizes each of his segments and humanizes people we might otherwise judge a little more harshly.

Three Mysteries from Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman, who is one of my favorite mystery writers. Lippman, a former journalist, is the author of numerous award-winning novels, including those featuring her journalist-turned-detective character, Tess Monaghan, and several stand-alone novels. As an added bonus, Lippman appears Wednesday night in Bellingham to read at the Chuckanut Radio Hour.

Another Thing to Fall © 2008
Baltimore detective Tess Monaghan is hired to provide security for the young star of a TV show being filmed in Baltimore after a series of mysterious incidents plagues the cast and crew. But when a member of the production company is murdered at the set, she finds herself embroiled in a complicated investigation that may or may not point to writers on the show, a bizarre photographer stalking the star, and several others who have motive to see the show fail.

Details about the television industry, in particular the writing and creation of a show, made this book of special interest to me, but the mystery, and especially the characters, will make this an intriguing read for anyone.

What the Dead Know © 2007
Thirty years ago, two sisters disappeared from a local shopping mall and were never seen again. No bodies were ever found, but it has long been assumed that the girls were murdered. But now a woman has returned to Baltimore, claiming to be one of the missing Bethany sisters. She knows a great deal about the crimes, and the two girls’ lives, but is she who she says she is? And if so, why has she just now reappeared. If she isn’t one of the missing children, why is she pretending to be someone she’s not?

Every Secret Thing © 2003
Two young girls, banished from a birthday party, walk home and encounter what appears to be an abandoned baby stroller—with a baby in it. In a misguided attempt to be helpful, they take the stroller, and the ensuing events destroy three families.

Now it’s seven years later, and the two girls are returning home after punishment. Advised not to contact each other, they are given new histories and identities and a chance to start fresh. But the past has a way of returning…