Home Sweet Home

The weather has left me trapped inside my house, unable--or at least unwilling--to spend much time saturating myself in rainwater (curly hair+precip=disaster), so I've been appreciating interiors. Occasionally my truck, often my office/library, but mostly my house. Freshly outfitted with a hand-me-over lava lamp from my dad, my bedroom (formerly the Sunset View room, now the Housepital-Blocks-My-View Room) is the perfect reading location.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to win the lottery soon, because I keep having these fantasies about improvements I'd like to make to the NapCastle. Before you go all ballistic and "you just built that house TWO YEARS ago!" on me, remember the Anne Frank Room, and recall that it is semi-inhabitable, eagerly awaiting the large influx of cash that will transform it into the Coolest Little Apartment Ever. If there's any chance that you think a 200-square-foot space can't be an entire residence, you need to go two places: 1) http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ and 2) your local bookstore to purchase the book creater by the authors of the AT blog: Apartment Therapy's Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces.

Realizing the dream of home ownership has not squelched my obsession with homes--it's amplified it. Now that I have a house, I want to learn all about houses. I want to look at pictures of houses and decor and color schemes and weird ways to create art out of recycled stuff (see photos of poems I painted and strapped to the side of the NapCastle) and hidden spaces and beds that pop out of walls (front porch Murphy bunk, anyone?). I recently listened to Bill Bryson read his latest book, At Home, in which he uses his own centuries-old English parsonageas a framework for exploring the history of human domesticity.

Traveling room by room through his own home, Bryson retraces the Western evolution of home-making, including in his typical style fascinating minutiae about how people have lived and why. I don't generally read history, but I love Bill Bryson and will listen to him read almost anything. The details in this book about food, cooking, bathing, sleeping, and every other aspect of life at home were absorbing and entertaining. They also gave me an even greater appreciation for things I take for granted, like plumbing, flapper light switches, and a bed that's not made out of dung. Now I also know why salt and pepper are standard table condiments, and my decades-long post-Amelia-Bedelia curiosity about what a "drawing room" is has been satiated.

It's easy to take for granted the simple amenities that add comfort and convenience to our lives--running water, telephones, live-in servants--while we're running around like crazyheads acummulating Wiis and iPads and 400-thread count sheets. Invention and innovation are amazing, and I, for one, can say I'm thankful I don't have to share an outhouse with my roommates. But ultimately, the things that make a home don't have as much to do with the inanimate stuff as with the living creatures inside. At least, that's what I keep telling myself. But Jesus, do I have a lot of throw pillows.

Also on the home front (-10 points for bad pun), I also read Meghan Daum's book about seeking and purchasing her first house, Life Would Be Perfect if I Lived in that House. Daum's search for a home coincides with her realization that she might not marry and have a husband, children, and a "traditional" life--all things I can relate to, which may be why her quest and subsequent success made me a little sad as I read. Nevertheless, I could relate to and appreciate her obsession with space. Like me, she has longed dreamed of a home of her own, and how that house will contribute to her definition of herself. Her insight into how space shapes self is intelligent and entertaining.

Because I do connect my space so intimately with my sense of self, I am always making mental ammendments to the NapCastle. I move artwork and rearrange furniture to match my moods and whims. I dream of additions where I can house more roommates, and outdoor patios where the sun shines EVERY DAY. It's not about having more stuff, or better stuff, or a bigger house--for me, it's about making the house I have even homier. I have THAT house, and life isn't perfect. But it's pretty amazing.

Hey! That's My Bike! And My Other Bike...and My Typewriter...and My Futon...and My Barbie Collection...

I don't have a huge aversion to cleaning house, although there are usually other things I'd rather be doing, like napping or reading or having a Modern Family marathon. Calculating the numer of Weight Watchers Points I'll earn by working up a sweat cleaning the hair out of the drain in the boys' bathroom never serves as adequate inspiration, so I've taken to watching episodes of Hoarders online. It's reassuring to know that I'm nowhere near pathological hoarding, and the filth in the houses they feature motivates me to keep ahead of the grime, even if I will never conquer the endless tumbleweeds of dog hair that seem to regenerate themselves every time I put the broom away.

There is some sensationalism to the TV program Hoarders, which focuses on two stories of hoarding per episode, complete with lots of footage of the hoarders' homes and lots of emotional moments wherein family members confront the hoarders or the hoarders work with therapists to confront their issues. In Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, authors Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee examine the causes of hoarding, as well as the manifestations of the disorder and treatment. Like the TV show, the authors of Stuff use fascinating, bizarre case studies of real people to illustrate the ways the disorder presents itself. If you enjoy watching Hoaders, you'll enjoy reading more details about the way the disorder affects their lives.

I was intrigued by the statistics: between 2 and 5 % of the American population--about 6-15 MILLION people--suffer from some sort of hoarding disorder. That's a lot of very messy houses, whether they are stuffed with hoarded food, pets, or broken lawnmowers. And contrary to what some folks believe, hoarding doesn't just afflict people in places where there is an excess of consumerism or available products--hoarding has been found all over the globe. In addition, hoarding isn't determined by how much stuff a person has, but by how that stuff affects the quality of their lives. When it impairs one's ability to perform basic functions, it's considered pathological. In some of these cases, living conditions threaten the health of the hoarder and other occupants, and can even be deadly. One of the most famous hoarders in history, Langley Collyer, lived in squalor with his brother Homer for years (this despite their monetary wealth). Eventually, the extensive collection of junk (and numerous booby traps) led to both of their deaths.

Most of the scenarios on the TV show Hoarders end with some success--psychologists work with the hoarder and his or her family, 1-800-GOT-JUNK shows up with a cleaning team, and order is established. But as follow-ups on the TV show illustrate, hoarding is an extremely difficult disorder to treat, owing mainly to its deeply rooted causes, and the cases on TV rarely reflect the many years of continual therapy required for hoarders to escape their habits and live less cluttered lives.

This is among a number of intriguing books of applied psychology books I've read that I would recommend to others. It's highly readable, adn the individual cases of hoarding are fascinating, but their analysis goes beyong mere voyeurism and offers substantial insight into an affliction that has only recently begun to be revealed and examined.

A SUMMERy of Great Reads

It's possibly my imagination at work, but it seems as though whenever I go on a trip, I hear 80's music the whole time--in Puerto Vallarta, in stores and hotel lobbies in San Francisco, and most recently, during my stay at L'Auberge in Del Mar. Everytime we went to the pool, it was like traveling through a time tunnel, except for the part where I'm wearing a size 5 bikini and slathering my skin with baby oil.

I am in awe of writers who can write about effectively about music; most critics either use pretentious, indecipherable language that makes me feel dumb for not knowing what a "tangible, multi-riff liquid slide" is, or the descriptions are so juvenile and insipid that they tell me nothing about the music. Let's face it, telling me that Lady Gaga's new album "pushes boundaries" tells me nothing at all. Steve Almond, who I've previously written about, has a new book that turns music into memoir and manages to describe the past, and the present, of popular music in a way that is funny, nostalgic, unapologetic, and readable. In Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, Almond assures us all that we're all free to love whatever goofy pop act we find ourselves tapping our feet to. "There us no sin in the realm of taste...you can't tell someone his or her ears are wrong. You can't rescind the pleasure they derive from a particular piece of music...there's no arguing with joy." Amen. (Sound of me cranking Styx on the iPod).

Peter Hedges (author of What's Eating Gilbert Grape) has written a far less funny, but no less absorbing, novel about the fragile ground that crumbles under couples when new and powerful third parties enter their lives in his novel, The Heights. A stable, happy couple in an upper-middle-class neighborhood finds their lives irrevocably altered when a woman moves in nearby and befriends them. Her wealth is only part of her mysterious allure--and both partners seek her attention and friendship, finding themselves questioning their relationship and their beliefs. Suspenseful domestic drama that twists and turns and makes you think about what it means to be committed.

Ravens by George Dawes Green will appeal to readers who liked House of Sand Fog. The Boatwright family wins a gigantic prize in the Georgia state lottery and is then terrorized by two grifters who seize the opportunity to hold them hostage and force them to split the money. Tense, action-packed, and darkly funny; a be-careful-what-you-wish-for scenario combined with a touch of In Cold Blood. I expect a movie with Mark Wahlberg and Toni Collette.

John McNally's novel After the Workshop is a terrifically fun read, combining the aggravations of work with a subtle mystery. Jack Hercules Sheahan, an MFA graduate working as an escort for authors visiting local bookshops, recounts the horrors of working with demanding prima donnas, stressed publicists, and a hilarious array of pompous university professors and adjuncts. When he loses track of a particularly challenging author, he juggles the ensuing drama with the complications of his ex-girlfriend, his chronically naked next-door neighbor, and a drunken formerly-famous author who has decided to camp out in his apartment. Smart, hilarious, and perfect for MFA grads or anyone who has worked in a job where they had to cater to the whims of of others. Oh, wait--that's pretty much everyone..,

Summer isn't technically over, but this is the best of what I read when the days were longer and the mornings warmer. Lots of new stuff to read next to the (fake) fall fire is piling up on my bedside table...

Big, Big, Big Love

One of my favorite TV programs, Big Love, focuses on the three households maintained by fictional polygamist Bill Henrickson, who practices the "Principle" of plural marriage with his three wives, Margene, Nicky, and Barb. If there's drama in a regular marriage, it's obviously multiplied when numerous women share the same man, which is part of what make Big Love so doable--the storylines that arise from the multiple marriages are only one layer of the drama. Religious in-fighting, secrecy, and loads of other potential problems await the characters and lend themselves to endless plotlines.

The same is true in Brady Udall's novel The Lonely Polygamist--Golden Richards, a man with four wives and twenty-eight children, struggles financially and morally to keep his life from falling apart. Away from his homes on a construction job, he meets and falls in love with a quiet, child-free woman who offers him respite from the complications of his marriages and children, but that relationship (like all of them) does less to alleviate his frustrations than it does increase them--and given who the woman is married to, Golden's love for her puts his family in jeopardy. His liaison with her puts him not only in moral peril, but physical danger.

But his family is falling apart anyway. His most fragile wife, Rose-of-Sharon, has recently been hospitalized with a nervous breakdown; his first wife Beverly fights constantly to maintain her control over the household and the other women, and his fourth wife, Trish, finds herself alone and lonely during Golden's absences, and contemplates a tryst of her own. The most endearing character in the book is the one whose problems also spiral out of control and yet also lead to the resolution--however heartbreaking--of this amazing book. Eleven-year-old Rusty reminded me of the character in "The Ransom of Red Chief." Neglected amidst the chaos of his home, Rusty seeks entertainment wherever he can, primarily by sneaking out of the house and riding his bike around town and plotting ways to get his father to pay more attention to him. Unfortunately, in this regard, he eventually succeeds.

Polygamy? Not a fan. It's unfair to women and children, complicated, and disastrous in terms of the long-term well-being of families (what happens if the sole provider dies?) Besides the major issues, it's impractical and likely to be unmanageable and miserable on a daily basis. Regardless, watching Big Love and reading The Lonely Polygamist (even though they are fictional) gives me a little more understanding of how and why people choose this lifestyle. "...this after all, was the basic truth they all chose to live by: that love was no infinite commodity. That it was not subject to the cruel reckoning of addition and subtraction, that to give to one did not necessarily mean to take from another; that the heart, in its infinite capacity could open itself to all who would enter, like a house with windows and doors thrown wide, like the heart of God itself, vast and accommodating and holy, a mansion of rooms without number, full of multitudes without end."

This is the best novel I've read in 2010--multi-layered, often very funny, beautifully written, and insightful. No matter how many people you live with or love, there is likely to be a piece of your truth in these pages, and even if there isn't, Golden's story of the perpetual quest to define to define oneself internally and to the world at large is unforgettable.

Who are YOU?

This will be a short post because I don't want to take up the time I think you should be spending at the bookstore or library purchasing and reading this recommendation.

Mysteries and thrillers often fall victim to formulaic plots and stereotyped characters (crusty old private eyes, sassy teenage girl detectives, etc.) but Dan Choan's novel, Await Your Reply, suffers from neither of these problems, and establishes itself as one of the most unique and intriguing suspense stories I've read.

Without giving too much away, the plot is a tritych of stories whose connection is woven so subtly into the events as to be eerily dreamlike--you'll find yourself wondering if you imagined mention of one clue in another part of the story as you read.

In the opening pages, a young man with a severed hand is rushed to the hospital by his father; in the second introduction, a teenage girl with a forgettable past leaves town with her high school history teacher; in the third, a man searches the icy Canadian landscape for his missing identical twin. The thread binding them together is the mysterious nature of identity--and identity theft.

If you liked House of Sand and Fog and The Garden of Last Days by Andred Dubus III, Chaon's book will claim a couple of hours of your life, too--and you won't be sorry.

Things I will never be: a teenage boy, a person who never sleeps (or for that matter, a person who never sleeps during the day, given my proclivity for napping), a person who reads comics/graphics novels/whatever you want to call those books with all the drawings and dialogue bubbles, a person who will probably never be able to extricate herself from high school drama, humor, and life.

No matter how incredible my adult experiences (I have a truck! A house! I can go to the store and buy candy any time I want!) there is an inexplicably seductive quality to high school life--not the real thing, of course, but the imaginary world of sex, secrecy, and snark that exists in my favorite TV shows: Friday Night Lights, Glee, Veronica Mars.

I recently flew to San Francisco for a conference and a 4-night stay in a boutique hotel that looked like it was decorated by a Manhattanite with a 400-square foot apartment who thinks a $50 throw pillow is a bargain. I flew first class because through some quirky karmic wormhole, I was bumped from my original $119 flight to first class, plus a $300 ticket voucher. I mention this not just to be an obnoxious braggart, but because it is exactly like the forces that rule high school life. No one deserves seat 1D (first row, first class) anymore than anyone else deserves backne, untameable curls and dyslexia. But teenagerhood and flight are similar that way: sometimes you're a size 4 cheerleader with a rack like Jennifer Aniston, and sometimes your flight is rerouted to Fargo and your brand-new Swiss luggage is circling a luggage carousel in Dayton, Ohio.

Being a high school teacher/librarian for the past twenty years has given me some insight into teenagers and also fortified me against many of the evils of the world. I continued to be fascinated by this weird 4-year period in life, and I keep reading about it. It's not enough to endure adolescents for seven hours a day, I also have to tack on another few hours reading about them. The Crazy School by Cornelia Read is one of my recent favorites, combining some of my favorite topics: mystery, sass, boarding school, bizarre psychological stuff, and teenage life.

Protagonist Madeline Dare is hired to teach at an expensive boarding school for troubled teens, and establishes a great rapport with her students, given her snarky humor and tenacity. Despite her good relationships with kids, however, Madeline is aware that something weird is going on at the academy--a student commits suicide, another disappears, and the headmaster requires everyone, students and teachers, to participate in counseling sessions. As she investigates the recent events, Madeline comes closer to discovering the dark secret at the heart of the institution, and only by joining forces with one of the academy's most dangerous students can she get to the heart of what's going on.

Nothing like this ever happens to me at my school, and I'm thankful that most of our mysteries are things like who spilled raspberry smoothie in the hall during first lunch? and who used up all of the ink in my printer? Nevertheless, the high school culture and the students rang true and entertained. If you like your mysteries smart, funny, and sexy, put this one one your list!

Walk Right Back. Or Don't.

Tim Farnsworth, the protagonist of The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris, is a lawyer leading a seemingly ideal life with his devoted wife Jane and their daughter, Becka, when he is afflicted by a nameless, unexplained compulsion to walk until he falls down. He leaves his office or his home when the urge to walk becomes impossible to ignore, takes the pack that Jane has lovingly prepared for him, and sets out to wander New York City until it becomes physically impossible and his wife has to come pick him up.

Needless to say, Farnsworth's disorder impacts every aspect of his life: his teenage daughter withdraws, his marriage becomes strained, and his work defending a wealthy and prominent murder suspect suffers. He and Jane seek advice and medical treatment from every expert they can think of, but no one is able to explain the compulsion--although it manifests physically and has serious health implications, it has the characteristics of a mental illness.

The Unnamed moves along briskly, fascinating for both its examination of a psyche under seige and for the legal drama lurking in the background. But what makes it so powerful a read isn't the reading, but the having read. I put this book down and could not stop asking myself, "wtf?" What did I just read? Who writes a book about a guy who just walks, inanely and dangerously, without explanation? And why? Why is it so interesting? Tim Farnsworth doesn't kill anyone or have any hidden childhood trauma or deep, dark past or engage in any bizarre sex acts. Then I remembered my secret weapon for answering questions about books I read: a B.A. in English.

I'm not claiming to have any definitive interpretation of The Unnamed. I'm not even claiming that there is or should be anything more than a thoughtful analysis of any work of literature. You can say whatever you want about a poem or a story or a novel and its "meaning," and that's fine with me. I might think you're a kook, but if (unlike far too many students I've worked with), you take the time to actually think about what you read and say something besides "that's stupid" or "that's boring" or "I don't get it," you're doing more with your brain than just storing it in your skull behind a sign that says Here I Am Now Entertain Me.

I want to be entertained by novels and stories and movies and songs. I want to "get" them. But there's something even more satisfying about not getting them and being forced to listen to their complexities rattle around in my brain for a few days until I form some sort of intelligible "aha!" That's what happened with The Unnamed. I went from "huh?" to "how about this...?"

My "how about this" regarding The Unnamed is that Farnsworth's compulsion to walk is a sort of metaphor or symbol for all our unexplainable compulsions--but his is just weird enough to make us stop and wonder. But then, it's not that weird. Ok, so he walks endlessly and suffers psychic and physical harm. But don't we all have compulsions, or at least habits, that are less than healthy or at least, when viewed by onlookers, a bit strange? Why do I bother to keep six chickens that don't lay eggs? Or a collection of several hundred rubber stamps that I don't use? Why do I keep ingesting cheese and candy and wine when I know they're as bad for my ass as Tim's walking was for his toes?

There is no magical formula for understanding novels or stories or poems or (especially) other people. But what is magical is reading something and letting it tickle your brain for the time it takes to makes some sort of sense of it; once you've accomplished that, you've been entertained in the best way possible.

That's What She Said

I'm a sucker for collections of articles that I probably would never have read when they were first published online or in magazines, mostly because the only magazines I ever look at are of the craft porn variety (you know, those with lots of pictures of cool projects I'll probably never get around to doing).

But there are collections of articles and essays that are published every year that catch my attention for whatever reason--sometimes because of the editor (Dave Eggers and the Best Nonrequired American Reading, for example), occasionally because of the provocative cover, most frequently because of the topic. Such is the case with Best Sex Writing 2010.

Now I know there are people out there yawning and thinking boorrriinnnggg, who wants to read about sex? so you folks can go back to studying biscuit recipes or the latest issue of Cat Fancy and I'll continue writing for that segment of the audience interested in sex. You know who you are.

Despite its tantalizing cover, this collection of essays isn't as prurient as it appears; although a few of the pieces are specifically about their authors' sexual experiences and/or interests, most are more intriguing, more political, and more about social issues related to sex than they are about exciting the reader. Nevertheless, there is a lot to be intrigued by and educated about in this collection.

Of particular interest to me were the articles about teen sexting, which is a big issue at the high school level and a concern of teachers and parents; another about sex ed and the failure of abstinence-only programs; a reassuring article by a guy who appreciates women's bodies, even the imperfect ones, and one about the crazy trend of plastic surgery on women's private parts. Yikes.

Here's my challenge, reader friends: find a book that you thought you'd never read, or one that makes you uncomfortable or a little sheepish or that you might have to hide from your kids. I think you'll find it oddly satisfying...

This is My Story, and I'm Sticking to It

"Ms. Belben, have you read Moby Dick?" a student asked me today. "Nope," I responded gleefully. Stunned, he stared at me for a minute. "Why not? You're a librarian! It's a literary classic!" I shrugged and gave him a variation of the same response I gave my roommate the other day when he expressed shock that I had not read Lolita. "I have read thousands of books," I told Q., laughing. "I prefer not to be judged by the ones I haven't read."

I also prefer not to be judged by the books I have read and have not blogged about, since my blog has been hibernating since Veterans' Day. I wish I had some witty or impressive explanation for that, like being too busy training for the Ms. Olympia contest, or having spent the past two months studying manuals on exciting new sexual techniques, but I can't claim anything of the sort. I've been reading, but I've also been lazy (BTW, if you haven't seen the first three seasons of Friday Night Lights, they're awesome). Also, I handmade 90% of my holiday gifts this year, and it's hard to sew and read anything, let alone Moby Dick.

Perhaps if I had a clone, one that I could program and assign some of my tasks (wrangling the chickens and cleaning up after Frida come to mind), I would get more read and written. But I don't have a clone, and I don't want one. I don't think the world wants one. And after reading the amazingly well-written novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, I'm more than a little frightened at the prospect of cloning, anyway.

When I originally began reading Never Let Me Go, I was following the advice of several writers (I think Steven King was one, but I can't remember) who placed the novel on their "best of the decade" list without going into detail about its plot, so I thought it was just another book about thirty-somethings reflecting on their years in an exclusive British boarding school, and all of the juicy secrets and liasions that permeate the lives of a bunch of teenagers living together.

But Ishiguro has created a much darker, much more sly world beneath the reminiscence-of-boarding-school facade. In this case, the students at Hailsham are, in fact, wards of the state who have been bred specifically to be used as donors for diseased and injured people. These children are the products of a society that has made the preservation of existing human life paramount, and its populace has become so accustomed to medical advances that it is a foregone conclusion that an amputation, a cancer, a failed organ will be replaced in what has become a fairly routine system. But the kicker is, the children don't know who or what they are--all they've ever known is life at the secluded school, and they haven't been told anything about what will become of them.

What makes this novel so stunning, so absolutely incredible and unforgettably powerful is the subtle, creepy, and truly masterful way Ishiguro subtley unveils the truth about the children's conception and their fate. Narrated by Kathy B., the story unfolds gradually but not slowly, as the 30-year-old narrator recalls the friendships she shared with others at Hailsham, specifically Ruth and Tommy. In retracing the development of their complicated threesome, she also exposes, piece by piece, the quiet clues the students pieced together through the years about the true nature of their existance. Without resorting to graphic description or gore, Ishiguro makes the culture that led to these characters' fate absolutely believable and horrible to contemplate.

Cultural critic and author Chuck Klosterman, a writer I consider an idea guru, has said that he doesn't think fiction has much importance anymore. "I don't think novels are shaping the way people think about the world, regardless of their merit as art." I would beg to differ with Mr. Klosterman on this point. Even if, as he points out, the best-selling novels are about wizards and vampires, I still think those shape how people see the world. Fortunately, though, there is other fiction out there that is also forcing us to reckon with the bigger, more realistic possibilities of our medical and technological advances--Never Let Me Go is one of them.