Belben's Book Blog

Belben Lately

2011-11-14T10:10:00.000-08:00

Inspired by my friend, author Cami Ostman's selection of this blog as one of her fifteen favorites, I am updating it with some new recommendations while I figure out how to manipulate the infinitely more confusing format of my new blog, Sexier Than Stupid (www.sexierthanstupid.com) over at WordPress. Holy Mother of Moses that thing is more complicated than I expected. But I own the domain name and can soon be writing posts there. Soon. Really.

In October, I got back into the groove with my reading. School stuff squared away, and 40 minutes twice a week during my classes' silent reading time allowed me to plow through some new titles, with fabulous results: I have some (mostly) great recommendations and am much more smarterer than ever before.

As promised, I finished some of my nightstand pile reads, including Sugar in My Bowl, a collection of essays by women about sex, edited by Erica Jong. Meh. I like reading about other women's attitudes and ideas about sex, but this wasn't (in my opinion) a particularly outstanding collection. One author writes about being a prude, Jong's daughter writes about being conservative despite growing up with one of the 70s most notorious authors, etc. I have read collections I enjoyed and remembered more. (But hey--check out that cover!)

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson was amazing. Wilson's writing is of the type that makes me want to write (that's always the truest proof for me that a book is incredible: it makes me want to create something as good). Wilson's novel revolves around the Fangs, a family of four who are warped in a particularly unique way. Parents Caleb and Camille are performance artists, and have raised their children, Buster and Annie, as (mostly unwilling) participants in their various acts of improvisational chaos, an upbringing that has consequences for the two as they enter adulthood and struggle to make sense of their past and forge more normal lives outside their weird family. When personal crises send adults Annie and Buster back home to live with their parents, the elder Fangs disappear, leading everyone to wonder whether they've been the victims of foul play or are simply enacting one final, triumphant drama. The truth turns out to be even stranger than anyone would have guessed.

Dog On It by Spencer Quinn is a funny mystery narrated by a dog. Every time I tried to paste the cover image here, it screwed up the formatting and caused me to swear profusely. Thusly, I deleted the image and rewrote the summary of the book three times before finally giving up. At any rate, Chet describes the case that his human, Bernie, a priviate investigator, gets embroiled in. A very sweet story, and the dog-as-narrator gimmick actually works surprisingly well.

I hit a blue period and bought Chelsea Handler's books, Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me and Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang because she is hilariously nasty. In the first, Chelsea's friends recount their experiences as victims of her numerous, and quite elaborate practical jokes. It's amazing, frankly, that she has any friends after the pranks she pulls. But I guess when you're gorgeous and rich and have your own TV show, you can buy your friends a new house or a car when you hurt their feelings and all is right with the world. If you're a fan of Chelsea Lately, you'll appreciate this book even more, since most of the writers are folks who appear on or behind the scenes and/or are referenced in Handler's other books. Chelsea Handler is an acquired taste. It's cold here, and dark, and it rains too much, so I've acquired a taste for tasteless humor. Cheer me up , Chelsea. Anytime.

Nicholson Baker, one of my all-time favorite writers, has created what is either a huge joke or a brilliantly creative work of literary porn. Either way, House of Holes is the nastiest (and by that I mean most sexually explicit) book I've read in a long time. So graphic in such weird, weird ways that I can't describe it here. Suffice to say, briefly, that it involves relatively normal people being sucked into a fantastical netherworld (the House of Holes) where they participate in sexual situations that are either amazingly imaginative or the by-product of creepy perversion, incredible intellect, and possible narcotic abuse. I recommend this only for readers who have exhausted every other variety of pornographic writing. And even then, I hesitate.

We the Animals by Justin Torres is a super-short novel that I suspect is semi-autobiographical focusing on the lives of three young brothers and their parents, who are alternately passionately in love or angrily at odds with one another. The narrator is the youngest of the three boys, and through his eyes, we watch his parents struggle to make ends meet and experience the challenges he faces growing up homosexual amid brothers who are aggressively male.

I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron disappointed me after I Feel Bad About My Neck, her previous collection about the indignities of aging. I felt like the more recent collection contained a lot of "in the good old days" complaints that weren't particularly insightful or original and made "getting old" a code phrase for "getting crabby," which it might be, but I don't want to read a whole book about it. Ephron's earlier work (picture here) was much, much more enjoyable. Read it instead. And while you're at it, let me remind you about How Not to Act Old by Pamela Redmond Satran, which is the funniest, and most helpful, book you can read about getting. Her blog's awesome, too.

The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo was the best book I read this month. The main character is Marjorie, a teenage girl who has been raised in isolation by parents who are members of a small, strange religious group that inflicts some unusual punishments on misbehaving children. Her parents' lack of interaction with the community around them has led them to develop bizarre speech patterns, a family dialect intelligible--but just barely--by those around them. When Marjorie's aunt finds her a job with a local man in town who is constructing his own personal cathedral in town, Marjorie's life is irrevocably changed for the better. In the shadows of her growing relationship with her employer, the stonemason, Marjorie's life is haunted by the mysterious disappearances of several local girls. The story of her growing courage to stand up to her family, the gentle, sweet relationship with her employer, and the dogged attempts by her aunt to help her escape her parents make this a thoughtful, unforgettable read.

On my reading list for November: several novels, more humor, Miranda July's new, weird-looking non-fiction book, and a thick, colorful guide to WordPress. If I get around to reading that last one (and whoa, not much more exciting than a computer manual), I'll get my new blog up and running in time for Christmas. I hope.

September Slowdown

2011-10-16T18:59:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite writers, Nick Hornby, wrote a column for The Believer for several years about his reading--he reviewed books, but more than that, he reflected on the reading life. His essays are collected in three short volumes (The Polysyllabic Spree, Shakespeare Wrote for Money, and Housekeeping vs. The Dirt that I highly recommend. He's funny, smart, and his insight into reading and books is unique. Each month, Hornby began his piece with a two column list: one side with the titles of books he'd purchased that month, the other with the titles of books he'd actually read. Like Hornby (and many other readers), I collect books; or rather, I accumulate them. I purchase books when I spot them on the shelves and know that I HAVE to read them. But they often rest, unread, on my nightstand for months (and in a few too many cases, years).

September was a resting-book month for me. Titles I'd accumulated over the summer languished unread, while I dipped partially into others and nearly finished several. This means that for September, I have only a few recommendations. By the end of October, however, I should have a hefty list of those I started in September but didn't drag myself through until my school schedule had settled, summer had finally worn itself out, and I had more time (Tuesday and Thursday SSR time with my junior and senior English classes) to read.

My first recommendation is one you should add to your Christmas-gift-buying list. When Parents Text by Lauren Kaelin and Sophia Fraioli is absolutely fantastic. The two began with a blog (of course) in which they collected texts from readers who had entertaining, confusing, bizarre, and ultimately hilarious text-message exchanges with their parents. The generational divide and the technological know-how gap combined with typical parent-child interactions (when are you coming home? call me! what do you want for dinner!) are combined with random, inexplicable messages from parents who are simply learning to communicate in a language they didn't grow up using. Parents who text and the children on the receiving end of their messages will love this one.

The second book I read in September (and the only other book I read in its entirety) was Tom Perrotta's new novel, The Leftovers. Perrotta, best known for the novels Election and Little Children, both of which were made into decent movies, writes about religion in The Leftovers--sort of. The story revolves around a small town reeling from the impact of what appears to be (but is never exactly named) The Rapture--as in Revelations, wherein the faithful are taken to Heaven and the disbelievers are left behind. Families worldwide are impacted by the massive disappearance of millions of people, Christian, and otherwise, but Perrotta focuses specifically on one family affected by the event.

Kevin's wife has left the family to join a mysterious group, The Guilty Remnant, whose exact intentions are unclear, his son has also left to pursue enlightenment with another group, and he and his teenage daughter are left to navigate their drastically altered lives alone. Both form new connections, Kevin with a young mother whose husband and two children were "taken," and his daughter with a friend who eventually moves into their home.

The premise of the story is fascinating, and the book is a quick read, although it left many questions unanswered and the situation basically unexplained in the end, which was disappointing--I would have liked more exploration into the religious implications of the disappearances and the overall theme. Because of this, it would make an excellent choice for a reading group. If anyone out there has read it, I'd welcome a discussion!

October, so far, has been more productive, and I hope to have many more recommendations--and a new Wordpress blog--by month's end. Stayed tuned for details!

Highway Librarian

2011-08-24T11:58:00.000-07:00

I spent six weeks on the road this summer, traveling through Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho with my dog, Frida. We camped and spent some time with lifelong friends, and I read many, many books. Some of the highlights from the Summer I Read SOOOO Much will appear in the fall issue of Village Books' quarterly pub, The Chuckanut Reader, exactly or almost exactly as they appear here.

Bumped by Megan McCafferty offers a glimpse of a future in which a virus has rendered adults over 18 infertile, thereby making the wombs of teenage girls highly sought-after property. Twin sisters separated at birth when their own parents used a surrogate are reunited when one of them discovers she has a twin and leaves the conservative religious colony where she has been raised to seek her sister. She finds her, and discovers her twin is in negotiations to have her first child. Things get complicated when the two girls are mistaken for each other by the players in the surrogacy transaction. It sounds cheesy (twins separated at birth! mistaken identity! sinister money-grubbers!) but it actually works--entertaining and thought-provoking at the same time.

Housekeeping vs. The Dirt and Shakespeare Wrote for Money, both by Nick Hornby, a.k.a. my mental husband. Nick Hornby (About a Boy, High Fidelity, Juliet Naked) is the shit. Smart, absolutely hilarious, and brilliant when it comes to writing about reading and books. Both of these are collections of essays he wrote for The Believer, in which he lists the books he purchased and books he read each month and then reviews them--sort of. Mostly, he talks about reading, why it matters, how it differs from reader to reader, and how much richer life is when it is full of books and words and people who love both.

A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire by Sai Gaddam and Ogi Ogas combines two of my favorite things: science and sex. The authors conducted a modern-day Kinsey study using the internet, a bunch of complicated algorithms and data filtering techniques that I will never understand, and collated their findings to come up with numerous fascinating theories about human sexual behavior based on the sexual images and text that people seek when they surf for satisfaction online. Their findings reinforce some truisms: men are more turned on by pictures than women; women like to read erotic stories more than watch porn, and Rule 34 is definitely true: if you can think of it, there is porn of it. This book was fascinating, entertaining, thought-provoking, and I will read it again soon, which is saying a lot because I don't usually read books more than once anymore.

Elliott Allagash by Simon Rich, a writer for Saturday Night Live, is the author of two hilarious collections of humor, Ant Farm and Free-Range Chickens. In Elliott Allagash, his first novel, he writes of a teenage underdog Seymour Herson, who becomes the pet project of his exorbitantly wealthy, clever, and potentially evil classmate, Elliott Allagash. Allagash is the son of another evil-doer, and between the two of them, they manipulate, trick, and arrange other people and circumstances for amusement and personal gain. It’s all very funny and extremely clever. I loved Rich's previous books, which are collections of short, humorous essays: Ant Farm and Free Range Chickens.

Beauty Queens by Libby Bray

What if a group of teenage beauty queens crash-landed on a deserted tropical island and had to learn how to survive without their curling irons and manicurists? That’s the premise of Bray’s work, and it’s perfect for a wickedly funny send-up of our celebrity-obsessed, appearance-minded consumerist culture. The story is like a mash-up of Glee, America's Top Model, The Daily Show, and late-night informercial. Very fun, and very funny, but with some real material to think about, too.

Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink helps explain why I took off for a summer of solitude and competition. Pink spent years studying human behavior, specifically motivation, and found that typical strategies used to encourage better performance are misdirected and based on psychology over a half-century old. Instead of being motivated by rewards and threats of punishment, Pink asserts, humans are compelled towards accomplishment by a desire for autonomy, mastery of their skills, and a sense of purpose, and he uses scores of examples from recent psychology, neurology, and culture to illustrate his theories. Success in the future--both for employees and those who manage them--will depend on workers who are motivated intrinsically by a desire to complete a project or see an idea to fruition because they love it, and by managers who recognize this kind of desire and make it the standard operating procedure of their company. Choosing people who love their work and then getting out of their way and trusting they will do it is the key to good management, Pink asserts. Teachers, parents, personal trainers, and anyone who wants to help themselves and others in their lives achieve their potential will find something worthy to take from this book.

Bold Spirit by Linda Lawrence Hunt is the story of Helga Estby and her teenage daughter, Clara, who walked from Spokane to New York in 1896, making my little drive around the Southwest feel remarkably luxurious in comparison. Estby, the mother of nine, undertook the endeavor in order to win a cash prize that will save her family from financial ruin. Her journey and its consequences were unspoken of by her immediate family and her descendents for years after, and much of her story was lost. Hunt recreates as much as possible the trek the women undertook, its impact on her family, and the powerful importance of story-keeping and story-telling.

In You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon, interconnected short stories reveal the inner lives of and family secrets of women and men living in Fort Hood, Texas, one of the drive-by locations on my journey. From the outside, there’s nothing out of the ordinary about the insular Army community, but as this collection demonstrates, there is always a story beneath the surface. A cancer-stricken mother is bewildered and shaken by the disappearance of her belligerent teenage daughter; an intel officer sets up surveillance on his wife, a wife readers her husband’s email and discovers unsettling possibilities about marriage and military service—as do all of these amazing stories.

Bad Dog: A Love Story by Martin Kihn is the only dog-memoir I’ve read specifically about the Bernese mountain dog—the breed of my dog, Frida, who accompanied me on my roadtrip. In Kihn’s story, his marriage is crumbling due to alcoholism, and his badly behaved Berner, Hola, doesn’t help matters by terrorizing his wife. When Kihn’s wife leaves, he is determined to win her back. In addition to quitting drinking, he undertakes to re-train Hola and earn the Canine Good Citizen medal, an AKC honor for pet dogs that fulfill 10 behavioral requirements. The story of Hola and her human’s adventures to improve themselves and win back their woman reveals the fun and frustration of dog-human partnership and is a terrific read for anyone who loves—and is sometimes exasperated with—their furry friends.

I traveled through Austin, Texas, one of my favorite cities, and spent several days enjoying the sun next to Barton Springs. In James Hynes’ novel, Next, Kevin Quinn flies there for a job interview in the wake of several missile attacks on U.S. cities. The entire narrative traces this one day in Quinn’s life, as the attacks prompt him to reflect on his relationships, past and present, and on the meaning of his life. His reveries take us through his chronology of love, sex, various infatuations, regrets, and current desires, concluding in one of the most unforgettable, stunning endings I’ve experienced as a read. I cannot stop thinking about this book.

How could I not read Rebecca Makkai’s novel, The Borrower, when it’s about a librarian on a road trip?! Lucy Hull, a 26-year-old librarian, helps a 10-year-old patron escape his fundamentalist parents, who are trying to “de-gayify” him in a controversial church program. Their roadtrip across the country struck me as implausible, but their relationship was authentic and moving. The two bond over a shared love of reading, and both are struggling with families they don’t understand—in Lucy’s case, their journey enables her to sort out her complicated feelings about her Russian émigré father, who has a mysterious past. Despite straining my credulity, I loved the road trip, the book references, and sweet, precocious Ian.

The Year We Left Home by Jean Thompson was reviewed widely late this spring--I think I read about it in Oprah, People, and Entertainment Weekly, so Thompson has a pretty good publicity team. But for good reason--she's an incredible writer. I loved this novel, which centers around the changes in the family over several decades, swinging between each of the four siblings and their parents as they move away from one another and pursue lives independent of one another and the small farming community where they were raised. If you liked Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, you'll enjoy this one.

My American Unhappiness by Dean Bakopoulos was my favorite novel on the trip. Protagonist Zeke Pappas is the head of a government organization that distributes money for humanities projects and the overseer of a project on the reasons behind Americans’ unhappiness. As such, he interviews individuals and fields letters, phone messages, and emails from people unloading their burdens. His own unhappiness is another subject altogether—his estranged brother and sister-in-law have died, orphaning young twin daughters, and according to stipulations in a will, they will live with their mother’s sister out of town unless Zeke marries. His quest to find love—or at least-matrimony is only one of several subplots in this entertaining novel, at the core of which lies a secret that may explain all that is truly troubling Zeke.

On the other end of the spectrum, The Geography of Bliss is NPR correspondent Eric Weiner’s quest to discover not what makes people unhappy, but what makes them happy, and he travels to various points on the globe to what role, if any, geography plays in our happiness, any why places we’d expect to be misery-causing (isolated, freezing-cold Iceland, for example) are some of the most joyous on earth. Weiner, who admits that he’s not, on average, a particularly happy person, discovers and relates a great deal of wisdom about what makes a happy life, and his insights are often funny and profound. Weiner notes, in one chapter of The Geography of Bliss, that we often don’t know how travel changes us until long after the trip is over. I sure hope that the discoveries I made this summer, and the joy I found traveling, competing, relaxing with my dog, continue to surprise me and teach me in the months and years to come.

May Reading Recommendations

2011-06-01T04:20:00.000-07:00

This month I think I read more books with more with than pictures than I did books with more words than pictures. If that sentence made no sense, read on and all will become clear. Ish. I just realized that I didn't read a single book this month about a disappearance, and I have no explanation for that. I included information under each title about how I came across each book and happened to read it, just because Nick Hornby does that often in his column, and I thought it was interesting.

You Know Who You Are by Ben Dolnick
Display table at Village Books.

Dolnick's novel follows protagonist Jacob as he copes with the death of his mother from cancer, his evolving relationship with his older brother, Will, some female character whose name I've forgotten, and his father, Arthur, who struggles to cope with his wife's death but eventually finds love. I liked this book, and I'm sorry I've forgotten small precious details that might encourage you to like it also. That's what happens sometimes.

The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
Recommended by Chuck Robinson at Village Books. This is an incredible, beautifully written memoir. Yuknavitch, a lifelong competitive swimmer, begins her story by recalling the stillborn birth of her daughter in haunting, beautiful prose. Much of the book takes place in Eugene and Portland, where Yuknavitch completed her Ph.D. and was part of one of Ken Kesey's writing workshops. She recounts her adult life, complete with failed marriages, drug addiction, and sexual rendezvous with both men and women, and retraces the relationship with her abusive father than may have contributed to her young adult recklessness.

Skin Deep by Karol GriffinFound at Goodwill, looked like a good follow-up to Chronology of Water. Griffin is a tattoo artist, and her memoir recounts various characters she's encountered on the job and examines the changing culture of Wyoming towns that are encroached upon by outsiders seeking new lives in the West.

Secrets of the Teenage Brain by Sheryl Feinstein
Found it at a brain conference.

Every parent and teacher I know needs to read this book in order to have a better understanding of why the adolescents in their lives behave the way they do. Feinstein clearly explains the neurological science from the past two decades which reveals that the human brain is not completely developed until the early twenties. Consistent growth--particularly in the frontal lobes, which regulate decision-making--explains much more about how teens act and learn than the old "raging hormones" idea. Feinstein's use! of exclamation! points! and slightly elementary-teacher-ish tone grated on my nerves, but the information is essential and really must be a part of a responsible, comprehensive teacher education program.

The Adults by Alison Espach
Read a review in O! Magazine.

Emily Vidal is the precocious and witty narrator of this novel, which focuses on the adults in her life and the effect they have on her upbringing. The story opens at her father's 50th birthday party, a lavish backyard event her mother has organized, despite her impending divorce from Emily's father. Together with her neighbor and classmate, Mark, Emily uses the party to make observations about her parents and their friends, and at one point, the two discover a stunning secret about Emily's father and Mark's mother that will resonate for years. In high school, challenged by her mother's post-divorce depression and probable alcoholism, Emily finds security and comfort with a young teacher at the school, and again, the relationship reverberates for years. I loved Emily's voice, which was older-that-her-years, funny, and resilient despite the many failings of the adults she is surrounded by.

My Cool Caravan by Jane Field-Lewis and Chris Haddon
Found it searching for books about campers on Amazon.

Prepping the NapCamper for my big summer adventure means doing some research into the interior decorating of travel vehicles, which you and I call "campers" and "trailers" and the Brits call "Caravans." There are a scant few books about this topic, but My Cool Caravan is an excellent opportunity to gaze inside some beautifully maintained and sometimes restored caravans. Most are vintage European models with exquisite upholstery and gorgeous mid-century modern lines and details. I can't transform the NC into a rare British caravan, but I can be inspired by the colors and ideas. Yum.

This Is a Book by Demetri Martin
Found on display at Village Books and started reading it.

I am embarassed to admit that I had no idea who Demetri Martin was until I read this book, which I bought because I liked the cover and the fact that, upon thumbing through it at the book store, realized it also had short chapters and lots of funny charts and comics. Then I read it and laughed out loud over and over again, discovered lots more Demetri Martin (he has his own TV show on Comedy Central! I am such a loser) and now I am obsessed with him. He makes the funniest charts, and charts are funny. Read this book and it will cancel out one day of rain and two days of 40-something-degree weather.

Housekeeping vs. the Dirt: Fourteen Months of Massively Witty Adventures in Reading by Nick Hornby
Circuitous discovery via Amazon search for book on another topic.This is one of those books that I was sorry to see end. Finishing the final essay (all published previously as Hornby's column in The Believer) made me sorrowful because I had grown to adore Hornby's wise, funny, snarky humor about books and writing. Each month, he lists the books he purchased and the books he actually read, and then writes about the latter. But his column is really not as much a book review as it is an ongoing meditation about reading, readers, books, and culture.

Damn It Rains A Lot Here. Glad I Like Reading in Bed.

2011-04-29T10:40:00.000-07:00

It's almost not April anymore, and my homework for the month is nearly done. Given the enormous amounts of time I was unable (unwillingly) to go outside because the weather was bat-shit crazy, I would have expected to have read a lot more. But I didn't. Instead I read these books, and they were all entertaining, smart, and fun. Enjoy. (The red title is the Pick of the Month!)

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home by Rhoda Janzen is absolutely amazing. I want Rhoda Janzen to quit whatever she is doing right now and go write more books! After her husband of 15years leaves her for a guy named Bob that he met on gay.com, and she is severely injured in a car accident, Janzen returns home to her Mennonite parents for physical and emotional recuperation. In telling the story of her mid-life repair, she retraces her upbringing in the conservative Mennonite religion (they're the ones that wear the little white doily-ish hats) and her recounting is both hilarious and wise. Janzen, who left the Mennonites to pursue academia, nonetheless has a warm, funny story to tell about how her parents chose to raise her, how the church's strict beliefs shaped her strengths, and how she ultimately found comfort in the traditions and community of Mennonites as she rebuilds her life (i..e begins dating: "In my opinion sexiness comes down to three things: chemistry, sense of humor, and treatment of waitstaff at restaurants." Amen, Sister Rhoda.) In the end, I appreciated--admired, really--Janzen's ability to love her family and respect their faith while choosing another path.

My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands by Chelsea Handler is as funny as the previous book, but in an entirely different way. This is one of those books I picked up at Goodwill, and then decided to read because Mennonite in a Little Black Dress was so funny and I needed another funny book as a follow-up and I was on Spring Break and therefore, unable/willing to read anything academic or erudite. And Handler is funny. She's also lewd and ridiculous, politically incorrect and occasionally disgusting, and if she's really had all the one-night stands she writes about in this book, then ew. Nevertheless, super funny if you like reading about other people's regrettable sexual exploits, which I do. Read it if you're in a funk and need to feel better about yourself. I felt like a virgin again by the time I was done with it.

I grabbed Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, at the airport after my initial dose of Handler's deliciously gross humor. Unbeknownst to me, this book turned out to be the perfect choice, once I discovered that I was seated next to hairy-armed, bulgy-eyed man reading Anger Management for Dummies who looked like the Phillip Seymour Hoffman character from the Todd Solodnz movie Happiness (which, if you haven't seen, do NOT go watch it and then call me up and me how sick and disgusting it is and break off being friends with me. I repeat: I did NOT recommend this movie). In addition to hogging our mutual armrest and intruding into my personal no-fly zone for the entire trip, Anger Management Man also indulged his tic of rubbing his dry palms together every 2-3 minutes. During snack time, he funneled his bag of treats into his mouth from above, spilling a portion down his shirt, and then dove for the crumbs, rustling around between his manboobs until he retrieved a half a pretzel and a fuzz-covered peanut. I mentally rehearsed my Emergency List of Ways This Could Be Worse: I could have a horrible facial deformity. I could be dirt poor. I could have a bunch of children. Thankfully, I have none of these, but I do have Chelsea Handler, and I thank her.

The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer has been reviewed a great deal lately, in People and Entertainment Weekly,among other sources, so there's a good chance you've heard the buzz. The gist is this: a new, funky drama teacher arrives in Stellar Plains, and chooses the Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes as the high school's performance. In the play, the women of Greece band together to bring an end to war by refusing to have sex with their men until peace is attained. In Stellar Plains, the production of the play has a mysterious effect on the town's residents: the popular, married high school English teacher couple finds their intimacy disrupted; the heavy, long-married guidance counselor stands up to her thoughtless husband, and even the teenage girls are denying sex to their bewildered boyfriends. The events lead them all to examine themselves and their relationships with one another; a fun, smart book.

Boys and Girls Like You and Me by Aryn Kyle.

Bunches of people won't read poetry because it makes them a) think of black berets and b) feel dumb. Also, a lot of poetry seems pretentious and full of itself, which it is, and why waste time complicating your life reading it when you can shut the door and spend 10 minutes taking a happy nap with Penthouse Forum instead? Short stories can seem a bit like poems, only longer, and they have characters and dialogue and sex scenes. The best short stories showcase the best a language has to offer: original word combinations, humor, subtlety, and cleverness. Aryn Kyle's collection joins my list of favorite short stories for eactly these reasons.

Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder by Samuel Wilson Fussell is mentioned on my other blog because I 've been doing a lot of weight-lifting and strength-training as I prep for a summer of triathlons, and in doing so, have become fascinated by the way bodies change in different ways in response to exercise. Fussell, an Oxford-educated writer, decided to pursue body-building in the late 80s after being harrassed repeatedly on the streets of New York City. At 6'4" and 170 pounds, he's a stickly target. Over the next two years, he progresses from this waifishness to competitive body-building stature, gaining over 80 pounds, and offers an insider's view of the steroid-and-body-oil fueled gyms of the 80s.

Modern Ranch Living by Mark Jude Poirier is this month's missing-person novel. A teenage Sharpie-huffing loser named Petey Vaccarino disappears one summer from a Phoenix suburb, but the real focus of the story is on two characters with whom he's loosely connected: his neighbor Merv, a 30-year-old Splash World Water Park employee who still lives at home with his mother, and Kendra Lumm, a 16-year-old weightlifter who occasionally slept with the missing boy. Both of these characters are transformed by the events of this summer, but only in part due to Petey's disappearance, and their stories are the catalyst for a funny, insightful examination of what it means to develop, change, and struggle to discover what our potential is and how to reach it. I loved reading this book--Kendra is tough, funny, and grammar-challenged; her interactions with her mother, her wimpy older brother, her classmates, and the therapist she is forced to see results in some of the wittiest, most original dialogue I've read.

Why Manners Matter: The Case for Civilized Behavior in a Barbarous World by Luncinda Holdforth is a short, provocative argument in favor of manners--voluntary social agreements to adhere to certain rules of behavior. A brief summary of her main arguments: Manners matter because 1) we are social animals with habitat to protect; 2) they are more important than laws because they are less invasive and better than social confusion; 3) they nurture equality; 4) order matters for freedom; 5) rudeness won't make us authentic; manners aren't just for right-wing bigots; manners advance social progress; 6) McDonald's doesn't own matters (you definitely have to read this chapter to get what her point is here); and 7) they give us dignity by improving communication, preventing premature intimacy, unlocking our humanity and making life beautiful. Teachers and parents take note.

I Knew a Woman by Cortney Davis is a nurse practioner's account of working with women over the course of her career and what she has learned about women's bodies as a result. Davis follows the cases of four clients--a pregnant teenager, a drug-addicted mother, a post-menopausal woman with cancer, and a thirty-something woman whose past, when uncovered, reveals the reason behind her sexual problems. Following each woman's story is sort of like watching an episode of Grey's Anatomy or House--a medical drama unfolds gradually and suspensely, and we learn something about medicine in the process. Davis is a gifted writer who has written books of poetry, and her talent for prose makes this a fascinating and thoughtful read.

March Reads

2011-04-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

YAY Books! I had the best reading month--inspiring advice, fun novels, and just a great mix of quirk and kink. I've highlighted the one book I'd most recommend once again. As always, I encourage you to support your locally owned bookstores and public libraries!

Seeing Me Naked by Liza Palmer is a quick read about Elisabeth Page, a pastry chef in Los Angeles who has long lived in the shadow of her Pulitzer-Prize-winning father, author Ben Page, and in the comfortable, familiar arms of Will, her longtime boyfriend. When she meets Daniel Sullivan, her options for the future suddenly change, she creeps out of the shadow of her wealthy, notorious family to find a life waiting for her that is much different than the one she expected. I like this kind of smart, sassy, upbeat chick lit.

The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan uses a gimmick to tell the story: each page is an entry in a dictionary, with a brief vignette or observation instead of a definition. All of these short entries add up to a portrait of a relationship between members of an unnamed couple. I love Levithan's writing--poetic, spare, subtle, and original. Two quotes from the book that I appreciated: 1) "Fuck you for cheating on me. Who came up with the term cheating, anyway? A cheater, I imagine. Someone who thought liar was too harsh. Someone who thought devastator was too emotional. Fuck you. This isn't about slipping yourself an extra twenty dollars of Monopoly money. These are our lives. You went and broke our lives." 2) "The key to a successful relationship isn't just in the words, it's in the choice of punctuation. When you're in love with someone, a well-placed question mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster, and a deeply respected period or a cleverly inserted ellipsis can prevent all kinds of exclamations." (Try it. He's right.)

Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso. I read this book so you that don't have to. Seriously, this is an 11 on the ick-factor scale, and I read it only because reviews in Oprah and Entertainment Weekly led me astray; I had heard that it would be controversial; and I want to be able to participate in the dialogue of that controversy from a knowledgeable standpoint. Not sure I'm right about that. The gist is this: Fragoso was sexually abused from the time she was 7 until the age of 22 by a man 44 years her senior, and she recounts in detail how the relationship between her and "Peter," her abuser developed as she and her mentally ill mother spent more and more time at Peter's home, in scenarios that will remind readers of the f***ed mess described by Augusten Burroughs in his memoir Running With Scissors (only not at ALL funny). She includes the details of their sexual encounters and I cannot stress enough how disturbing this is; although her prose is skillful and the storytelling compelling, I can't help but feel a more nuanced writer (and one who wanted to warn us of the danger in the world, rather than share it with us) would have been able to relay the sheer horror of these events without giving us an up-close-and-personal view of her tormentor's scrotum. Seriously. Yuck.

Nothing by Janne Teller is a short young adult novel with long-lasting impact. Like Lord of the Flies, it offers a glimpse at the powerful and destructive nature of peers on one another, especially when those peers are children acting unregulated by experience, wisdom, and adutl guidance. In this story, a student announces to his classmates that nothing means anything, and proceeds to stop attending school and hang out in a tree instead. The other students, eager to prove him wrong, beging accumulating a mass of items that are meaningful to them by challenging each other to relinquish their most prized possessions. Their challenges escalate to the point of violence, and yet the question continues to haunt them--does anything mean anything? And if so, what? Absolutely one of the most powerful YA novels I've ever read.

Adios, Nirvana by Conrad

Seattle writers have made a rich contribution to the YA literature scence, and this new novel is no exception. Set in West Seattle, it is the story of Jonathan, who has recently lost his twin brother in an accident. Failing school and slacking just about everywhere else, Jonathan's only real pleasures are writing and music, both of which he excels at. His high school prinicpal gives him a chance to make up his missing credits by collaborating with a dying WWII vet on the creation of his memoir. That part of the story fell apart a little at the end, but the voice, the teen writer/musician narrator, and the presence of Eddie Vedder more than redeem this excellent story.

Smooth: Erotic Stories for Women edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel
There's such a thing as snow porn. Who knew?

Don't You Forget about Me by Jancee Dunn

Lillian Curtis returns to her hometown after her husband announces he wants a divorce, and finds herself reconnecting with old friends--including her gorgeous ex-boyfriend--as they prepare for their twentieth class reunion. I adored this book for lots of reasons--a narrator who was in pain without wallowing, the connection to the late 80's, and especially Lillian's boss, a 70-something ex-starlet who hosts a TV talk show and lives life to the fullest. Very sweet and the writing was great, thanks to Jancee Dunn's years and experience--including dozens of cover stories for Rolling Stone. Read it if you liked Big Love and Secrets to Happiness by Sarah Dunn (no relation, as far as I know).

The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander

Easily one of the most inspiring books I've read, the art of possibility offers guidelines for reframing our thinking to make room for possibilities that we might not have contemplated, such as remembering that "it's all invented" and we have the power to reimagine ourselves and our lives and make those imaginings a reality. In terms of offering new ideas and supporting anecdotes about how to make your work, interpersonal connections, and personal goals a reality, this is a powerful, uplifting book.

Three Stages of Amazement by Carol Edgarian

Lena and Charlie find their marriage, already made fragile by the death of their newborn twin, strained even further by a cross-country move and Charlie's tenuous grasp on a business deal. Though the writing was gorgeous, I thought this story was a real downer. So unfair to dismiss a well-crafted piece of contemporary literature this way, when it's really and admirable piece of writing, but I wasn't really in the mood for a marriage-on-the-rocks story, no matter how beautifully spun. I enjoyed both The Heights by Peter Hedges (less financial talk, more sex and tension--also some mean girl action) and The Inheritances by Jonathan Dee (still about rich people, but they're less whiny) more.

Drinking Closer to Home by Jessica Anya Blau

Every now and then, I stumble upon a book that I begin reading and have to carry with me everywhere I go in order to sneak pages while I wait in line, get stuck in traffic, or blow my nose between sets at the gym. This month, this was that book. For starters, I love funny stories wherein big, dysfunctional families with scads of adult siblings and their lovers, husbands, children, and so forth gather a la Big Chill to air their memories and grievances, and this is definitely one of those stories. Anna, Portia, and their brother Emery are summoned home when their mother, Louise, finally has the heart attack she's been smoking towards for their entire lives. Louise and her husband, Buzzy, raised their children in a filthy, pot-smoke-filled home in Santa Barbara in the 70s, and it is between then and now that we rotate, gaining a thorough and hilarious insight into the history of the family and its bizarre mechanisms. Author Jessica Blau freely admits to basing the characters on her own parents and siblings, and an interview with family members at the end of the book adds an additional, entertaining dimension to this novel. Read it.

February Reads and Recommendations

2011-02-15T08:28:00.000-08:00

If you're on my Facebook, you know that I whined interminably about the length of January this year. It took too long, cost too much, felt too miserable, and is now, happily, nothing but a dim blip in the rearview mirror of my life.

However, because it seemed to be comprised entirely of excess hours, January afforded me the opportunity to read 13 books, most of which were amazingly good. February, unlike its predecessor, whipped along in an ever-lightening frenzy, hurtling us all toward spring as if the planet spun extra-fast in sort of cosmic meth trip. Accordingly, I didn't read nearly as much. I did, however, follow my rule of reading stuff that excited me and inspired me to encourage others to pick it up, too. Here it is, a list of what I read in February, again with the title of the one book I recommend most highlighted in red just in case you don't have time for more.

A Thousand Cuts by Simon Celic
High school teacher Samuel Szajkowski enters a school assembly one day with a loaded gun and proceeds to take aim, killing three students, a colleague, and himself. The crime is then dissected from various angles, most of which take the form of first person narratives delivered to Lucia May, the police detective assigned to investigate the crime. May's inquiries into the cause of the event, however, make her superiors uncomfortable, as she discovers hints that the tragedy might have resulted from something other than just the deranged and psychotic impulses of a sick and twisted man. Instead, as she interviews his students, his colleagues, his former lover, and others, she learns that Samuel was tormented by students about his appearance, his teaching style, and just about everything else--bullied much like students who don't fit in are bullied--and that the mistreatment he suffered may have led to his eventual outburst. The novel offers a unique look at a crime and its potential genesis, as well as presenting an angle on bullying that isn't often handled in fiction (or otherwise).

All About Lulu by Jonathan Evison

Evison is a Seattle writer whose latest novel, West of Here, about generations of families on the Olympic Peninsula, is receiving all kinds of acclaim, but I haven't read it; I read All About Lulu instead after seeing it on display at Village Books. Set in the 80's, it's narrated by teenager Will Miller, who starts the story sounding a bit like Holden Caufield, but (thankfully) that voice doesn't persist and we get instead a smart and likeable young man slightly adrift in a family where he doesn't fit. His mother has died of cancer, leaving Will alone with his father, Bill Sr., (a.k.a. Big Bill), a competitive body builder, and his two younger brothers, Doug and Ross, identical twins who are also weightlifters and (in Will's estimation) not so smart. Family dynamics change dramatically when Big Bill meets and marries Willow, who moves into the Miller residence with her daughter Lulu. Lulu and Will become inseparable--a closeness that veers close to and eventually becomes obsession on Will's part--until one summer when Lulu returns from her grandparents' home mysteriously distant. The story follows Will through high school and beyond as he tries to solve the mystery of Lulu's disconnect and re-establish their friendship. I found myself cheering for Will, enchanted by the multi-dimensional Big Bill and his body-building younger sons, amused by the 80's setting, and entertained by the novel in more ways than I can count.

Food Rules: An Eater's Manual by Michael Pollan
I'm really lazy about reading sometimes, so I haven't ever finished Pollan's opus, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and so this brief pocket-sized guide to eating is the perfect refresher on what to eat and why. Basically, his message is simple: eat food, mostly plants, not too much. These three rules are broken down in more detail, creating a list of 64 rules total that are still pretty easy to follow, emphasizing the need to avoid processed foods, eat mostly vegetables and fruits, and to eat less. Only the exorbitantly confrontational person could find anything to argue about here; Pollan's list is based on common sense and science, and while it will undoubtably piss off the fast-food and packaged food industry, it's really tough to claim that he doesn't know what he's talking about or that he isn't right. Buy a copy and keep it in your kitchen.

How to Become a Scandal by Laura Kipnis
Kipnis deftly, and briefly, analyzes why we are obsessed with--and in many cases, gleeful about--scandals. She examines four recent, well-known scandalous events in the headlines: the case of Lisa Nowak, an esteemed astronaut who traveled 950 miles by car to confront her ex-lover's new girlfriend; the downfall of Judge Sol Wachtler; the betrayal of Monica Lewinsky by her "friend" and confidante Linda Tripp; and the exaggerations that led A Million Little Pieces author James Frey to humiliation. Rather than just summarizing the salacious events, Kipnis writes intelligently about human nature and carefully dissects why scandalous stories have such appeal, and why public interest in them reveals more about the public than it does the one who committed the offense. Timeless, entertaining, and thoughtful.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

Here it is, the monthly missing-person novel. Larry Ott is living alone, tending his chickens and minding his auto shop when he is ambushed in his home, shot and left for dead. Accused years earlier for the disappearance of a local teenage girl, Larry has spent his life living in the shadow of suspicion created by the event, and now another girl has vanished and Larry is again suspected in her disappearance. Larry's shooting is thought to be self-inflicted: unable to live with his crimes, the townspeople think, Scary Larry has finally decided to kill himself this time. But he doesn't die, and the investigation into his near-fatal shooting is headed by his old childhood friend, Silas, now the town constable. As Silas investigates Larry's attack and the missing girl, he, himself, is forced to confront his past friendship with Larry and the secrets he keeps about what happened years earlier. Dynamic, original characters paired with a gripping storyline kept me reading this through the weekend!

Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren

At 19, Jillian Lauren had worked as a high-paid prostitute and stripper, and was pursuing a career as an actress when a friend in the escort business offered her an opportunity to travel to Brunei, where she would be one of about 40 young women in the harem of Prince Jefri. Eager for adventure and money, Lauren accepted the offer and spent a couple of years living among beautiful women from around the world who were competing for the attention of Prince Jefri, one of the wealthiest men on the globe. Her experience was disheartening, of course--despite the money, competition among the women was soul-crushing, privacy was non-existant, and there was little to do, as the women were allowed no personal freedom. Lauren's story is fascinating, if a little sad, and her writing is admirable. Flashbacks into her past reveal just enough about her to partly explain why she agreed to participate in the harem, but I would have liked a little more analysis and introspection.

Day for Night by Frederick Reiken was an absolutely fabulous read that reminded me in some ways of Jennifer Egan's book A Visit from the Goon Squad, which I recommended last month. Told by ten narrators, Reiken's novels pieces together a series of interlocking mysteries that weave characters' lives together. Included among the characters and their connections are Beverly Rabinovitz, who escaped Poland in WWII; her boyfriend, David, who is dying of leukemia; their children; an odd couple of musicians, Tim and Dee, who have a loose connection to a woman on the run from the FBI, and Dillon, Dee's 21-year-old comatose brother, and a bunch of other minor players. Somehow Reiken manages to blend these characters' stories together within a plot that involves the Holocaust, Satanic ritual abuse, manatees, and a bunch of other seemingly random topics to create a beautifully written, thoroughly engaging story that kept me riveted.

When She Flew by Jennie Shortridge is the second novel I've read that is based loosely on the true story of a man and his adolescent daughter living in a Portland Park. My Abandonment by Peter Rock, was reviewed here awhile back, and is the more literary of the two books, both of which focus on "Frank and Ruth," who in 2005 were ou sted from their wilderness camp by authorities but received much support from the community at large. Shortridge's version of events switches between two point of view: that of Lindy, the 12-year-old girl who's found living in the woods, and Jess Villareal, a police officer assigned to the case. Lindy's observations are told in first-person, and reflect her love of her father and nature and aher angst at being torn from the home she's known for five years. Jess's perspective is third-person, which is unfortunate, because her side of the story feels more like something we're being told, rather than something she's telling us--her emotions are narrated, rather than shown. In addition, Villareal's response to the events hinges upon her discord with her own daughter, which worked in a Lifetime-movie-of-the-week kind of way but frankly, felt sort of artificial.

It's March now, and I've got a lot of reading to do.

Happy International Quirkyalone Day!

2011-02-10T11:40:00.000-08:00

It took me almost 40 years to figure it out and own it, but I am a loner. My parents could probably have attested to this fact long ago, when, not content to simply have my own room, I rigged a hanging flashlight from the clothes rod and fashioned an even more secluded space to read The Boxcar Children in my closet.

And now I'm all grown up and have a house and I STILL do this--squirrel away in some nook and do my own thing (usually sew or paint), praying that no one will bother me at least until this episode of Big Love is over and then I can be social in a time and place that I've already predesignated and set aside for that purpose. 7:30-7:45 p.m.: Make Small Talk With Roommates. Act Interested.

I am a loner who doesn't live alone or work alone or even work out alone. I have three roommates; I work in a high school with 1000 kids and a hundred co-workers; I exercise amid the masses. Regardless, I am a consummate loner, living by myself inside my own head, moving among you, enduring you and silently judging you (just kidding, that's from Magnolia).

Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics by Sasha Cagen pretty much sums up the highlights of alonedom: the belief that life is amazing and fun without a mate, and that not having a partner isn't a sign that one has failed to accomplish one thing but chosen to do another. Cagen carefully defines quirkyalone, pointing out the different between those who are merely weird and lonely from those who are social and actively pursue a solitudinous (pretty sure that's not a word) existance punctuated by forays into civilization for entertainment and comfort. She lists famous folks who prefer to live alone, chronicles the quirkyalones through history, discusses the complicated business of quirkyalones, love, and partnerships, and most of all, offers a documentation of all that is right with pursuing a life of sassy singlehood.

It's Valentine's Day, and for an extraordinary number of us, it means not candlelights and chocolates, but another episode of Mad Men, some quality sofa time with the dog, and a Lean Cuisine. Would I rather have a foot massage and a bouquet? Maybe. But it doesn't have to happen today. I have Jon Hamm, after all, and Frida, and Cagen's book full of insight and humor. I'm not alone at all.

January 2011 Reads

2011-02-02T10:45:00.000-08:00

My New Year's Goal, to laugh hard every day, was accompanied this year by a renewed commitment to read more, and to read more stuff that I sincerely want to press into the hands of my reading acquaintances. No more slogging through something just because I paid money for it--I'm determined to make better selections and to quit reading when something bogs me down, so that I can create a list of truly awesome recommendations. Here's what I read January 1-31st, 2011.

For those of you who have lives filled with romance and adventure and unlike this narrator, don't have piles of time laying around in which to read 13 books a month, I have conveniently highlighted in red the title of the one book that you must absolutely read this month. The others are essential, too.

The Last Child by John Hart is a quality suspense story about a teenager who is determined to solve his sister's mysterious disappearance on his own. This story is multi-layered, with well-developed subplots, dynamic, complex characters, and a plot that steers away from police-procedural formula.

The Neighbors are Watching by Debra Ginsberg is another fantastic suspense story, this time set in Del Mar, California, a bedroom community of San Diego, during a giant wildfire. A pregnant teen has run away to live with the father she's never met, and her sudden appearance (and subsequent disappearance) wreak havoc on a small, tidy neighborhood which, it turns out, is full of seemingly upstanding citizens who are harboring a few nasty secrets of their own.

Secrets to Happiness by Sarah Dunn tells the story of Holly Frick, recently thrust into an unwanted singlehood after her husband leaves her, and the recipient of confessions and complaints by practically everyone, including her best friend, who divulges the secrets of her own infidelity. Holly's not looking for love, just happiness, and her quest leads her to some unique and hilarious conclusions. I loved that this story of a smart, funny single didn't rely on her finding the perfect guy and/or becoming a mother in order to be happy--a testament to those of us quirkyalones who are building different lives. Dunn's writing, especially the dialogue, is the kind I want to read aloud to people just because it's so spot-on, so funny, and so very, very true.

The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich is the basis for The Social Network, and is apparently, only ONE side of the contentious relationship between Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard classmates who co-conceived of (depending on who you ask) Facebook. It's a quick read, and worth a few hours just so you get the background for the movie. I'm on the look-out for a more well-rounded version of events.

A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan has appeared on practically every best-of-2010 list I've encountered, and with good reason. Although not told in a traditional format (one chapter is narrated in PowerPoint slides), the multiple viewpoints and non-linear travel through the characters' lives only deepen and enrich this story, which revolves around an assortment of people associated with and affected by a charismatic music producer--including his high school bandmates, his lovers, and many others. I can't describe it adequately. I also couldn't stop reading it.

Second Wind by Cami Ostman is the non-fiction account of Ostman's journey around the world, completing a marathon on every continent, which is awesome in about a billion ways PLUS she lives in Bellingham and I know her. Her book is funny, thoughtful, and inspiring, and it will make you believe in your own ability to recreate your life and savor your talents, gifts, and challenges.

Racing for Recovery is the one book I read this month that didn't really excite me. I'm training for triathlons, so I'm looking for narratives and memoirs about other triathletes--there aren't many out there--and this is one I found. A drug addict cleans up his life and becomes an ironman. The story's inspiring, the writing isn't.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman is amazingly smart without being pretentious or difficult to read. Interrelated stories of characters affected by their employment or readership of an English-language, old-school newspaper in Rome tell the story of the paper's rise and fall, which sounds really dry, but it's not. Each story is a tiny, detailed, absorbing world rich with weird characters and unexpected plot twists.

Annabel by Kathleen Winter tells the story of a baby born with both male and female genitalia to a family in rural Nova Scotia. His parents decide to raise him as a boy named Wayne and keep the truth about his anatomy secret--even from him. But secrets--their keeping and their discovery--are what make stories worth reading, and this one is no exception. But it isn't the secrecy that makes the novel so phenomenal, it's the characters and the unexpected way they respond to Wayne and the challenges that accompany his growing up. NOT a "problem novel," this is a rich portrait of isolated people attempting to deal with an unimaginable anomaly in an otherwise remote and ordinary place. Gorgeous writing, likeable characters, an unusual premise--a must-read.

Matched by Allie Condie is the only young adult book I read this month, but it was awesome. The story will remind some people of The Giver by Lois Lowry, as it takes places in the future, in a society where government manipulation allows everyone to be equal, and regulations manage everything to when and what is eaten to your job, life partner, and clothing. Cassia, at 16, is about to be "matched," or assigned her life partner. A special ceremony will reveal the mate selected for her by the government agency that studies and selects the best fit. When she attends her Match ceremony, Cassia is thrilled discover that her best friend, Xander, has been chosen as her mate. But when she reviews the data card later, she sees, for a brief instant, another image--of another boy. Curious, she begins investigating, and discovers that a technical glitch has allowed her to see something no one else has ever been allowed to see--an alternative. Cassia's exploration in options is dangerous for her and for her society, but once the possibility becomes available, it's impossible to resist. Part love story, part warning, Matched is a terrific read--and not just for teens.

One Day by David Nicholls revisits Emma and Dexter yearly on the day they originally met in college and had a one-night stand. Following their lives and intersections for twenty years, we watch as their friendship grows and changes as each pursues career goals and love interests. The affection they share is what makes the story so likeable, and I found myself pleading with them to get together once and for all through the whole book. More than just a rom-com, this story delves a little deeper into the characters' lives, motivations, mistakes, and disappointments. A younger Hugh Grant might have been cast as Dexter, but in this one (due out July 8, 2011) it's going to be Jim Sturgess alongside Anne Hathaway. I expect it to rock.

Half a Life by Darin Strauss. As a teenager, Darin Strauss struck a classmate riding her bike while out driving, killing her. Although the death was ruled an accident, that doesn't stop it from haunting him throughout his adult life, his own success as a writer continually reminding him of the life cut short by the accident. I expected this book to make me weep, but it never strays into weepy, maudlin territory, nor does Strauss plead with us to feel his sorrow and guilt about the accident. A bad thing happened, it changed a young man's life and the lives of the family members of the young woman killed, and this story shows what that was like. Strauss's story is simply and skillfully told, a meditation on mortality and chance.

The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard. Well this is it--the one book I read this month that I would recommend you read if you have time for no others. And yes, it's a missing persons story (I have a weakness for those). Nora Lindell goes missing in high school, and the story follows the teenage boys who knew and admired her as they carry on with their lives, all of them imagining what might have happened to their classmate. The framework--missing girls, those she left behind--isn't what makes it remarkable. The narration however, is unique without drawing attention to itself; one of the boys--unidentified--speaks in an omniscient, plural first person that offers a collection view of Nora, her family, the neighborhood, and the time period. Perhaps most significant are the carefully crafted possible scenarios presented as explanations for what happened to Nora. I can't really say anymore...you'll just have to read it.

And now it is February. Stay tuned.

Every Freaking Book I Read in 2010, Part One

2011-01-13T10:01:00.000-08:00

If the title is highlighted in red, that means "Hey people, this is one of my top recommendations!" I didn't even read 50 books in 2010, and that's probably because I got really into sewing, and that shit is like crack.

JANUARY-JULY (ish) 2010
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. (Fiction)
An eerie, creepy novel in which the horror behind the set-up unfolds so subtly you feel almost as though you’ve been tricked into reading a story you never would have chosen. Children being raised in a boarding school-cum-orphanage develop intense relationships as they mature and discover the true reasons why they are living where and how they are.

Schusterman, Neal. Unwind. (Young Adult Fiction)
In a futuristic America, abortion is no longer legal, but parents can choose to have their children “unwound” when they turn 13—basically, have them sent to harvesting centers, where they’ll gradually be parted out.Three teens--one who's been created specifically as a donation, one who's disappointed his parents, and a third who has failed to develop her talents in a foster home--escape from their fate and try to survive on the run from the authorities.

Grodstein, Lauren. A Friend of the Family. (Fiction)
Excruciating, but well-written and un-put-downable. A father tries to stop his 20-year-old son from dating an older woman with a very dark secret in her past.

Best Sex Writing 2010.(Mostly Fiction)
Meh.

Benway, Robin. Audrey, Wait! (Young Adult Fiction)
Very funny YA about a girl who is made famous when her ex-boyfriend writes a song about her that becomes a hit. Perfect for Meg Cabot fans.

Ferris, Joshua. The Unnamed. (Fiction)
A man suffers from an unnamed, unexplained disorder that compels him to walk aimlessly for hours, even days, at a time. OK, so a book about a guy walking endlessly sounds boring, but in Ferris's story, it is a fascinating memoir for our times--who are we? We are we going? And most importantly, why? Unique and smart. One of my favorite novels of the year.

Mitchell, Mary. Americans in Space. (Fiction)
Kind of lame story about a screwed up high school counselor. I liked the writing, but not the characters or the story.

Pierson, DC. The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To. (Fiction)
One teen befriends another, and the two embark on a wacky adventure to write a comic book or something. Funny for awhile, then I realized I don’t really like wacky that much.

Hubbard, Jennifer. The Secret Year. (Young Adult Fiction)
A teenage boy mourns the death of the girl with whom he had a secret relationship.

Johnson, Marilyn. This Book is Overdue! (Non-Fiction)
A peek into the lives of librarians. Some good stuff, but way too much about librarians in cyberspace and virtual lives. I could write better, but I probably won’t.

Cross, David. I Drink for a Reason. (Non-Fiction Humorous Essays)
The funniest book I read all year. David Cross is a genius. There are essays in here I will quote for years, even if I don’t drink anymore. (And actually, the essays are about pop and political culture, not about drinking, anyway). David Cross=David Sedaris+Bill Maher.

Knowles, Jo. Jumping Off Swings. (YA Fiction)
Another teen pregnancy story. Who cares. But then again, at least it's not about vampires.

Stead, Rebecca. When You Reach Me. (YA Fiction)
Cool story about a girl receiving mysterious messages. A good recommendation for readers who liked I Am the Messenger.

Welch. The Kids are All Right. (Non-Fiction/Memoir)
(Not the basis for the movie of the same title).
Four teens are orphaned and divided up among family friends and relatives, where each struggles to find happiness and identity before they are reunited. Very good—good recommendation for anyone who liked A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.

Udall, Brady. The Lonely Polygamist. (Fiction)
I loved this novel about a polygamist with four wives and 28 children who finds himself in moral turmoil when he is attracted to another woman and caught in the midst of the complications in his own enormous family. Read this if you like reading, and also if you like Big Love.

Halpern, Justin. Shit My Dad Says. (Humor)
A collection of the hilarious and usually profane remarks made by Halpern’s dad.

Levithan, David. Will Grayson, Will Grayson. (YA Fiction)
A gay teen named Will Grayson meets another boy with the same name, and their lives become intertwined. Good reading—Levithan is one of my favorite YA authors, and he does a really good job with LGBTQ lit.

The Lighter Side of Life and Death. (YA Fiction)
A guy gets involved (read: has sex with) a much older girl. Some other stuff happens, but I’ve forgotten, so I’ll file this one under “teen drama/romance” and leave it at that.

Mulgrew, Jason. Everything is Wrong With Me.
Humorous essays. I keep wanting every humorist I read to be David Sedaris, and they’re not, but they’re still funny, just not as funny, which sounds like a condemnation, which it’s not.

Almond, Steve. Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life. (Non-Fiction)
Steve Almond can write anything and I’ll read it. His fiction is amazing, his non-fiction is amazing, and this book was funny and insightful, just like everything he writes. But then again, I think anyone who defends their love of Styx is pretty incredible. Not just for music lovers or survivors of the 80s, this is a manifesto for lovers of music who may have felt previously that their tastes were shameful. No more. Whatever your audiological kinks, you’ll appreciate Almond’s acute observations about music.

Green, George Dawes. Ravens. (Fiction)Gripping suspense story about a couple of In Cold Blood-like hoodlums who discover a family has won the state lottery before it hits the media and then hold the family hostage to extort their winnings. How the money affects the individual family members, and how the bumbling bad guys terrorize the family is scary, but it doesn't make me want to win the lottery any less.

McNally, John. After the Workshop. (Fiction)A publicist who has the thankless job of escorting visiting authors to their venues is in big trouble when one of them goes missing. McNally is funny and suspenseful, and so far, I’ve enjoyed everything he’s written. This one will have special appeal for writers and anyone involved in the publishing world or the world of writers’ workshops.

Young-Stone, Michele. Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors. (Fiction)A young woman struck twice by lightning meets another lightning strike survivor and the two begin a relationship to figure out the mysterious connection between them. I liked this book; I wish I could remember the details.

The Late, Lamented Molly Marx. (Fiction)After she is mysteriously killed, Molly Marx continues to be cognizant of the living world, and watches as investigators and friends try to solve the mystery of her death. A light, funny, chick-lit mystery that took me too long to read.

Nielsen, Susin. Word Nerd. (Fiction)
Scrabble-lovers, rejoice! This is a fun YA read about Ambrose, a self-described nerd, who moves regularly with his mother. At their latest home, he begins pestering Cosmo, the adult son of the Greek neighbors. Cosmo’s been in trouble with the law, and Ambrose hangs out with him against his mother’s orders, eventually attending a local Scrabble club and becoming a favorite among the other players. His participation and his secrecy have consequences, however, that no one could have predicted. I LOVED this book—it reminded me of some of the other awesome YA/tween books like The Giver, Holes, anything by E.L. Konigsburg (The View from Saturday, etc.).

Home Sweet Home

2010-11-30T10:14:00.000-08:00

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...

2010-10-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-20T08:57:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-04-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-02-25T08:11:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-02-15T08:24:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-28T10:08:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-06T11:11:00.000-08:00

"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.

2009-11-11T08:19:00.000-08:00

It's almost not entirely a coincidence that I'm writing about Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer on (or around) Veteran's Day. I would be writing about it anyway, eventually, so why not now? Even though I'm not quite done reading it, it's well worth recommending, and far more appropriate for a solemn national holiday than the other two books I just read, one entitled How Sex Works and the other a young adult novel in which the plot hinges on a scene where the narrator craps his pants.

If you're unfamiliar with the story, Pat Tillman was a professional football player who, following the 9/11 attacks, gave up his $3 million contract and joined the Army with his younger brother, Kevin. The two trained together and became members of an elite force, were sent to Afghanistan, and Pat Tillman was killed. Investigations into his death revealed that he had been accidentally shot by an American soldier and that the incident was covered up by the military.

Krakauer has a talent for delving deep into the backstory when he writes; Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, and Under the Banner of Heaven all provided thorough examinations not only of the individuals he wrote about, but the circumstances and politics surrounding their situations. His story of Pat Tillman's life and death is no different. Krakauer begins with an explanation of the conflict in Afghanistan, including the formation of the Taliban, that involved a lot of names and words that are really hard to spell and pronounce and which I will never remember. However, it did provide me with a better understanding of why the U.S. got involved.

The best parts of the book, however (and probably the reason most people will read it) are the details about Pat Tillman, his life and personality, and his almost unfathomable decision to give up his life's dream to go to war. Tillman was, as Krakauer clearly illustrates, a charismatic, intelligent and sometimes inscrutable character who doesn't fit the NFL stereotypes. Details about his life come mainly from his widow, Marie Tillman, who worked closely with Krakauer in writing the story and who continues to do work in memory of Pat Tillman.

I haven't finished reading Where Men Win Glory yet. I'm stuck on the portion about the Tillmans' relationship, their deep love for one another, and the affection that Pat Tillman wrote about regularly in letters to Marie and his own journals. The tragedy of his death is magnified by this fully realized portrait of who Pat Tillman was not just unto himself, but in the lives of those who were deeply affected by his charisma, humor, intelligence, and eventually, his death.

Short, Sweet, Easy to Eat

2009-10-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

Nicholson Baker has long been one of my favorite writers, every since I read his weirdly wonderful novel The Mezzanine years ago. In his latest novel, The Anthologist, Baker's protagonist is Paul Chowder, an anthologist charged with writing the introduction to a collection of poems. Chowder, however, has a severe case of writer's block, and can't seem to manage to eke out the 10-12 pages he needs to write. Instead, he finds himself explaining poetry--what it is, how it works, why it's wonderful.

Why it's wonderful is because Nicholson Baker is writing about it, and he has a gift for language unsurpassed by any living writer, in my opinion. Even non-poetry lovers will appreciate his humor and insight, and they'll learn some things about poems in the process, and a great deal about the art of writing, too. This is one of those books where I found myself sticky-noting passages to return to later (of course, half those sticky notes fell off when I was reading in bed and got stuck in my hair while I slept, but nevertheless).

The irony, of course, in Paul Chowder's life, is that for all the time he spends explicating the art of poetry, he could have easily finished his assignment (not unlike some high school students I know who spend more time complaining than researching). Thank god he doesn't, because his observations are much more interesting. One of my favorites is his criticism of haiku, a poetic form that I've never really liked. And here it is, the reason why, perfectly articulated: "This is the kind of poetry that makes perfect, thrilling sense in Japanese, and makes no sense whatsoever in English. That's what [the teacher] should have told us. This form is completely out of step with the English language. Seven syllables, eleven syllables, five syllables? Come on, how does English poetry actually work. It doesn't work that way. I don't know Japanese, but haiku in Japanese had all kinds of interesting salt-glaze impurities going on that are stripped away in translation."

My nephew, Thomas, is just a month shy of his fourth birthday, and has become fascinated by rhymes in recent months, making Paul Chowder's commentary on rhyming especially poignant in a kind of an "a-ha! so that's why rhymes are so much fun!" kind of way. "The tongue is a rhyming fool," Baker writes. "It wants to rhyme because that's how it stores what it knows. It's got a detailed checklist for every consonant and vowel...and somewhere in there, on some neural net in your underconsciousness, stored away, all these checklists, or neuromuscular profiles, or call them sound curves, are stored away, like the parts of car bodies, or spoons, with similar shapes nested near each other...what rhyming poems do is they take all these nearby sound curves and remind you that they first existed that way in your brain..." Well, that's probably more complicated than anything Thomas understands, but it works for me. Chances are, it works for you, too.

Catchup Is Delicious

2009-09-23T13:22:00.001-07:00

I returned recently from a quick weekend trip to San Francisco, where I met up with my parents, aunts Barbara and Marjorie, cousins, and good friends Steve and Amy. The time with them really made me thankful that despite its assorted weirdnesses (Aunt Barbara's collection of seasonally attired Barbie dolls, for example, and my dad's trunk full of glow-in-the-dark ephemera), my family and its extensions have really good juju.

Besides traipsing around Chinatown, Haight, and NorthBeach, I also read a lot. On the plane, on BART during an extended tour of Oakland (I took the wrong train at one point), and at SeaTac during my three-hour layover waiting for a flight home to Bellingham (and yes, I realize I could practically walk home in that amount of time. Thanks, Horizon!) At any rate, here's a wrap-up of some of the best I've read recently:

This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

Quite possibly the funniest book I've read this year, Tropper's novel features a family with a little more baggage than mine. The four adult siblings gather to sit shiva for their recently dead father, and bring a load of issues, resentments, and current FUBAR life scenarios with them. Narrated by thirty-something Judd (whose wife has recently left him for his boss), this novel brims with spot-on dialogue, loads of physical comedy, a simple plot that nevertheless twists and surprises, and intelligent insights that had me folding down corners. "You can sit up here," Judd muses, "feeling above it all while knowing you're not, coming to the lonely conclusion that the only thing you can ever really know about anyone is that you don't know anything about them at all." Amen.

Songs for the Missing by Stewart O'Nan

If you're a regular reader of this blog (and who isn't, really?), you may be familiar with my appreciation for missing person stories. I love the intrigue and the tension of stories about people who've vanished, and Stewart O'Nan's latest novel, Songs for the Missing, has both, plus a whole lot more. The plot revolves around the disappearance of Kim Larsen during the summer before she's about to leave home for college. Like The Lovely Bones, the story focuses on the impact of the mystery on Kim's family and friends, and their struggle to cope with their bewilderment, grief, and (for some) sense of guilt. Could not put down. Gripping, with a satisfying ending.

Accidentally on Purpose by Mary Pols (Memoir)

Mary Pols, at 39, gets pregnant after a one-night stand with a much-younger guy, decides to write a book about it, the book gets optioned for a TV show and she probably has way more money now. As much as I liked the story and Pols' writing, I couldn't help but feel a little sad throughout, because even though her adorable and sexy baby-daddy carries through on his promise to stick around and help raise their son, he isn't a partner in every respect, and despite his love for their boy, he doesn't love Mary, and that emptiness echoes throughout the story. It's enough to make a person rush out to Fred Meyer and buy condoms.

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

The protagonists of Hornby's novel, Annie and Duncan, have been together for fifteen years, but their relationship is ending, in part because of Duncan's obsession with a reclusive musician named Tucker Crowe who hasn't recorded an album in 20 years.

When Annie intercepts a recording that has been sent to Duncan by a fan of his Tucker Crowe fansite, she discovers it is a raw recording of the songs on Crowe's most famous album, Juliet. In listening to it before Duncan does, she violates his trust, angers him, and their relationship ends--not entirely to Annie's disappointent. She's grown weary of Duncan's obsession, wants to have a baby, and is ready to move on with her life. So she contacts Tucker Crowe herself, and the two strike up an email friendship...and that's when things really get interesting.

This is what planes, trains and airports are good for: getting me caught up on the towering pile of bedside table books...and now I am. Almost. Honest.

Born to Pun (Sorry)

2009-09-02T14:41:00.000-07:00

Runners are in the headlines lately, what with Usain Bolt's record-setting time and the recent investigation into the sexuality of South African phenom Caster Semenya. Also, since Mayor Pike has offered Jon Stewart a key to the city, it seemed like a good time to recommend a book about running that I learned about from watching The Daily Show. (On a totally unrelated tangent, how many books do they recommend on Fox "News"?)

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World has Never Seen grew out of an article Christopher McDougall wrote for Outside magazine about the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico. The Tarahumara, who live deep in the isolated Copper Canyons, have developed an amazing talent for running extreme distances--over a hundred miles a day, in some cases.In addition, they have escaped major diseases that afflict others in the Western world, such as cancer, diabetes, and obesity.

Intrigued by stories of these runners, and curious about what they could teach him about running and living healthfully, McDougall ventured into the Copper Canyons to seek El Caballo Blanco, a mysterious white man rumored to live among the Tarahumara and know their secrets.

What follows is part mystery story, part adventure, part history lesson, part physiology 101, and altogether absorbing story of the Tarahumara, the history of ultramarathoning and the obscure and unusual group of people who train for and compete in these incredible tests of endurance.

What I Did This Summer by Cathy B.

2009-08-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

Summer for me, is partially officially over, since I signed up to teach a three-week summer school program for incoming ninth-graders who need a little extra boost before beginning their regular high school courses. Lest you think I’ve completely lost my whole entire mind, know that 1) I’m getting paid for this gig; 2) it’s only 4 hours a day, 4 days a week; 3) it’s kinda fun, and 4) frankly, I wasn’t doing anything else anyway.

I define my existance, in large part, by how I spend my summers. Referring to “the summer I_______” helps place my life’s trajectory in a timeline. “The summer I was in L.A.,” “The summer I went to school in San Diego,” “The summer I nannied Wyatt,” these are all statements that allow me to pinpoint where/when/what I was at a given point in time. This summer, ’09, is notable for the following (and I am NOT bragging): it is, in no particular order: the summer I joined Facebook, the summer I nearly wore a dent in the chaise on my front porch, the summer I….frak. I can’t think of anything else. This summer may be notable only because it is the first summer I did typical summer stuff: laid around in the sun, slept in, avoided responsibility and read 8 billion books. Dreamlike in its simplicity and yet somehow unfulfilling. Teaching summer school is a welcome break from a life of relentless leisure. Seriously, one more nap and I was going to have to get prescription Neosporin for the bedsores.

I did manage to get a couple of projects done, and again, I’m not bragging, I’m just saying. One day I touched up all the divots in the paint around the house. Very satisfying. I washed the baseboards. I finally labeled that row of perplexing light switches in the living room. I put up towel-hooks and a bottle opener next to the hot tub. I planted lavender, basil, rosemary, and mint (only the mint died). I made serious progress on the soda-can art thingy (undefinable) I’ve been working on since 2004 and hung window frames for “privacy” in front of the hot tub. I bogarted the neighbors’ sewing machine and sewed pockets in the roommate’s sweatpants. I made a few greeting cards that also involved sewing. I did not make any more wine gift-bags from the sleeves of the shirts of a now-forgotten ex-boyfriend. I did not make any voodoo dolls. Honest.

Knowing that I'll have less time to do it later, I also spent some of my summer making some of my Christmas gifts. I got a little help from my most recent favorite craft book, The Big Ass Book of Crafts by Mark Montano. I can't tell you the specifics on the projects I completed, because you might be among the eventual recipients, but let's just say that Montano has 150+ ideas, some of which will remind you of the 1970's (think macrame and glued-on pasta), but most of them are creative, fun, and not too time-consuming. Most don't require any special tools, skill, or artistic flair, and many can be adapted for kids, which, if you're at the end of summer and you have children, will probably come as a blessed relief. Something to occupy them...and use up all those popsicle sticks. Craft on!

Stories from the Chaise...

2009-07-09T11:01:00.000-07:00

Since school’s been out, I’ve read a bunch of fiction that’s definitely worth recommending, and I’m never going to get around to writing an individual entry on each book, what with all the napping and existentialism. So here’s a summary:

Best Book for Your Book Club
I live with a houseload of outdoorsy guys who are forever hiking off into the wilderness to test the superpower capabilities of testosterone, otherwise I might forget that people can and do survive happily in the sticks and dirt. Some of them live their whole lives between backpacks of Top Ramen and Belly Timber, seemingly ignorant of wonders such as the pillow-top mattress and take-out Thai.

In My Abandonment by Peter Rock, a father and his 13-year-old daughter, Caroline, live for 4 years undetected in the Portland, Oregon’s Forest Park. Completely self-sufficient, they grow their own vegetables, forage for other food and materials to use in maintaining their hidden shelter, and exist peacefully until a chance encounter reveals their situation to the public and their lives are irreversibly altered.

As the story progresses, you’ll become slightly, almost imperceptibly suspicious of Caroline and her father, of their past and the how and why of their isolation and partnership. And that's why you'll want to read it with a friend--there are profound questions about the story, the characters, and it what it means to have a home. Based on a true story, this fascinating account of survival and escape will appeal to anyone who liked Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Best Book for Anyone Who Likes House, Grey’s Anatomy, or Any Other of the Billion Medical Dramas on TV
A writer for Salon once called Grey’s Anatomy “soft-core porn for women,” an apt description of the show that doesn’t really fit Oxygen by Carol Cassella, but I’m sitting in a bar writing book reviews and I needed a segue, so there you have it. Like Grey’s, Oxygen takes place in a Seattle hospital, but without nearly as much sex. The story revolves around a compelling ethical dilemma that’s far more serious than anything that whiny Meredith Grey has ever had to deal with.

Marie Heaton is an anesthesiologist whose career is in turmoil after a child dies in her care. Accused of malpractice, Marie finds herself questioning all that she has come to believe about her abilities and role as a doctor. Legal drama, medical mysteries, and a series of unpredictable twists make this novel the perfect excuse to turn off the TV.

A Missing Person Novel That’s Not Really About a Missing Person
Really! It’s not! But I wasn’t disappointed. Precious by Sandra Novack begins with the disappearance of 10-year-old Vicki Anderson in the summer of 1978. Vicki is the daughter of single mother, Ginny, an alcoholic widow, and the classmate and of Sissy Kisch, and it's the impact of the disappearance on Sissy that forms the core of the story. Sissy's mother, Natalia, has also disappeared, although under less mysterious circumstances--she's left her husband to be with another man, and has left Sissy and her sadistic older sister, Eva, in the care of their father Frank. Eva responds to her mother's abandonment by throwing herself into an affair with a married teacher, and Sissy copes by immersing herself in a fantasy world...or is it? An absorbing story about families, couples, and being present...or not.

Best Book for People Who Like Books about Books
I pick what to read based on reviews I read in Booklist (the ALA's official book review journal), the Indie Next list, which is distributed at independent booksellers and available online; People magazine (gotta keep up with the pop!), and Entertainment Weekly (ditto). I rarely read the list of New York Times Bestsellers because I'm not interested in what's selling well--I want to know what's written well.

The Indie Next list is my favorite source, because the recommendations come directly from other booklovers and are often reviews of books that are from smaller presses or new writers--work I might not hear about otherwise. Such is the case with How I Became a Famous Novelist, by Steve Hely, a completely original and hilarious skewering of the American book publishing world and the financial engine that drives it. Hely's character, Pete, studies the trends in best-sellers and then writes his own--a book that he himself recognizes as crap, but nevertheless one likely to appeal to readers who like everything else that becomes popular. Hely's voice is unique, funny, and memorable.

It may seem as though I've spent the summer (so far) lounging on my front porch, reading and sipping cool beverages. And that's pretty much exactly right. But it's work, people, work I do for you, so you won't have to pluck a crappy paperback from the grocery store check out line in a moment of panic before you board your next flight. It's a sacrifice, and you can thank me later. Hi-ho, hi-ho.

Just Pretend It's a Swimsuit!

2009-06-11T08:27:00.001-07:00

Joseph Campbell has written that we "must be willing to give up the life we had planned, in order to have the life that is waiting for us," and it seems as though many days of my life have required that I reconcile with this bit of wisdom. Thirty years ago, Amy and I maneuvered our little plastic cars (she swallowed the white one, long story) around the board game of LIFE, landing happily on the squares that announced IT'S A BOY or IT'S TWINS. We assigned our favorite names to these tiny plastic children and somehow never even considered that having three or four children, no matter how well-considered their names, would be a crapload of work and really interefere with who we really were.

Don't get me wrong--I think both Amy and I would be fabulous moms (albeit a bit bizarre--heavy on the costuming and themed parties) but for myriad reasons, that life isn't the one that we've ended up living. And while there are days that I wonder what it would be like to escort little William Benjamin Belben (Bill Ben Belben) up the street to kindergarten at Larrabee Elementary, mostly I live a satisfying life without Pull-Ups and Pirate-themed birthday parties. The arrangement here at the Nap Castle is not one I imagined even a year ago, but it's turning out to be a happy one, even if it doesn't match the plan I concocted for myself when I was eleven. There are no children here named Laurie Louise (my favorite name in 1979) or husbands, or weird floorplans involving indoor pools and grand pianos suspended from chains, a la the home designs I drew in 4th grade.

Here's what I have instead: a houseful of people whose lives have taken untraditional directions and who, through Craigslist or the Food Pavilion parking lot (long story) have ended up sharing space with me. Chris, Mark (pictured), Ethan, Phil, Amy, and Cynthia (and their accompanying friends and partners: Chris, Ashley, Julia, Joanna, Jay & Laurie, Gabe, etc.), have become, over the last 8 months, my erstwhile family. And despite the temporary nature of having people living in my extra bedrooms, on my sofa, and in my garage, I wouldn't trade their companionship, intelligence, and humor for the Other Life I might have had if I had driven my little plastic car on the road more traveled. Also, I don't have to cook dinner every night, thanks to our casually organized Community Meals, and I'd frankly rather attend a Guac-Off any night than go to Open House with a school full of intense parents.

In Waveland, Frederick Barthelme's latest novel, characters are involved in a similarly unconventional living arrangement. Following Hurricane Katrina, professor Vaughn Williams' marriage ends, and he becomes involved with his new landlady, Greta, whose own marriage ended under mysterious circumstances. Vaughn's world changes even more dramatically when his ex-wife, Gail, is abused by her boyfriend, and asks Vaughn and Greta to move into her house as protection. As absurd as the arrangement sounds, the three somehow make it work for a time, and all gain perspective into the complex nature of relationships of friends and lovers.

Like life at the Nap Castle, things at Gail's house aren't always ideal: Vaughn must confront his animosity towards his brother, Newton, who reappears and plays a pivotal role in Gail's life, and he must contend with Greta's complicated past, as well. But they make it work, somehow, which is the best we can all do, whatever our situation. Whether we have a traditional, nuclear family, or a family we've cobbled together through less conventional means, ultimately, our goal is the same: to connect, to find community, to be less alone in a huge and often scary world.

"If you were lucky in the world," according to Barthelme's protagonist, "you built yourself a new life as an adult, complete with friends, lovers, partners, rivals, enemies. You replaced the old people with new people, and your party moved along effortlessly." It might not be, as this character notes, the pleasures you'd dreamed of, or the life you'd dreamed of, nor sought, nor even imagined...but facing it, finally, you might find it is a life for which you are now well prepared.

Roadtrip Reads

2009-05-28T09:39:00.000-07:00

Of the many things I am thankful for, possibly the highest on my list is my ability to read in a moving car without puking, a gift that has saved me countless hours of boredom on long family trips and other adventures that might otherwise be mind-numbingly dull. This past weekend, I had the opportunity exercise my skill again on a 3-day journey from Bellingham to San Diego with pal Amy and her brother Steve. Once I finally convinced Amy that no, she did not need to bring a giant bag of hangers, a Chinese lantern, and a milk crate full of incense, there was actually room in the car for me to tote along a backpack of clean clothes and, of course, a few books.

Between my naps in the backseat and my management of the sing-along playlist (if I never hear "C'Mon Get Happy" again it'll be too soon), I read three books, all of which are recommendable. Let's start with The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd, which focuses on the last summer Dade Hamilton spends at home before going to college. During these three months, he contends with his parents' crumbling marriage, his abusive boyfriend, and the local mystery of a missing eight-year-old girl. He also falls in love, and that element of the story is what makes this a particularly sweet summer read. Marketed to teens, but the elegant, witty writing and intelligent insights make it a great read for anyone.

I also read Elinor Lipman's latest novel, The Family Man. Lipman is known for her humorous portrayals of family life, couplehood, and friendship. In The Family Man, Henry Archer finds his life complicated by a phone call from his distraught ex-wife, Denise, as well as the re-appearance of her grown daughter, Thalia. Henry and Thalia were close when he was married to her mother, but lost contact after the divorce. Now that she's back, she and Henry refresh their bonds and help each other navigate the odd, humorous details of their professional lives, their personal lives, and their ever-unpredictable relationship with Denise. Like all of Lipman's novels, the dialogue is phenomenal--fresh, witty, and fast--and the plot, while pretty goofy and even a tad unbelievable, nevertheless transport readers through some amusing and unique territory. A beach read with smarts.

And because a backseat isn't a backseat without a little, umm, spice, I also read essays from Behind the Bedroom Door:Getting It, Giving, Loving It, Missing It, which while about sex, was more smart than salacious, satsifying my intellectual curiosity about what other people think/feel/do/hope for/regret without being a pornographic journey into other people's lives. Which was a good thing, cuz porn+best friend+backseat of best friend's car+best friend's brother=ewww.

Finally, on the plane ride home, I mostly dozed off listening to my iPod, but during conscious moments, concentrated on trying to balance my in-flight snack pack, my Bloody Mary, and my book on the teeny-tiny table tray. The book in question was A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo (if anyone knows how to pronounce that name, let me know and I will take care of your dog for free on weekends). In the novel, a young Chinese woman (she goes by the name Z) spends a year abroad in London, where she learns the language (sort of) and has a complicated relationship with a lover who is at first charmed, and later exasperated by, her naivete, innocence, and struggles to speak English.

I felt a little bit like Z in San Diego amidst the skinny surfers and tanned beach bodies. At least I had the books to distract me, not only from the perpetually youthful culture of Sunshine, but from saying good-bye to Amy. I look forward to seeing her soon. I'll be saving up some great books for the next trip south.

HAIR!

2009-05-18T12:15:00.001-07:00

Thirty-one years ago, on the squareball court at Roosevelt Elementary, Amy Baklund called me (the new kid at the school) "little girl," and shortly thereafter, became not my tormentor, but my closest friend. Over three-quarters of my life are comprised of memories of her: the summers we spent at Camp Don Bosco, the time I put her underpants in her flute case before school, the "classes" we conducted we conducted as teachers with a roomful of stuffed animals (little Ralphie the beat-up black and white teddy bear was especially badly behaved), the time she spilled her Bunsen Burner in 8^th grade science, the billion notes we wrote under our assumed identities, Wanda Teetlebound (Amy) and Elouise Latink (me), the summer days we conducted Camp Kiddie Joy in my back yard, and the many, many times we costumed ourselves, laughed uncontrollably, and seized, together, the joy and the journey of life in Bellingham and on this planet.
In January of 2005, Amy was diagnosed with Stage 1 Breast Cancer, and for a horrible, terrifying time, there was a chance that these stories, these memories, this life that we had shared, would become anecdotes that I told at gatherings with our amazing group of friends: "Remember that time when Amy...." "Remember how Amy used to...." "I wish Amy were here to..." But Amy received excellent treatment at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (in her words, "the juice bar") survived her cancer, and continues to be one of the most charismatic, vibrant, life-affirming people I am honored to know.

Amy says that one of the worst days of her cancer diagnosis was when her doctor gave her a prescription for a wig. Fortunately, she never had to fill it, because she didn't lose her hair, but lots of people with cancer aren't so lucky. And if you read, Hair: Public, Political, Extremely Personal by Diane Simon, you'll appreciate even more how our tresses not only frame our faces, but define who we are. As someone who has spent the past twenty years growing, caring for, wrestling with, and cleaning up after long, curly, hair, I know exactly what it means to be defined, at least in part, by the dead stuff hanging from my head.

Every year at my school, a cancer-awareness week is followed by an assembly in which students buy raffle tickets to shave the head of a dozen or so teachers. Many students also volunteer to have their heads shaved to show solidarity to those fighting cancer, and the funds raised are donated to Children's Hospital. This year, I joined in, following the example set last year by my principal Beth, my friend Laural, and a half-dozen courageous students who chopped their locks. This past Friday, Amy came to the assembly at BEHS to cut my hair. I shared her story with the students and then she carefully sheared off my two 8-inch ponytails, which I sent to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths, an organization that makes and donates wigs to women who’ve lost their hair due to cancer treatment. Later that afternoon, my other buddy Jill accompanied me for a touch-up haircut, which my regular stylist, Heather, donated to the cause.

I’d tell you that I went home, looked in the mirror at the curly cupcake that is now my head, and broke into tears. But the truth is, as much as I love having long hair, I love having Amy in my life more. Every day that I spend waiting for my hair to grow out is a day that I might not have spent with her, had her treatment not been successful, and I'd rather be completely bald than imagine a single day without her humor, spunk, intelligence, and friendship. I am so thankful, every morning, when I wake up, that her zest for adventure, our shared history, and a future of fun await. No amount of hair on earth would ever be an adequate exchange for that. When you see me, and my not-so-Carrie-Bradshaw-mushroom-head, I hope you'll agree.

The Best Missing Person Novel Yet

2009-05-11T11:09:00.001-07:00

Just when it seemed impossible to read yet another story about a missing person, I found another one. And it's excellent. In The Local News by Miriam Gershow, fifteen-year-old Lydia Pasternak deals with the disappearance of her older brother, Danny, who despite his popularity at school and many friends, wasn't the ideal brother. He teased, bullied, insulted, and ignored Lydia, making it difficult for her to miss him much.

Nevertheless, she becomes obsessed with his vanishing and with the investigation into his whereabouts. When her parents--both of whom are too overcome with misery to be much comfort to Lydia--hire a private detective to find their son, Lydia also begins looking for clues.

But the story isn't so much of a murder mystery as it is a coming-of-age story with a twist. Lydia's life is profoundly impacted by her missing brother--her parents are hazy and uninvolved, her schoolmates and teachers remember a Danny that Lydia didn't know or care for, and strangers write to them regularly with bewildering clues, ominous "visions" and false leads. Lydia encounters all of the regular teenage issues: pressure from her best friend, her changing relationship with her best guy friend, her attraction to one of Danny's friends, but all of the normal challenges of being a teenager are exacerbated by the circumstances surrounding her brother's disappearance her parents' odd withdrawal from her care and attention.

The Local News is incredibly well-written; Gershow maintains a sense of tension and suspense that while related to the mystery at hand, also permeates the relationships in her characters' lives, lending depth and insight to what might otherwise be just another ripped-from-the-headlines story. If it weren't for the effect of the disappearance on Lydia's coming-of-age, this novel would have been just as excellent without it, and I would have appreciated the author's humor, intelligence, and wordsmanship just as much.

What We Learn from Make Believe

2009-04-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

Why read stories about tragedies--deaths, disappearances, and the assorted harms that humans can inflict on one another--when there's already so much ugliness in the world? Why replicate the pain of loss in made-up stories, package and promote it? Doesn't this just contribute to the already staggering amount of sadness that exists in reality?

I like to believe that fictional stories about crime and loss offer us some salvation from the true miseries that dominate headlines. For one, novels and stories, even (and especially, perhaps) those that tackle the most difficult topics, transform tragedy into art, somehow endowing the unexplainable with redeeming qualities. News stories rarely delve into the true depth of the players involved, focusing instead on the sorrow of survivors, the detestability of the perpetrators, and whatever au-courant commentary a given crime purportedly offers on modern society.

Talented, sensitive storytellers create worlds inhabited by three-dimensional characters who, unlike their real-life CNN doppelgangers, can offer explanations. We learn their backgrounds, their complications, their motivations, and we can understand why they acted as they did. Empathizing with villains isn't necessarily the outcome: gaining a deeper understanding of human psychology is.

Laura Lippman is a multi-award-winning mystery author whose novels features dynamic, complex characters whose actions are carefully dissected and whose backstories are fully explored, creating multi-dimensional novels that address the how and why of human behavior. In her new novel, Life Sentences, protagonist Cassandra Fallows aims to follow the success of her two memoirs with a true-crime book that examines the mysterious case of her childhood acquaintance, Calliope Jenkins, who spent 7 years in jail after refusing to reveal the whereabouts of her missing infant son.

In investigating Calliope's story, Cassandra is forced to confront her own past: her broken friendships with three women she wrote about in her memoirs; her philandering father, her wounded mother, and her own failed relationships and mistakes. As she unravels the mystery of Calliope's missing child and the reason for her silence, she learns as much about herself as she does the other woman. And possibly, we'll do the same as we read: understand more about ourselves and the people we are surrounded by.

If You're Not Laughing, You're Not Doing it Right

2009-03-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

"It is a happy talent to know how to play."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Yesterday concluded my week of spring vacation, and despite the incessant rain and the fact that I was trapped inside for days on end, it was nevertheless great having free time. Nine days--216 hours--which I didn't completely waste on naps.

I managed, despite being housebound, to spend some quality time playing. In my world, this meant doing craft projects, painting furniture I bought off Craigslist, reading,goofing around with Frida, and riding my bike before the rubber on the tires decays from lack of use.

The good news is that time spent playing is not squandered, according to researchers. In Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, Stuart Brown, M.D. shares a plethora of anecdotal and scientific research indicating that not only is play important, it is absolutely vital for the health and development of the brain. And the data applies not just to children, but to adults as well. "Play...seems to continue the process of neural evolution...it promotes the creation of new connections that didn't exist before...play seems to be one of the most advanced methods nature has invented to allow a complex brain to create itself." Even if you're not interested in getting any smarter, you might be inclined to play for the health benefits. "People who continue to play games are less likely to get heart disease and other afflictions that seem to have nothing to do with the brain," Brown writes.
He devotes a significant portion of the book to the play we're most familiar with--the stuff kids do when their parents tell them to go outside. Unfortunately, he notes, unstructured playtime has become more rare, usurped by scheduled playdates, organized sports teams, assorted lessons, and other activities planned by adults. The quest for improved standardized test scores in schools also forces cut-backs in the arts, P.E., and music, something Brown says is "the wrong approach" for many reasons. "Play isn't the enemy of learning," Brown writes. "It's learning's partner. Play is like fertilizer for brain growth. It's crazy not to use it." In addition, today's students will face a work world required more ingenuity and creativity than ever before--thinking skills best developed in unstructured, imaginative play and exploratory music and art classes.

Adults, too, have to give themselves permission to play. We've been led to believe that playing or goofing off is a waste of time, but the opposite is true--in all arenas. Not only do studies show that adults who play stave off dementia and other health issues, they're also happier (duh) and better employees. "Employees who have engaged in play throughout their lives outside of work and bring that emotion to the office are able to do well at work-related tasks that might seem to have no connection to work at all," Brown says. "Respecting our biological need for play can bring back excitement and newness to the job. Play helps us deal with difficulties, provides a sense of expansiveness, promotes mastery of our craft, and is an essential part of the creative process...work does not work without play." So all the practical jokes we execute at work? Not just harmess pranks. They're brain builders. Remember that the next time someone covers your car windows with Post-it notes.

Despite the weather (which is beautiful, of course, now that I'm back at work), I played as much as I could last week: hung with my aging buddy Kosha, took Frida to the dog park, biked with Laural and my roommate, played Scrabbled, hot-tubbed, and watched another 47 (or so) episodes of Rescue Me; I did some yardening, read, napped, visited my nephew, family, and friends, went on the Downtown Gallery Walk, made it to the gym a few times, and basically pursued my usualness with freedom and frivolity. Yes, the weather sucks a lot of the time, chores have to be done, and therenever seems to be enough energy/money/time. But whatever you do, if If you're laughing, you're playing. And I don't know what's any better than that.

This Is Your Brain on Books. Also, Another Death Book.

2009-03-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

One of the ways I try to convince my students to read is by sharing with them the irrefutable data that reading regularly changes their brains. Actual, physical activities happen upstairs when the cells are activated by the introductions of letters, words, and the ideas and stories resulting from their combinations. "Think of me as a P.E. teacher, only for your brain," I tell them. "It's my job to motivate you to exercise and strengthen those brain cells by reading, just the way your P.E. teacher tries to help you develop a strong body by making you play badminton and go power-walking."

Since I've been a librarian, I'm forever on the look-out for information supporting the connection between reading and brain power. Luckily, there is a lot of it. And none that I've found (so far) that says any kind of reading is harmful to brain cells, unless you're lounging around with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a crack pipe while trying to read the instructions on a rocket launcher. The research is pretty conclusive: read more=strengthen the connections between neurons=solve problems more effectively=kick your roommates' butts on crossword puzzles=live happily ever after.

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Baylor University whose first book of fiction, Sum: Forty Tales of the Afterlife, is a stunning collection of forty short stories--all addressing the question, "What, if anything, happens when we die?" Eagleman has impressively imagined some possibilities in language so clear and yet so artful that it reads like poetry. He obviously not only understands the brain, but has one of his own that is adept at orchestrating some amazing unions between words and ideas.

In the opening story, "Sum," the dead experience their lives over again--except this time, all like activities are grouped together and occur in a clump before the next event happens: two weeks are spent counting money, 18 days staring into the fridge, seven months having sex, etc. "In this afterlife, you imagine something analogous to your Earthly life, and the thought is blissful: a life where episodes are split into tiny, swallowable pieces, where moments do not endure, where one experiences the joy of jumping from one event to the next like a child hopping from spot to spot on the burning sand."

In "Mary," the dead discover that Mary Shelley sits on a throne, protected by angels, because God's favorite book is Frankenstein. Having created humans and watched them destroy each other, God now "locks Himself in His room, and at night sneaks out onto the roof with Frankenstein, reading again and again how Dr. Victor Frankenstein is taunted by his merciless monster...and God consoles Himself with the thought that all creation necessarily ends in this: Creators, powerless, fleeing from the things they have wrought."

Although generally serious in tone, throughout Sum there is an undercurrent of intelligent humor--not mocking, exactly, but a sly questioning of assorted systems of belief and their corresponding visions of the afterlife: we live forever, we are punished, we celebrate, we are reunited, we are remembered, we remember, we are completely forgotten, we forget everything we ever knew; we are exactly the way we were on earth, only better. Or worse.

In examining our perceptions about death, Eagleman creates a remarkably insightful dissection of how we live, and in particular, how we think about ourselves. We are gargantuan and meaningful or infintismally inconsequential. We are everything, or we are nothing.

The Person Your Dog Knows You Are

2009-03-16T10:26:00.000-07:00

"It's just like magic. When you live by yourself, all of your annoying habits are gone," says humorist Merrill Markoe, and I couldn't agree more, especially now that I have three roommates, and I'm suddenly aware that some of the stuff I could get away with when I lived alone is no longer acceptable, like leaving the dryer full of unmentionables and neglecting the cat box for a week at a time. Having roommates has made me more conscientious, although I'm a little paranoid after reading Matt Haig's novel, The Labrador Pact, that I have always been under another set of watchful eyes...

Prince is a black Labrador who oversees the well-being of the Hunter family--parents Adam and Kate and teenagers Charlotte and Hal--as part of an age old pact created by Labradors in which they vow allegiance to their humans. "Duty above all" is their mantra.

Unbeknownst to humans, dogs are able to communicate with one another, and they can understand people when they talk. This makes them witness to the most private moments of their masters and families. Because dogs are also keenly aware of smells and subtler nuances, Prince informs us, they are able to predict human's emotions before the people themselves show any signs that they're happy, worried, depressed, or whatever.

As the story begins, Prince informs us that he is on his way to the vet to be euthanizied; knowing he's going to die, he takes us back through the series of experiences leading up to his execution day--events which were mandated by his adherence to the Labrador Pact.

When he senses his family falling apart, Prince collaborates with his best canine friends, Henry and Falstaff, to set about saving the Hunters from themselves. Adam and Kate are both acting suspicious and prickly, hovering on the verge of adultery and divorce, the teenage daughter Charlotte is dating a creep, and older son Hal is partying and defying his folks. Worse, an old friend of Adam's from the past, Simon, re-enters their lives, and Prince is immediately alerted to the threat he poses, and knows it is his duty to protect his people from this intruder. Unfortunately, the steps he must take require him to violate the Pact and sacrifice himself for the safety of the Hunter family.

"Humans don't realise it," we are told, "but the speed of our wag directly impacts their own happiness. Our tails dictate the rhythm of Family life..." Unfortunately, Prince isn't able to save Adam, Kate, Charlotte, and Hal with simple tail-wagging. But his narration --his wry observations of family life, his commitment to the Hunters' happiness, and his earnest, loving, and ultimately doomed attempt to make all right in their world--is absorbing and endearing. I can only hope that Frida, despite the many unseemly things she may have witnessed (and I'm only implicating myself here, not roommates Cynthia, Chris, and Mark), shares Prince's feelings of duty and devotion...or least, my sense of the same for her.

I Promise: Next Week, I Won't Write about Death

2009-03-10T09:55:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article for BUST magazine about my decision to donate my body to the University of Tennessee's Anthropological Research Facility, a.k.a. The Body Farm. Besides the whole recycling aspect of donation, and my qualms about the funeral industry (see Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death for complete details), I like the idea that my remains might solve crimes.

I have always been intrigued by mysteries, and especially real-life stories of disappearances and murders. It isn't the grisliness that appeals to me, it's the psychology behind the stories that I am gripped by--the why rather than the what or the how. For that reason, I'm pretty finicky about the "true crime" that I read--see the sidebar for a list of my all-time favorites--they have to have some unique quality or focus that distinguishes them from the dozens of grocery-store paperbacks that appear on the shelves. They have to reveal something new about behavior and life, something that helps.

Kathryn Harrison's book While They Slept: An Inquiry into the Murder of a Family, fit my criteria. Ostensibly about Billy Gilley's 1984 murder of his parents and sister in Medford, Oregon, it's really about the psychology of family; the impact of violence, and the possibility and process of healing in the aftermath of horror. Because Gilley spared his older sister, Jody, Harrison has access to the only person besides the murderer who can offer insight into the crimes, and much of the research she did for While They Slept involved meeting with Jody again and again to find out what happened in her family prior to its destruction and how, in the twenty years since, she has created a successful, happy life despite her shocking history.

Harrison carefully examines the pathology of the Gilley family, exposing the Gilleys as abusive parents who failed to nurture their son; the child protection services that failed to investigate claims of abuse in the home, and the mentality of the man whose rage and warped sense of justice made him a killer. She juxtaposes Billy Gilley's psyche with that of the sister he spared--a woman who, growing up, retreated from the violence and mistreatment in the home by surrounding herself with books, and one who ultimately has repaired the damage that was done before and after her parents were killed.

Harrison is a gifted writer, able to pull together the many complex elements of this story and the lives of each member of the Gilley family to create an account that is certain to be compared to In Cold Blood for both its literary quality and its insightful and unique approach to the analysis of tragedy.

You Learn Something Everyday, Whether You Want to or Not

2009-03-03T06:08:00.000-08:00

My friend Dorothy passed away recently at the age of 79. We didn't know each other long--that's us on our first outing, the annual Seniors' Picnic at Hovander Park last August--but even in our brief friendship, I gleaned a lot about living from her stories.

Now that I don't have Dorothy to learn from, I try to connect with other older people and steal their smarts. I'm not going to name names here, but let's just say that a) there are a lot of people older than me and b) there are even more who are smarter. I'm not even smart enough to have come up with the idea of getting smarter by listening to what old people have to say about life. Someone else thought of it, wrote a book about it, and is now probably not selling his stuff on Craigslist to pay the mortgage.

Henry Alford recently published How to Live: A Search for Wisdom from Old People (While They Are Still on This Earth),an entertaining exploration of what older people have to teach us about life. Rather than a collection of pithy anecdotes or sweet stories, the book is a memoir of Alford’s visits with numerous elders who have experienced great achievements, sorrow, fame, or simply, ordinariness. Among his subjects are Ram Dass, Phyllis Diller, Harold Bloom, Edward Albee, Ashleigh Brilliant, and his own mother—whose life is profoundly affected by her son’s quest for information.

Alford's subjects have plenty of wisdom to offer him and his readers, bu Edward Albee may have stated it best in his play Three Tall Women, when a character says she's wise because she's given up her illusions about the past and future and settled in the present. "Enough shit gone through to have a sense of the shit that's ahead, but way past sitting and playing in it," she says. And that, quite possibly, is the sum of the wisdom Alford gathers from all of his interviewees: getting old means growing wise not because you've collected facts, but because you've collected experiences, which translate into perspective. Alford says this kind of wisdom is "hard-won, forged as it is in the crucible of failure," and cites researcher Ekhonon Goldberg, who says wisdom is a product of the accumulation of cognitive templates--basically, we get increasingly better at recognizing patters, whether they be in economics, relationships, work situations, or whatever.

In addition to talking to actual old people, author Alford spoke with theorists specializing in wisdom--what it is, how people get it, how you can snag some of your own--and found (unsurprisingly) a lot of variation. The best answer came from psychologist Robert Sternberg, who identifies four components of wisdom: using knowledge and skills for the common good; balancing interpersonal and extrapersonal goals, balancing short-term and long-term interests, and "dialogical thinking"--i.e. the ability to see other people's points of view. I might add that the wisest older people I know personally (pictured here are three of them: Aunts Marge and Barbara and Uncle Herb) are those that keep on keepin' on: they take up painting at 68 or still referee soccer games at 69, or continue working at jobs they love until they're 84, like Aunt Barbara.

Alford ends the book by seeking out aphorisms from numerous old people; basically, he's looking for their lives' wisdom summed up in a single phrase. And he finds a lot of it, most notably from Ashleigh Brilliant, the most-quoted writer in history, who is known for his some 10,000 copyrighted epigrams, quips that are generally clever and sometimes corny. Old people like to talk--Dorothy told some fantastic stories about growing up in small-town Idaho, but the end of this book seems to suggest that all of what we learn in life can be boiled down to simple bits of truth. Wisdom, it turns out, isn't necessarily about knowing a lot, but about knowing what matters.

This Blog is Free. Thank God.

2009-02-23T11:57:00.000-08:00

Since I’m too broke to travel, I’ve been spending most of my free time hanging out at the Nap Castle, attending to money-saving tasks like posting stuff on Craigslist and taking naps and accompanying Frida on arm-stretching tug-o-walks around the ‘hood. My one indulgence this month was the Northwest Comedy Festival at the Mount Baker Theater, which was a gigantic break from worrying about money and picking up dog crap. I was also introduced to the absolutely hilarious troup Sidecar, now my three favorite people on the planet.

I’ve been low-budget-finishing my Anne Frank Room, the 10x20 space above my garage that with one more coat of paint, some carpet, and a heater, will be my new writing studio. Before James drywalled it, the room looked like it does above. It's looking more finished (and smelling a little fumey) now that I've painted it. Stay tuned...the next blog post should feature the "after" photo!

I figure that I've painted about 80,000 square feet of wall space in my home-owning life, and every job has been made easier by David Sedaris--I've listened to all of his books, some more than once, while painting. Besides the fact that laughing out loud is free and it makes jobs go faster, another advantage is that I've come to associate painting with humor and specifically with Sedaris, making painting something I now dread at least 37% less than emptying the cat box.

This is probably the first post I've written specifically endorsing an audio book, but if you're going to enjoy David Sedaris, the very best way to do it is to listen to him read his own work. Writers who read their own stuff--especially humor--always sound so much better to me than audio books read by actors. Writers know their own words, the places to emphasize ideas or phrases, and best of all, their comic timing is perfect. Actors reading other people's books always sound like they're trying too hard to be dramatic or entertaining.

In the Anne Frank Room this weekend, I listened to Sedaris's latest collection, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and it eased the tedium and helped me ignore the lack of heat.I've spent so many hours hearing about him and his family that it feels like I'm being kept company by a a cast of friends while I work. Every Sedaris collection, and this one is no exception, features self-deprecating tales of his past and current life. The best thing about his writing is his ability to transform universal scenarios with such fine, personal details--his parents leaving him and his siblings in the care of an eccentric babysitter for a week, for example, in "The Understudy." I know I've had a weird babysitter before. Hell, I've probably been the weird babysitter.

One of my other favorites is "This Old House," about Sedaris's time as a tenant in the boarding house of an eccentric "antiques" collector, a woman who also rented to a schizophrenic man and shared Sedaris's love of the past. Since I'm now sharing my own home with renters (neither of whom is schizo, as far as I can tell), I can see myself as my roommates might--or as they might someday, if I continue sharing my space until I'm as old and crusty as Sedaris's landlady. Since my current housemates are awesome, that wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Given the current economic struggles many are facing, it's a good time for therapeutic projects: scrubbing out the refrigerator, yardening (I recent ripped out some ivy and scrub encroaching on my lawn...it felt fantastic) and maybe, if you can afford it, brightening a gloomy space with a fresh coat of paint. If you don't have the energy or inclination for those, reading is free...and fun.. and your three-year-old nephew will love it!

Enjoy Yourself. It's Later than You Think.

2009-02-03T08:47:00.000-08:00

It may seem like a weird time to think about road-tripping, given that the weather is still unpredictable, the roads are in wintery disrepair, and most of us are still months away from anything resembling a vacation. And yet, what better conditions for fantasizing of a get-away? Before I built the Nap Castle, I owned (moment of silent remembrance) the Vanbulance, a fully-equipped Volkswagen camper van; a dream-on-wheels that was going to take me across the country during the summer of 2007. I had a map in my office stick-pinned with destinations, a book about natural hot springs I planned to visit, and a list of people I hoped to see and books I wanted to read along the way. Very little of it came to fruition--I lived in the van for a week during construction and spent a night at a campground where my next door neighbor and his buddy peed on their campfire to put it out. I now must live vicariously through the road-trips of others.

In Michael Zadoorian's new novel, The Leisure Seeker, John and Ella Robina, a long-married couple, take off in their aging motor home to travel Route 66 from Detroit to Disneyland. But this trip, unlike many others they've endeavored is unique: it is positively the last one they will take together. In their 80's, the Robinas are both suffering the cruel effects of old age. John is in the middle stages of Alzheimers, experiencing fewer lucid moments each day, and Ella is stricken with rapidly progressing cancer.

Against the wishes of their children and their doctors, Ella and John kidnap themselves from their hospital beds, forgo further treatment for their ailments, and traverse onward to live out their last days together on the road.

What follows is more than the travelogue of a trip--it's a scrapbook of marriage and family, and a very funny one at that. As they journey westward, the Robinas encounter typical vacation woes: mechanical problems, criminals, bad road conditions, and crummy food (John has a penchant for McDonalds). But their trip is far from usual; in addition to the usual discomforts, both are increasingly ill abnd forgetful.

But the hazards of the road, their illnesses, and their children's worry don't stop the Robinas from continuing their journey and they definitely don't stop them from maintaining the status quo of their marriage: some bickering, a lot of humor, and a deep affection for each other and their shared history.

While I don't necessarily want to travel the country in a 1970's camper van with a crabby old man who wets the bed, I do want to grow old like the Robinas do: with a sense of independence and adventure, and a goal to make the most of the last of my life.

Way More 80's Crap Than I Care to Reveal...

2009-01-27T08:59:00.001-08:00

A long time ago, in a place that might as well be a galaxy far away, I did some writing about a high school detective named Veronica. There was a lot of down-time on that job, and I spent some of it doing research that might help my character solve her mysteries more easily. I read about tarot, psychic readings, Catholic symbolism (long story, but the dish of Saint Christopher medals in episode 202, Driver Ed, was my idea), STDs, and a bunch of other stuff that sometimes turned out to be useful, but mostly not.

One thing that would’ve helped me help Veronica is Sam Gosling’s book, Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, but it wasn’t published until 2008, and by that time, I was back here, helping high school kids learn important skills such as including a “Table of Contents” at the beginning of their papers instead of a “Table of Context.”[1]

In Snoop Gosling delves into the science behind the messages that our stuff—and the things of others—says about who we are. How does the arrangement of our books reveal our personalities? What do we give away about our innermost selves in the geegaws and knickknackery displayed in our homes, offices, classrooms, and cars? How can we “read” others by looking at their surroundings? What does it mean that I have a set of South Park finger puppets and a unicorn-on-a-stick in my office at school?

Surprisingly, the messages you intend to send when you arrange your tchotchkes aren’t always the ones your observers pick up on, and you can’t always trust what you see when you make guesses about others’ lives based on their stuff. But you can learn some useful tools for understanding people and their personalities, and Gosling’s research and entertaining presentation shows you how.

But his book isn’t just (or really) about snooping on a subversive level. If you want to rummage through your acquaintances’ bedside tables and bathroom cabinets, be my guest, but there are some easier and more valuable things you can learn just by looking and listening to the indicators they display right out in public. And I’m not talking about the friends who have the Vietnamese Love Swing[2] in their rec room or whatever.

Everyday, ordinary, preferences tell us more about people than do the things they hide. Studies have shown, for example, that “music consistently trumps books, clothing, food, movies, and television shows in helping people get to know each other.” Keep that in mind when you’re snooping: you can learn more from the CD collection than the bookshelf.

___________________________________________
[1] Honest to God, someone really wrote that.
[2]Just for the record, I have no idea what a Vietnamese Love Swing is, nor do I know anyone who has one. I don’t think.

Are George and Lennie Mice?

2009-01-09T13:35:00.000-08:00

The best thing about working in a library is that you can tell people to be quiet anytime you want and it's completely legitimate. Even if you just want them to shut up because you can't hear your Pandora, no one questions you. People have preconceptions about libraries that lend themselves perfectly to my desire not to listen to them talk about their lives.

Unfortunately, people also have other notions about libraries that are guaranteed to make me ponder hari-kari. Chief among these annoyances is the belief that libraries are places where one person talks to another person in a fearful whisper. I absolutely loathe whisperers, mainly because I can't hear what they're saying, but also because their timidity seems to imply that they must tiptoe around and be careful not to disturb me, lest I go berserk and poke their eyes out with a bone folder. Which I've only done like once, and that was on a day when I was even crabbier than I am right now.

Every profession has its annoyances, and my theory is that they stem not from the actual acts committed by the annoyers, but by the sheer repetition of those acts. How many times do kids have to walk through the alarm system and simulate its "beep beep beep" noise before I've legally earned a paid mental health leave of up to one year? And when I tell someone they have an overdue book and they say, "I've never even heard of that book," shouldn't it be permissable--in fact, required--that I throw something at or near their head? My job, as delightful and rewarding as it is, requires me to answer and/or respond to a wide array of asinine questions. I've detailed them here.

Turns out that my job, as a high school librarian, is, in part anyway, to train the people who will leave this institution and go into the Real World to torment the underpaid and overworked employees of the nation's public libraries. At least that's what I've discerned from reading Scott Douglas's memoir, Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian. You do not have to be a librarian to appreciate his story, just an appreciator of workplace humors. Seriously, if you like The Office, you'll appreciate the interactions Douglas has with the quirky cast of personalities who work with him at the small Anaheim library where most of his story takes place.

Weird patrons, finicky co-workers, and bizarre requests and problems are all a part of being a public librarian, and Scott Douglas makes hilarious work of his daily duties, which include not just answering stupid questions and chasing away misbehaving teenagers, but also fetching people who've fallen asleep in the bathroom, confiscating contraband, and requesting that masturbators take their um, handiwork, elsewhere. These are all things I've had to do in my own job (in addition to asking students to please not ninja-kick each other) so I'm obviously training the students well for their future library lives. Either way, this is a highly recommended read--one of the funniest books I've read this year.

When I'm Sixty-Four

2009-01-04T06:44:00.000-08:00

I've been in Mexico four days and somehow can't seem to get Beatles songs out of my head. The cars and bars blast musica latina, 80s tunes, and a crapload of Air Supply, but Amy and I keep singing about returning to Puerto Vallarta to retire. We've modified the lyrics of "When I'm Sixty-Four" to accomodate our optimism about being nonegenarians at Playa de Los Muertos, and I keep humming "Paperback Writer." Hmmm.

If one IS a writer of paperbacks, there is a good chance that your work will end up in a cafe like Una Pagina del Sol, where travelers can trade used and/or crap books for credit towards purchases on other used and/or crap books traded in by other vacationers. Pagina (which just for the record, is pronounced pah-hee-nuh, NOT pa-JI-nuh) is located at 299 Olas Altas, on a busy corner in the Zona Romantica, ideal for watching tourists and just steps from Los Arcos, a large, clean hotel with easily accessible banos. "Going to Los Arcos" has become code for "the coffee just kicked in, and I'm going to appreciate the privacy of a clean bathroom."

The cafe/bookstore is frequented mainly by local ex-patriates and tourists, but not the kind wearing fluourescent bracelets who arrive on gigantic air-conditioned buses. We sat and watched as a terrified trio of these visitors huddled on the corner, waiting 25 minutes for the bus to return them to their hotel in Nuevo Vallarta, the land of Costco, Walmart, and gated security. 25 minutes! "Waiting for the tour bus" is our new synonym for wasting precious time in the midst of a beautiful life. It is the opposite of Saying Yes.

At Pagina, my personal shopper Amy helped me select books that allowed me to utilize my 30 peso credit as well as rid myself of another burdensome $70 pesos. Pagina has delicious coffee, superior licuados, and an unforgettable tres leches cake, but many of the books are of the yellow-paged, spine-cracked Grisham/Steel variety. However, we did find a copy of Deborah Rodriguez's memoir Kabul Beauty School and a 1978 paperback entitled How to Ask a Man by Judi Miller.

Miller's book, published at the height of women's lib, is intended for women who "wish not to be trapped by an old-fashioned dating sytem" and hope to "learn to approach a man--the RIGHT man!" by "bringing dating out of the dark ages!" It has provided quite a lot of poolside entertainment. Besides advising women to ask to see a prospective date's divorce papers, Miller also suggests that women cook for their man-of-interest. "Everyone has her own special recipe to use when a man comes to dinner. Whether it's Beef Stroganoff or Veal Scallopini, make sure you have three or four can't-miss recipes in your repertoire!" Other chapters include "Stopping That Macho Before It Becomes Too Mucho" and "Go Ahead! Pick Him Up!"

Kabul Beauty School, interestingly enough, is also about women's issues; Rodriguez went to Afghanistan in 2001 on a relief mission, and ended up returning there to live when she discovered that Afghan women were in need of professional haircare and that there were many women interested in running their own salons. Because of strict Islamic regulations requiring the separation of women and men for such personal services as hair care, waxing, and make-up, as well as the need for professionals to perform elaborate pre-wedding-ceremony hairstyling and removal rituals, Rodriguez recognized that women in Kabul needed each other, and she opened a school to help train a cadre of beauty professionals. Her story of friendship and love in an unlikely place is absorbing and uplifting, proof that we can all get by with a little help from our friends.

A Postcard from PV

2009-01-02T07:06:00.000-08:00

A brief blog from the sunnier section: I'm on a sabbatical from the snow and rain, reading my way around Puerto Vallarta, where it's a surreal 80 degrees. I'm working on an article for the spring edition of Village Books' Chuckanut Reader, so I assume that all of my expenses on this trip are write-off-able, even if I am writing nothing about Mexico.

The topic for my upcoming piece in the CR is "light reads for dark times" and I'm focusing on smart humor to uplift and entertain us through economic hard times and other crap that sucks the fun out of life. So far, I haven't been able to add anything new to my list, but have been actively eliminating potential suggestions. For example, I didn't even have to read I Hope There's Beer in Hell by Tucker Max, because one of my travelmates (who asked not to be named so as not to be associated with the book) hated the book so much that he even refused to trade it in for credit at La Pagina del Sol, the favorite cafe/bookstore of the trio.

Apparently, Max writes proudly, exclusively, and in exhaustingly disgusting detail about his excessive drinking, mistreatment of women (including his "standards" regarding who he'll date), and his obnoxious attitudes about sex and just about everything else. One of those books that seems like a fun idea when you buy it at the airport, and then later just feels like a huge embarrassment. Perfect for chopping up and making some sort of craft project out of. Or something.

On the flight, I read most of Shauna Reid's memoir Adventures of Diet Girl because 1) I'd read a review of it thta made it sound funny and similar to Wendy McClure's weight-loss memoir, I'm Not the New Me; 2) like McClure's book, Reid's began as a blog about her amazing weight loss, and 3) I liked the cover. Reid's story is uplifting and fun, and her accomplishment is worthy of commendation, but the book feels too much like it was lifted directly from the blog without any further embellishment--no real subplots or suspense, and frankly, the writing is average and not particularly unuique. However, if your New Year's resolution includes shedding some excess flesh, consider this one as part of the overall motivational package. I certainly do, although for now, I'm off for some chilequiles. The workouts will have to wait...Adios y feliz ano nuevo!

Snow and Strippers

2008-12-26T09:25:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-08T09:17:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-04T08:03:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-25T11:48:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-24T10:31:00.000-08:00

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 (As sassination 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

2008-11-18T19:14:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-14T08:55:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-10T10:19:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-07T13:14:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-03T11:02:00.000-08:00

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

2008-03-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

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…

Book of the Week for November 13, 2007

2007-11-13T08:39:00.000-08:00

Here if You Need Me: A True Story.
© 2007 by Kate Braestup.
Braestrup’s inspirational memoir reveals her extraordinary and unusual role as chaplain of the Maine Warden Service, a position she took on after the death of her husband, a Maine State Trooper.

A widowed mother of four young children, Braestrup seeks a way to fulfill her husband’s goal of completing seminary school, assuage her overwhelming grief, and lend comfort and solace to others afflicted by challenging or tragic circumstances.
After completing training at Bangor Theological Seminary and becoming ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister, Braestrup signs on with the Warden Service and begins a career accompanying search-and-rescue teams on missions to find lost hikers and children, recover bodies, and solve the mysteries of missing people. Her job is unique in law enforcement, she notes, “I’m not needed in any urgent, practical sense. For 120 and its 125 years, the Maine Warden Service managed quite well without a chaplain…I don’t make the difference between finding and not finding a body, between order and chaos, life and death.”

Nevertheless, story after story affirms the need and importance people have for her special type of comfort in times of trauma. She’s there to console the family of a young suicide victim, to wait with parents as the woods are searched for their six-year-old daughter, to accompany her colleagues on a late-night trip to inform a family of a terrible loss.

For the wardens she works with, Braestrup’s presence at the scene of an accident or death serves as a source of strength for them as they pursue their difficult work, but it also frees them to concentrate on their tasks. “Perhaps more importantly, Braestrup says,“ My uniformed presence signifies a human and humane understanding on the part of the wardens…that the body in the woods or in the water is not just a practical problems, but a matter of tremendous spiritual significance for those most intimately involved…as a reverend, I can express our significance.”
Often Braestrup’s tales of search and rescue end happily, with a found child, a safe father, a lost and tired but living brother—but regardless of whether she’s present for celebration or sorrow, she creates a profound and moving document of her role and its power for the people who need her.