On Books

Will there come a time when books will be obsolete?
Honestly, I don't think so, and I certainly HOPE not.
But a recent visit to the University library (research!) got me thinking. I was wandering around, looking for books, and all around me I was surrounded by young people on their computers. Were they studying? Perhaps. Probably.
But it begs the question, why do we need this library for them to study in? They could study in any structured space that gave them some privacy and some quiet. None of them (none!) was looking at a book. Not one!
On the plus side, when I walked among the rows and rows of books, I felt at ease. The smell of the books, many of them old, was familiar. I know my way around a library.
But for how many of the younger people (how many? how young? who can say!) is information and the idea of a text a wholly virtual and non-tactile thing?
My son certainly loves books, but he grew up with me and my husband. My husband, whose philosophy is "one cannot have too many books!" If my son expresses an interest in an idea, my husband buys him a book about it. Which is a great thing, and has made my son a fantastic and broadly read person.
But so many others don't know and don't care about books.
I suppose I (and others like me) are dinosaurs in our love of the actual, physical book. I know others love the book, but enough others?
And I don't necessarily think the death of the library as a place that houses books as a bad thing. I often go to the downtown public library and I think of it more as a social hub than one whose focus is primarily books. People go there to use the computers. And yes, to find books. But also to hang out, to find shelter, to use the bathroom, to sit at a table and exist.
So what is the future of the book and what is the future of the library?

My Bookshelves

Awhile ago, Hightouchmegastore posted this to her blog. A little something about her bookshelves, which made me want to do it, and now, finally, I'm gettin to it. So, it only takes me a long time, it turns out, to get around to stuff. Because I have a lot of stuff going on, okay? Don't be like that.

So here is an assortment from my library. What I'm reading and what not.

Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino

I borrowed this book from a friend because I read two of these shorts in a creative writing textbook and I loved them. I have been reading this book very slowly, and enjoying it. Apparently it has a structure to it, each little chapter, such as "Mr. Palomar does the shopping," has three parts which are visual, cultural, and speculative. But you don't need to know that. Some of the sections are better than others, but they are all slightly strange and alienating and also beautiful.




Spectacle by Susan Steinberg

I bought this book at AWP at the Graywolf table. I have read and liked Steinberg's stories before. I do like this collection/linked stories/novel. The writing is interesting and has all the hallmarks of her other work: a disjointed narrative, focus on female experience, possibly disturbing events, theorizing on the meaning of things. Some of them are clever, or meant to be clever (based on their titles, like "Signifier"). But, as with her story collections, I feel like most of the stories hit the same note. But, I'm going to finish it.



This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

I just bought this book today. I'm reading it for one of my book clubs, so I want everyone to know I bought it and Yes, I'm going to read it.








The All of It by Jeannette Haien

I am supposed to read this for my other book club, which doesn't meet until May, so that shouldn't be a challenge because the book is only 145 pages. I include it here because it is one of those books I have known about for almost 15 years and have just never read, for whatever reason. So I look forward to reading a very short book.






As you probably assume, my house is filled with hundreds more books that I have not yet read, but plan to. I will do my best to keep  you updated on those.

Things missing from my house

1. That nice lady. You know, the one who comes and brings you clean towels and empties the trash and changes the sheets. You know, the one who does, basically, all the things you don't want to do.
2. Loads and loads of people. Most of whom you don't know.
3. Lots of books. I have a lot of books, but they would fit in like, 10 boxes. They would not, for example, fill up those many rooms in the basement or maybe not the basement of the Marriott.
4. That sweater. That I lost one night and found the next day, right where I lost it. And then I lost it again. And didn't find it. (Maybe it's with Nicole's hat? In the AWP museum of lost things? Because it was in DC and apparently, there? There's a museum for everything.)
5. Hightouchmegastore. And that's sad, because she's a good roommate. But she's a little sick and she probably missed The Historian and also her child/ren. But if she wanted to, I would let her live in my cold basement. 
6. Any sense that tomorrow is Monday and therefore a work day, that is, a day on work must be done. Because, basically I sat around all day feeling tired, doing laundry, and letting the interwebs eat what is left of my brain. 
7. Terrance Hayes. He, also, could live in my basement. Or wherever.
8. Sleep. But it will not elude me for long.
9. Tapas. I ate at the most excellent tapas bar in DC. I want the tapas people to be my live-in personal chefs. 
10. Absurdistan. I heard Gary Shteyngart read on Saturday night and he's like, totally fucking hilarious and I thought, oh, Middlebrow read that book and loved it, I'll read it when I get home. But he gave it to his BFF because, apparently, if MB likes a book and you don't jump on it immediately slathering like a hungry daschund, then he sulks and is all like, you don't like what I like, and then he gives the thing he likes away so that, eventually, when you decide you do like it, he can be all like, oh, I said you would like it, but no, you didn't take my word for it, you had to talk to Shteyngart himself and then you're all, oh, he's funny, give me the book. So, in other words, I'm going to have to get my own copy. 

Overheard from the back seat

"Smell this book. Doesn't it smell good? It smells like the used bookstore. I love the smell of books!"

Read This!

My title refers (sort of) to this book I'm obsessed with: Born to Run. But it also refers to this blog post.
Sometimes I think I'm talking into a void. Also, I think, "why blog?" It seems self-indulgent and narcissistic.
But then my friend posts this: "I prefer blogs that read like a journal where every petty detail of their lives are revealed." But his blog is intellectual and insightful, a mash-up of a personal essay and poetic theory. His blog is not petty.
But his post made me feel like it's okay to just blog whatever, I don't need a theme or an insight I can just say, here's what happened today people.
So, we're nearly done with the patio project, and I will post pictures, eventually. We put some sand on the part that is finished and (thank god!) it hides our imperfections. I wish I could cover myself with sand.
I decided that my experimental, obsessive novel needs to be a mystery with a chronological plot. Back to the drawing board. But I already have an idea for the second novel in this series with my thirty-something female main character. If I can't be literary, at least I can sell out. Maybe. I'll let you know how that goes.
I'm obsessed with the running book and now feel like what I need to do is run more. Right. I'll let you know how that goes. But the book is awesome, and even if you don't like running, it actually has a great plot and the information in it is super fascinating. It's inspiring.

Christmas Stats

Here is some of what we did over the last few days:

• Last minute Christmas Gifts purchased: three (all for MB, all purchased on Christmas Eve!)
• Cookies baked: four (peanut butter cornflake chocolate bars, seven layer bars, peanut butter kiss cookies, sugar cookies)
• Other baking: cranberry maple cake for Christmas breakfast
• Meals cooked: One (Christmas, Caesar salad, baked potatoes, steaks on the grill, easy!)
• Other cooking: Spanish style shrimp, which included three parts, making the garlic oil, making garlic chips, then finally cooking the shrimp.
  
• Tamales consumed: um...four? five? we ate some the 23rd, the 24th, etc etc etc. We still have some left and will be eating them for dinner tonight.
• Bottles of wine polished off: please don't make me divulge this number!
  
• Christmas movies watched: Three (Christmas Carol, the George C. Scott one; It's A Wonderful Life; A Christmas Story)
• Presents Opened: A gajilion? All for Son, of course, who got the haul which included a Lego Star Wars ship from Santa, a spirograph, a puzzle, two games, a Rubik's cube, numerous art supplies including a sketching kit and some painting canvases, a spyology book, night vision goggles, and some Wimpy Kid books. I got him some shirts and a sweater and an orange for his stocking!
• Gifts given: I got MB the NBA socks he so wanted, also two sweaters and The Best of Ogden Nash and a moleskin notebook. He also received a Godzilla action figure from Son, but I'll let him report on that. I gave my sister a bunch of movies, and my mom a book she wanted. That's all. Oh, and various gifts for the neices and nephew.
• Gifts received: a great exercise shirt and sweater from MB, also the London moleskin, complete with maps, etc, a book from Son. My mother got me a coat and crocheted a scarf to match. Cute! Lip stuff, Luna bars, cocktail napkins.
• Books read: one, The Subtle Knife. Now I'm on to The Amber Spyglass. I need to finish this series before school starts again!
• Trips out of the house: in the last two days? None! Which is why I need to get off my fat (cookie) ass and at least go for a walk. I don't want to drive anywhere, even though the hardworking civil servants are plowing and salting, even as I write this.
  
• Further festivities: a dinner with Jason's retauntuer friend, a dinner with Otterbutt and Sylvia. Then maybe I can stop drinking for a month. Or at least a week.

Merry Christmas to all! I wish you a fabulous 2009. I hope I get to see you all real soon!!

Best of Lists: A Complaint

Why are everyone's end of the year BEST lists so predictable? Take this one for example. Now, I know these people read all year long, new books, that's their job. (That's their job! How did they get so lucky??) But...why so predictable Michiko Kakutani and Janet Maslin? (I know there are others, but theirs are the only names I know...)
I'm happy to see Steven Millhauser on the list, because even though he's been around a long time, he's not very popular. So who am I not happy to see on the list? Toni Morrison and Jhumpa Lahiri. First of all, does anyone not know about Toni Morrison? Say you wander in to your local bookstore and see this book propped up on a table. Is anyone likely to pick it up and say, "Hmm...Toni Morrison...never heard of her"? No! So the NYT book review does not need to promote books that will be read no matter what. People will pick up that book. What they need to do is point out to me a writer I have never heard of and say, "People!! You should be reading this book!! What have you been doing? Put down that 'Twilight' shite and read this. This!!" That's what I want them to do for me.
And I am sorry, but I am not (NOT!) going to read any of those nonfiction books. They are all about war, war, war, and egomaniacs. Blah!
Sadly, I read very few (2?) book published in 2008. But, of the books I read, I can tell you which ones I liked.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: This was very good. It had dogs and a sympathetic narrator, and did I mention dogs? Also, it used some parts of "Hamlet," which I just taught. I thought it was well written and did not draw attention to its own style, unlike some other books that I read that were published this year, but will not appear on this list.
The Long Goodbye: Do I even have to explain this?
All the mysteries by Arnaldur Indridason: If you haven't read these, get on it. The new one comes out in February.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: This was really good and sweet. I think I might teach it in my novel class.
Lucky Jim: Funny!
Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender: Why isn't she on the list???? (oh. it was published last year.)
Blink: I love Gladwell's style.
Time's Arrow: There's no Amis, like old Amis. Apparently. When I saw him in NYC, I thought he was a blowhard, but I loved this book. Love.
Writing at the End of the World by Richard E. Miller: I actually want to reread this. It was great.
Okay, one more: The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. It took me awhile to get into this one, but I really liked it.

So, having criticized lists and created one, I'll say I'm thankful for books and all those hardworking folks who write them.
Please, friends, tell me what books you loved this year. I'm sad to say that no book made me cry or rethink my life, but I'd have to say Edgar Sawtelle came closest.

Books

Since all I seem to be doing is reading or making lists, this meme from Otterbutt, who is somewhere close by, but whom I haven't seen in at least a week!!
Some of these wouldn't let me bold & underline, so you have to take what you can get.
So, I bolded ones I read, underlined ones read for school, and italicized ones I started but did not finish. Some I question why I read in the first place. Memoirs of a Geisha? Though I know why. I told people that I thought it was bad, then I got taken to task for saying that because I hadn't read it. So I read it. And you know what? It was bad. Some books you just know are bad without reading them. Why read them and waste your time?

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion is this
There is Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

10 Canonical Novels I Love

1. Jane Eyre: love it! I spent about half (okay, maybe I exaggerate) of my oral exams discussing this. Why? Unknown. But I did. I've read it maybe 3 times. Never tire of it. My favorite part may be the crazy lady in the attic. I identify with her. And with Jane.
2. All Jane Austen: Never met a Jane Austen novel I didn't like. I've read all except: Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey.
3. House of Mirth: I think this was my favorite of the novels I read for my exams. Since then I've vowed to read more Wharton. And have I? No, I have not. Hey, give me a break. It's only been 5 years!
4. Mrs. Dalloway: I love this novel. It is my favorite Woolf. Why? It's lyrical without being choppy. I much prefer this to The Waves, for example. (But, like hightouch, I have not read To The Lighthouse). I often use excerpts from this novel for my students to imitate.
5. The Awakening: Love it! I know, she kills herself in the end, but there are many descriptions of interior space and she moves from a house to an apartment. Plus many good details (especially the last two paragraphs).
6. Our Mutual Friend: I actually really liked this despite the fact that it is so long. It also has lots of interior space issues. One thing I didn't like is all the minor characters who never recur. I was left wondering, well, what happened to them?
7. Lolita: I once had a long fight with some friends of friends about authorial responsibility for writing novels about pedophilia. But I hadn't read Lolita when I had this discussion. I like to do that. But now I have read it, and I'm not sure how I feel about authorial responsibility, but I do know that Nabakov is a master. In his second language. Damn him!
8. Beloved: I reread this for my exams and I have to say I didn't love it so much the second time, but I still like it. And I love the structure, so I'll keep it on my list.
9. Tristam Shandy: I liked this book, but I liked the movie even more. I know the movie isn't in the canon, but still.
   
10. Wieland: This is a shocker, I know, but I really liked this. I wrote a pretty good paper on this that my professor liked. My thesis was: She must be unhoused! (Sorry, I can't remember her name!). As you can see, many of these novels concern houses or interior space. It's my obsession. Deal with it.
    

Books I Haven't Read

Inspired by Sleepy E's idea for Humiliation and the game from David Lodge's Trading Places, I am going to OUT myself by admitting the books most literature majors have read but that I have not.

1. Moby Dick. I know. This is must be a mortal sin for a fiction writer. But hey.
2. Canterbury Tales. At the University of Oregon, where I got my BA, there was this scary professor who taught the Old English classes and he made you come to his office and read Beowulf to him in Old English. I avoided this class until the English Department finally hired a woman who taught a class on Medieval Women, and then I took that. Needless to say, we read neither Beowulf nor Canterbury Tales. But I had already read (at least one page of...) Beowulf.
3. Paradise Lost. To be honest, I "read" this for a class in grad school, if by "reading" you mean opening the book and turning the pages but retaining none (and I mean NONE) of what has passed before your eyes. I used to think it was because I was stupid, but now I know it's because the book( I should say "poem") sucks. You heard it here first.
4. Aeneid. I did read part of this, but I never finished it. This is the second book from the same class in grad school that I didn't read/like/finish. I much prefer The Odyssey, thank you very much.
5. Any novel by David Foster Wallace. I think this is only a sin for a lover of postmodern fiction. I like his short stories. You know why? Because they are short.
6. Remembrance of Things Past. Nothing. I have not read it. If I ever get stuck on an island, maybe I'll get to it. But I doubt it. I'm shallow!
7. Some James Fenimore Cooper novel I was supposed to have read in grad school. I read some of it. But I didn't finish it. The professor was mad at me because I didn't talk in class for about three weeks, while we discussed this novel. I hated it.
8. Billy Budd. Is it nice to include two Melville on such a short list? I was supposed to read this for AP English in high school. I just couldn't do it. It was so boring. So. So. Boring. Even now, I still couldn't read it. And I didn't read Pierre when it was assigned at UO. My teacher had a thing for introductions, so I just read the introduction. I knew there would be a question on the introductions on the final, and there was! So I passed the class!
9. Invisible Man. Okay, I started it. I read most of it. But I didn't finish it. Again, so long. Why? I know it's good, but I tire easily of novels that get too preachy.
10. The Bible. I've read parts of the New Testament and parts of the Old Testament. But I've never read the whole thing. This, I think, is a mortal sin.

Next time: 10 Canonical novels I love!!

7 Facts about Me

I was tagged by Hightouchmegastore to do this 7 Facts about Me list. You know I love lists!
So, only 7?

1. I'm an anxious, anxiety ridden individual, plagued by self-doubt and insecurity. Often this expresses itself in certain habits. Such as: drinking too much wine and talking really loudly, allowing my attention to wander so that I'm not paying attention to friends I should be listening to during conversations, saying things I shouldn't and then regretting them later, feeling a sense of competition with, well, pretty much everybody, worrying about my weight, my eating habits, the eating habits of Son, my exercise habits, saying cruel things I don't really mean but then can't take back. Basically, worrying about everything.
2. I have these OCD habits like: picking up trash and straightening things up at events where I'm not responsible (wine and cheese get togethers, kids birthday parties, restaurants, friends' houses) but not, I should point out, my own house. (Perhaps I do it because I am nervous and insecure?)
   
3. I love to read mysteries. Once, in my high school AP class we were doing presentations on Greek gods from Edith Hamilton's Mythology and I had an Agatha Christie book stuck inside my mythology book. Then, when it was my turn, I took Agatha out, stood up and did my presentation, sat back down and continued to read Agatha. I mean, I was reading, right?
4. I hate fantasy books. I don't mind sci-fi, especially sci-fi that's like our world, but only slightly different. But I hate books with dragons and fairies. Especially fairies! All my friends read those Anne McAffrey novels in junior high, but I couldn't stand them!
5. My favorite book in junior high was Lizard Music by Daniel Pinkwater. I love that he's a commentator on NPR now. He's so legit! If you haven't read it, you should. It's like Vonnegut for the tween set.
   
6. My favorite movie in high school was "Casablanca." I was such a romantic! Now...hard to say. I still love "Annie Hall" and probably always will, but I think "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is riding high, because I wish I could write something that original and inventive. (and I kind of hate that guy because of it, see? competitive!!) But then there are all those other movies I love: Grease, Ladyhawke, Hannah and Her Sisters, Lost in Translation, Notes on a Scandal, etc, etc, etc.
7. I'm running a fun race on Thanksgiving at City Creek. I think y'all should run with me. It's fun. If we can find someone to watch Son, MB will run too. Anyone?

So, I'll try to tag seven: Susansinclair, academom, not a folk singer, scorpion's tail, ErinAlice, SuziQ, Strange Polkas.
I did it! Success!

Book #23: Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital

Last night I completed book #23 for this year, Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital. I liked it, enjoyed a lot of it, but I didn't think it was as good as Oyster. Her last three novels (Oyster, Due Preparations for the Plague, and Orpheus Lost) riff off of current events and do so in fascinating ways. What I love most about her novels is her ability to be lyrical, to be literary, and to have great plots. Orpheus was no exception. She takes a musician and a mathematician, and somehow links it all to terrorism, underground prisons in Iraq, and freelance interrogators.
This novel is less successful than the previous two, in my opinion, because she gets a little off-track with the characters. There are whole chapters that don't advance the plot, but rather give backstory about one of the main characters, Leela (and you know how I feel about backstory!). And at that point, I didn't care. I just wanted to find out what happened. And I think too much of the plot was elided rather than depicted. I wanted to know more about what happened in the Iraqi prison and what happened behind the scenes. I think the characters could have been more fully explored. There was a lot of darkness in the novel, but whereas in Oyster she went way into the darkness and depicted what was happening in Orpheus she talks about what happened, but it's never really clear what occurred. Maybe, in some ways, it's realistic. Maybe the characters will never really know what happened. But I think as a reader, I wanted to know more about the circumstances.
In any case, it was a good read. I read it in about a week. I will definitely meet my goal of 25 books this year, maybe I'll even make it to 30! But I'm still trying to finish Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks. I've been reading it for more than a year. I have a good feeling though. I can do it!