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.

I'm a Lover, Not a Hater

I am famous, or is it infamous?, for not liking things simply because other people like them, perhaps too much. This applies to, maybe, Rolling Stone magazine, U2 during a certain era (because I liked them before!! before you people even knew about them!!), Brad Pitt, ice cream, running skirts, Pilates. Oh, you know. The list could go on.
No where, (no where!) is this behavior more heinous than in Reading and Book Recommendations. If a book hits the best seller list or if everyone's book club happens to be reading it, well, that's a guarantee that I will sneer when I see it, will dismiss it out of hand, will began to hate it without having read a word of it. I am most famous for hating Memoirs of a Geisha, so much so that I had to read it so that I could then defend my dislike of it (which persisted even after I read it!).
Books I still have not read because other people liked them to much: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (or maybe it's the title?); The Secret Life of Bees; Life of Pi; Everything is Illuminated; Special Topics in Calamity Physics (to my credit, I tried to read this one. And I hated it. Also, I hated the aknowledgements where she thanked her nanny for watching her two children while she closed herself into her office and wrote for 9 hours a day. Now why would I hate that?)
But....BUT....
I resisted reading The Help. Everyone LOVED IT!!! IT WAS SO GOOD!!!
See, when someone tells me that, I think, it can't possibly live up to the hype and I don't want to read it, because I hate being disappointed. Almost as much as that, I hate the conversation where someone asks me if I've read a book they love and I exclaim (because I cannot help myself), "Oh! I hated that book!" And then this book lover looks at me as if I have just stated that I hate freedom, and puppies, and apple pie (for the record, I love apple pie). (See also: my reaction to "Forrest Gump." You can imagine, right?)
So I resisted reading The Help because I didn't want to hate it. But then I saw the trailer. And I love Emma Stone (hello? Easy A?). And then, because I wanted to see the movie, I have to read the book. It's some weird compulsion. So I got the book from the library and I started reading it and now I want to read it all the time and I really like it and it is so good.
So I promise, from here on out, to be, perhaps, maybe, a bit more open to liking books that, you know, everyone else likes too.

I don't want you think I'm not Reading....

Because I am. Maybe too much, because I'm not finishing anything. Well, here's what I'm reading right now.








































And of course, still, Bleak House. Oh, The Dickens.

The Blog is Dead! Long Live the Blog!

Over at Hightouch, she is contemplating the lack of inspiration for the blog. I agree that it is difficult to find reasons to blog, and yes, probably, FB is to blame for some of that.
But I am not ready to lose some of my favorite bloggers. So I'm going to try to blog in an effort to convey to them: look, we're blogging! It's a conversation! Let's talk!!

I spent most of yesterday reading In the Woods by Tana French (loaned to me by Hightouch). You can read my review over at Goodreads. But what I'll say here is, I like a good literary mystery but the key is balancing the literary with the mystery. If it's a mystery, it needs to have a good, solid plot that moves and doesn't get stalled in beautiful descriptions of the crime scene or the woods. Mostly these are notes for myself for the mystery I am not writing but need to finish. In The Woods actually has a lot in common with the book I'm trying to write and so it was a good reminder of what I want to do and how to do it. And what I don't want to do and BLEEP, I think I'm going to have to present resolution for both the main and sub-plots. Which doesn't mean back to the drawing board, it means writing more.
I think, maybe, I'll have finished the book in another 10 years. Damn!

New Year's Resolutions: A Review

Here are my resolutions from last year, with a recap:

1. Go to bed earlier. (sleep is good!) *I don't think I accomplished this*
   
2. Exercise more. (Swimming, Running, Yoga) *This I definitely have accomplished. Recently*
   
3. Worry less. *Still unsuccessful on this front*
   
4. Ski this winter. *I did ski, but I want to ski more this year*
   
5. Be nicer. *I tried. Not sure if I succeeded. Maybe?*
   
6. Be more patient. *No*
   
7. Write more. *More? Maybe? Probably not*
   
8. Read more. *Yes. Successful on this one.*
   
9. Watch less TV. *No.*
   
10. See more movies in the theater. (this one seems doable!) *Yes. I accomplished this*

So, all in all more success than not. This year, I'll limit myself to five.

1. Sleep. (sound familiar?)
2. Do a triathlon.
3. Write. (ie: finish The Novel)
   
4. Read.
5. Hang out with friends (dinners, movies, etc.)

I think getting rid of "more" insures success on the resolution front. And I'm all for success.

Sleeping In

The conditions under which I, a mother of a seven-year-old boy, am able to sleep in:

• son is safely stowed at friend's house for sleep over;
  
• drank a considerable amount the night before including, but not limited to: one mojito type cocktail, numerous glasses of red wine, a glass of port;
• ate a considerable amount the night before including, but not limited to: warm frisee salad with Camembert and grape vinaigrette, lamb chop with dried apricots, pomegranate, and Israeli couscous, various chocolate desserts;
• sat up reading while trying to digest;
• went to bed around or after midnight;
• was awakened at 4:37 a.m. by a stranger trying to get into our house;
• laid in bed, heart pounding, while MB patrolled the front door, called the police, then observed four squad cars and their various activities for about one hour;
• tried to go back to sleep around 5:30 a.m., unsuccessfully;
• finally went to sleep, eventually, only to awaken with a start at 10:57 a.m.

And this, friends, is the story of how I learned that I could, indeed, sleep in.
(Also, it turns out, that the guy was probably drunk and meant to go next door to his girlfriend's house, possibly, and the police made him do the drunk test, cuffed him and put him in the squad car, and searched his car with flashlights but then, maybe, just let him go? I'm not sure.)

Post-Reading Break-it-Down

First, I love our valiant MC. He was so over the top nice in his introduction. You know what I'm talking about.
Second, I DID read the F-word/sex story and everyone seemed to love it. I'm not sure all the elderly folks in the room loved it, but everyone else seemed to. My former student and her friend liked it. Some random audience members I didn't know liked it. My smart fiction friends got the whole "unreliable narrator" thing. Thank you, friends.
Third, the person I read with was nice and lovely and new to me, so that's always cool, to meet a new writer person.
Fourth, a friend and I had an interesting conversation about the first-person, which is always interesting (to me anyway), talking about narrators, etc.
Fifth, I gots paid! There is money to be made in fiction, friends, don't let anybody tell you different.
Now, I must go collapse into my bed.

Pre-Reading Panic

I am reading tomorrow and I don't yet know what I am going to read. I have some good short things, but they all have too much sex in them (not just sex but the F word). Plus, I feel like crap, like I'm on the verge of a big cold. Unfortunately I have student conferences tomorrow and then the reading.
That's all.

Instructions for a Saturday

1. Sleep in. With a 7-year-old, this means about 8. Ish.
2. Make coffee. Very important.
3. Make banana muffins.
4. While the muffins bake, grade a few papers. Let's say 2.
5. Eat a muffin and drink coffee. Participate in the festivities/argument going on in the living room about Son's inability to name any state and its capitol.
6. Take the on-line state location quiz. Get a respectable 80%. Ignore husband when he lords his 100% over you.
7. Take an on-line quiz about European capitols. Get stumped on San Marino, which, it turns out, is the capitol of San Marino, a practically non-existent little dot within Italy.
   
8. Grade a few more papers. One? Two?
9. Fight with son.
10. Stomp around the house while getting ready to take dog for a hike in off-leash canyon. Guilt son and husband into going with you, even though neither likes hiking or the outdoors. Not even a little.
11. Hike. Watch dog run about 20 times the distance covered by the humans.
12. Go out to lunch with family. Sit in the sun. Gorge yourself. Reminisce about the pickles of your youth.
13. Guilt husband into getting a new drum of propane by saying it seems like a "guy job."
14. Roast peppers from last week's farmers' market.
15. While peppers are roasting, read "The Awakening" for your lit class. Ahh! Multitasking!
    
16. Make delicious Chile Verde from Otterbutt's husband's recipe.
17. While it's simmering, grade a few more papers. Two. Three.
    
18. Taste the Chile Verde. Damn! That's hot. So. Hot.
19. Open the wine.
20. Grade another paper.
21. Call and sign up for tennis tomorrow.
    
22. Cut up some carrots. Eat carrots.
23. Read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle while waiting for husband and son to get back from movie.
24. Drink wine.
    
25. Add sexy, bald writer of Edgar Sawtelle to your Sexy Bald Men list.
    
26. Sit on couch, blog, think about making dinner, drink more wine.
27. Watch something on TV, then go to bed. Plan on that. Allow for surprise.
    

You had me at "drunk"

For next month's book club, we are reading Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye. It didn't take me very long to become enthralled with the novel. (For the record, the word "drunk" is the 12th word in the book.)
A few lines in it reads, "You could tell by his eyes that he was plastered to the hairline."
Oh Chandler. I have missed ye.

Farmers' Market

I've just returned from the Farmers' Market with my haul: a watermelon for the get together tomorrow night, green beans, 3 tomatoes, garlic, beets, 3 ears of corn, a loaf of delicious bread, 2 summer squash, mixed greens, and the most delicious pastries known to human kind: cinnamon pull aparts from Crumb Brothers. I'm not sure why anyone eats anything else...
We also got some grass fed beef from Lau Family Farms. They come to the market once a month, and one can order bundles ahead of time. I'm excited to try it, as I'm trying to eat more locally. I also vow to try, try!, to eat fruit and vegetables in season. The two things I don't think I can give up: bananas and avocados. And coffee. It's hard to find local coffee, but at least we can buy locally roasted coffee that is fair trade. As far as I can tell the most sustainable coffee that I've found is Cafe Feminino from Ibis, a Utah roaster.
Middlebrow just bought Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, so I guess it's a vibe that's going through the house. I think this means that we'll be cutting back on trips to Costco, unless it's the Idaho Costco, which sells wine (but we'll be focusing on California wines, or Northwest wines, as opposed to the South American or Australian variety).
In other news: If Obama doesn't win the fall election, we'll be buying a small farm in South America, where we could find local coffee and wine. And maybe grow all our own food and write novels and play clay court tennis. My needs are few. Let's stay optimistic, but check back here in November, if you want to buy in to this post-apocalypse dream.

Where's Dr. Write?

I know you have been fretting, thinking to yourself, "Where's Dr. Write? What could have happened to her? Why isn't she blogging?"
Well, I hate to tell you, but nothing exciting has been going on. For one week I was in Pinetop/Lakeside Arizona at a condo with my mother and her husband, my sister, ErinAlice and her family, Middlebrow & Son. It was great fun hanging out in the pines where it was very cool, it rained nearly every day, I wore the same sweatshirt for a week, we over-hiked (meaning we thought we were going to hike 6 but really we hiked 9.5), we engaged in all kinds of sports (miniature golf, fishing, swimming, ping pong, basketball, pool, hiking, tennis), and the liquor flowed like water sometimes as early as noon! Unheard of! We also watched our share of cable, including "Deadliest Catch" which is strangely addictive, and plenty of HGTV.
Then we stopped, too briefly, at Otterbutt's, where we hung out, ate, did some hiking, and adored her beautiful and amusing daughter. Also drank sufficient amounts. Also experienced more torrential rain. Also watched "Flip This House!" Vacation = Cable.
What else? I read the first in the His Dark Materials trilogy. (Loved it!) Finished Cloudsplitter. Finally!!
Also saw "Mamma Mia." Ridiculous and totally entertaining. How could you not love a movie that has Meryl Streep AND Pierce Brosnan AND Colin Firth AND Julie Walters? I tell you how: it's impossible. You can't.
I also started running again and am running two races in the next two months. I started swimming again, and I went to the tennis workout. (News flash: my backhand still sucks!) Also I went for a hike (not too long) with Sylvia and Gus (who was very well behaved! He's a champ!).
Next week we are going to Island Park, which as you know from our friend Hightouchmegastore, may or may not be heaven. I'll give you my verdict when we return. So much depends upon the density of the mosquitoes and the quality of the margaritas.
Pretty soon, I'll have to face reality and work on my syllabi. But for now, there's a Corona in the freezer with my name on it.

Waiting

Most of our lives is probably spent waiting, and while we wait, we do things like read. Or surf the internets.
I only mention it because I'm in a colossal bout of waiting right now. Dup-de-doo. (Imagine me twiddling my thumbs.)
Also, I've been really impatient lately at the additional waiting that accompanies life, like waiting in line to pay for things, waiting to get a card, waiting at stop lights, etc etc etc.
I also wanted a new post, because that book one was confusing. The upshot was, I've read some things for school, and some things I started and didn't finish, and other things I haven't read at all.Actually that's most things. If you ever see a book and think, "I wonder if Dr. Write has read this..." the answer is probably no. Middlebrow is on this "read really, really, really long books" kick (which he is just about to start...any day now).
Meanwhile, I think I'll watch a movie.

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

What I've Been Doing (Not that You Wanted to Know...)

• Reading about Writing (This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley)
• Reading Other Things (textbooks, Pale Fire, blogs)
  
• Writing (or trying to write or at least sitting downstairs at my desk)
• Riding the Train (and reading on the train)
• Seeing Movie ("Made of Honor" yes, I actually saw it & I liked it!)
• Eating (fish tacos that I made, salad, banana muffins)
• Sneezing (while running, sleeping, and so on)
• Not sleeping (is it the allergy medicine?)
• Reading to Son (still on Harry Potter 5, which, magically, seems to be endless)
• Cleaning (who really wants to mop the kitchen floor? But it needs to be done!)
• Doing Laundry (this really is endless!!)
• Exercising (well, I didn't do this Sunday or Monday. But today. Today!)
• Downloading & Listening to Madonna's new album "Hard Candy" (some ridiculousness, such as "my sugar is raw" !? but I laugh every time I hear JT say "Ma-Donna")
  
• Going to the Pool (I took Son to the pool yesterday. The indoor pool. But still.)
• Thinking about packing for Austin
• Signing up for things on-line
• Wondering when my new swimsuit will arrive by mail
• Fretting
• Oh yeah! Being happy about not winning a book contest, but being one of 5 finalists (that's a first for me, being a finalist. The not winning part I've been doing for awhile)
• Dining with friends (that's tonight)
• Going to Austin (on Thursday, so I'm out for at least a week, but if I have wireless at my hotel, I'll blog!)
  

Things to Do on a Snowy Day

Not necessarily in this order. But maybe.

1. Sleep in.
2. Drink green tea.
3. Skip breakfast. Still full from last night's late night pizza (leftovers from Son and Babysitter)
   
4. Try to finish the novel I'm reading (The Post-Birthday World)
5. Shovel the walk/driveway/sidewalk in less than ten minutes
6. Drive to Lone Star for lunch (because who doesn't need a burrito and the world's best iced tea?)
7. Make second trip to Steve & Barry's (for gifts, sweater and vest for self, t-shirt for Son, sweater for MB)
8. Stop by Red Balloon (more gifts, Playmobil Advent Calendar for Son)
9. Finish book on drive home (more on this later)
10. Put together advent calendar for Son
11. Watch Son open days 1-8 in less than 5 minutes
12. Wander around the house wondering what to do
13. Read everyone's blog, comment on blogs, click links on blogs, surf
14. Watch Son constructing new knight scenarios with calendar booty and castle stuff from two Christmases ago
15. Drink some 7-Up
16. Stare into space
17. Laundry?
18. Think about making more rice to go with curry leftovers from Thursday
19. Consider the movie viewing options for the evening ("The Science of Sleep")
20. Finally give in and grade a few Creative Nonfiction portfolios
21. Sigh
    

Things to do Over Break: A List

As MB said, This is the end. It's been a fun month that went way faster than one would think it could. But now I have things to do over break (once I finish grading and submit my grades, that is):

1. Baking: chocolate chip cookies, this bittersweet chocolate and hazelnut cake I make every year from my and MB's birthdays, boob cookies (a family tradition, basically a small peanut butter cookie with a Hershey's kiss right in the middle), seven layer bars, some kind of sugar cookie for Son to decorate.
2. Tree: This year we are finally getting a tree. Maybe tomorrow. I am looking forward to having the good-smelling, well-lit, glowy thing in our living room for almost a month.
3. Reading: A lot. I just want to read some trashy detective fiction, and maybe finish a few more of the books that haunt my nightstand.
4. Writing: I'd like to work on my novel (the old one), send out some short stories, and take one more look at my collection before I submit it to another publisher, just so I don't fall into despair about the publisher that my collection is now languishing at, unread and unloved.
5. Sleeping: A radical notion, but maybe I'll go to bed earlier. Maybe.
6. Swimming: Try to get up earlier to swim with the Serious Swimmers (otherwise known as the Masters. But I'm not the slowest one! So there's that.)
7. IKEA: MB and I have an IKEA date. When Son is in school we're going to go shopping.
   
8. Breakfast: MB and I also have a breakfast date. We drop Son off at school and then we go have breakfast. I'm hoping we can try a new place.
9. Movie: I hope to see a movie in a theater. It's a radical notion, but it just might happen.
   
10. Appetizer date-night: MB and I usually go out for our birthdays. This year we are going to IKEA. But I hope we can still squeeze in a date that goes something like this: appetizers and drinks, movie and popcorn, dessert and wine. That sounds like an ideal birthday to me and covers a few things on my list: baking (the dessert), movie, and this one of course, number 10. The end of the line. As far as we go.
    

One Day: One Book

On Friday night, I began reading The Thirteenth Tale for my Moms-with-Kids-who-were-in- Kindergarten-together Book Club. We're meeting December 13th, in some kind of numerical coincidence.
In any case, I started the book around 8:30 on Friday night and read until just past midnight. I thought Middlebrow was still reading too, but unbeknownst to me he had fallen asleep. Then I got up today and, after dropping Son at a playdate, finished the book. It's a recent record for me, one book in less than 24 hours.
Reading this book was a relief, as lately I'd had a hard time getting into any book. I love the feeling of getting so wrapped up in a story that things like sleeping and eating seem less important. But then there's also that feeling when the book is over. A kind of elation, but also the let down. The world of that book is closed now, though in a way it's still alive inside you. If the book was really good, you go over parts of it again and again in your mind. The characters are vivid.
I liked many things about this book: the narrator's voice (distinctive and clear, but unobtrusive), the plot (a mystery, but really a family mystery about characters and relationships between them), the structure (divided into sections, "Beginnings," "Middles," and "Ends"), and many of the little details (the narrator is a biographer who has written an article on a certain set of twins, her father owns a rare book shop), the writing. The book has some beautiful sentences which are heavy on insight into the human character. But I didn't mind that.
And it has closure, and a somewhat happy ending. No loose threads to annoy the mind.
I was going over my list of books read this year, and I think this is definitely one of my favorites. My mom has a five star rating system, and she hardly ever gives anything five stars. She's a librarian, so she's read a lot and has many books to compare against one another.
But this was a five star book, definitely.
Next on my bedside table: The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver. I've heard great things about her writing. One friend (from the book group) said she couldn't put it down. She also said her mother called her and told her she had just finished it and, when she hung up from talking with her daughter, was going to read it again. I look forward to it.
Winter (especially vacation) is the time for reading, especially reading a book a day. Okay, maybe every three or four days. Or five, depending on how much movie watching is taking place.

Being Thankful

Seven Things I'm Thankful For

1. Rainy days: I like to stay inside and drink tea. And think about running, but not actually go running because, you know, it's raining.
2. Reading: Along with drinking tea, I read Son the rest of Harry Potter (the 2nd) today. It's difficult, to read out loud for a long time, but it was fun. I enjoyed that Son was so into it and that he wanted me to finish.
3. Breakfast: I love to go out for breakfast. We had some friends in town, what shall I name them? Conservation Man and Idaho Teacher. We all went out for breakfast. It wasn't the best breakfast I'd had there, but it was good. And Son ate all his breakfast and a side of bacon and a side of fruit. Dining out for breakfast is fun. It just is.
4. Food: I'm not hungry. At Son's school, we are doing a project for the food bank, making snack packs for kids who eat free lunch at school. Apparently, over the holiday breaks, many of these kids don't get enough to eat. I'm thankful that Son has enough to eat, even if he's not always aware or thankful. And I'm thankful that his school cares enough to have the kids do service projects. In first grade! Maybe these kids can change the world!
5. My family: I'm not always as thankful as I should be for them. All of them. I have great sisters and parents and a great husband and a great Son.
   
6. My brain: Even though I often feel stupid, and use the word "idiotic" about myself too often, I know I'm not stupid. So I thank my brain for still working and for getting me this far. You deserve a break! But please don't take one. Not yet.
7. Writing: Even though I'm feeling discouraged these days, sometimes writing feels like a gift. Like when I've been discouraged and think I suck, and then one day I sit down and write something, and I have no idea where it came from or why. Those are the good days. I think there are more on the horizon. (Cue the George Michael:) I just gotta have faith.
   

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!