beginning of a lifelong fling
You know, I just updated my reading list for this year and was pleasantly surprised when I read over the list. As of today, I’ve finished 29 books, and while I’ve rarely been able to choose what I wanted to read without influence from either a publisher or a professor, I have read some really great books.
Somehow, that’s encouraging.
I arrived without incident in DC around 2pm on Thursday. Let me now recommend Bolt Bus; we were a little late, but the ride was direct, the bus was pleasant, and there was free Wi-Fi on board. Oh, and it was cheap.
Liz was our fabulously gracious hostess for the entire trip; we hung out with her and various friends all weekend. We saw Wall-E (again for Liz and me, first time for Tom and Angela), as well as Wanted (well, it’s not great cinema, but lots of things blow up and it’s visually awesome). We went to the Newseum and were duly shellshocked by the Pulitzer Prize Photojournalism exhibit, which I highly recommend - it’s worth the cost of admission alone. We watched fireworks from a rooftop and ate really good food, notably at Nora, Zaytinya, and the legendary Ben’s Chili Bowl. Tom and I stumbled into the National Portrait Gallery and wished we had a lot more time there. We stayed up very late and were rather raucous and, all in all, had a great time.
We got home Monday around 5:30pm and I dashed off to my 6pm class, for which I’d just finished the readings, and wow, I just love school. It’s so much work and it makes me stressed out but all this reading and discussion and research is invigorating.
Yesterday evening we had a screening of Brideshead Revisited, and I’m happy to say that the trailer is completely misleading and it’s actually very tight with the book. The casting is great (Ben Whishaw continually blows my mind), and the music is beautiful, and it’s really very good. We both were a bit confused by its August 1 release date, since it actually seems like Oscar material. In any case, I’m reviewing it, so I’ll say no more until then.
Tomorrow night, Bret Lott is having a book release party at the IAM space for his upcoming novel, Ancient Highway, and Kelley McRae is opening with a set. I know. I love living in New York. If you’re nearby and want to come, check out the Facebook event.
On the home front, I’m now reading H.G. Wells’ Tono-Bungay for Monday’s class, and we’re finishing Six Feet Under, at long last. We even went grocery shopping yesterday. It’s been a while. I have class again tonight, and then I’m off until Tuesday (thank God for a stay-cation!), so I might not blog too much more this week!
There was almost no traffic on this blog yesterday, which was confusing until I realized the server was down. Thanks, Dreamhost. We’re back up today.
I head south tomorrow morning for a long weekend in DC, which will involve festivities of various kinds, none of which are very nailed down. Just having a vacation outside the (well, this) city for a few days should be refreshing.
Lastly, this article on being a writer in Brooklyn is kind of awesome, especially this part:
I have a hard time understanding all the hype. I dig it here and all, but it’s just a place. It does not have magical properties. In interviews, I get asked a lot, “What’s it like to write in Brooklyn?” I get invited to do panels with other Brooklyn writers to discuss what it’s like to be a writer in Brooklyn. I expect it’s like writing in Manhattan, but there aren’t as many tourists walking very slowly in front of you when you step out for coffee. It’s like writing in Paris, but there are fewer people speaking French. What do they expect me to say? “Instead of ink, I write in mustard from Nathan’s Famous, a Brooklyn institution since 1916.” “I built my desk out of wooden planks taken from the authentic rubble of Ebbets Field. Have I mentioned how I still haven’t forgiven the Dodgers for moving to Los Angeles?”
An exceptional month for books.
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
You know why I read it. Frankly, though I was glad to put it down, this is really an amazing book - not in the life-changing way, but because it’s so insanely layered. I still don’t know what it means, but it’s worth reading, preferably with a biography of Melville or some kind of commentary in hand. [5/5]
Home - Marilynne Robinson
Not to succumb to hyperbole, but this is an amazing book. If you’ve liked Robinson’s earlier work (Housekeeping, Gilead), you’ll love this; if you found it a little hard to follow, you’ll love this one even more. It’s more narrative, but has some of the same characters from Gilead. Home comes out in September. Don’t miss it. [5/5]
It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music - Amanda Petrusich
I am not much of a reader of music journalism, but I really enjoyed this book. Petrusich chased Americana’s history on a road trip and ended up with a highly engaging portrait of a country that continues to survive turmoil, change, and growth. If you’re into country, rock, blues, folk, or any of the alt-variations thereof, you’ll really enjoy this; even if you aren’t, I think you’ll still like it. [5/5]
Howards End - E.M. Forster
This is for my current class. Unfortunately, I read it in fragments on subway rides and didn’t appreciate it as much as I should have, though I recognize that it’s a great work. More when we discuss it in class next week. [4/5]
This month: a lot of reading for class, and not much else. It’s okay, they’re good books. I’m in the midst of The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad, right now.
Well, I totally forgot to post my May book list. I read more than I thought I would this month.
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
This was for my forthcoming Modern British Novel class, and it was good. More Victorian and traditional in feel than the others I’ve read, with a hint of the gothic. I loved Sebastian’s character. As an added bonus, there’s a new movie adaptation coming out soon. [4/5]
The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and “Women’s Work” - Kathleen Norris
I love Kathleen Norris. This was a short transcription, I believe, of a talk she gave somewhere. It’s an excellent meditation on the nature of the repetitive work we do in the home, and of the different roles that women fill. Definitely recommended. [5/5]
Saturday - Ian McEwan
Stellar, and also for Modern British Novel. I love McEwan, but I honestly enjoyed this book much more than Atonement (which was great, but got less great as it went along). Plus, the main character is a brain surgeon, and I love all his descriptions and the way he thinks about people. This seemed to have a lot in common with Mrs. Dalloway (which, incidentally, will also be in class). [5/5]
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
I can recognize the innovative way in which this book is written - it jumps around in time, but not in the way most books do. It’s more like The Virgin Suicides. But I couldn’t really get into it. It’s also for class, so I’ll be interested to see where it goes. [3/5]
I’m in the midst of Howard’s End in my bits of free time, but beyond that, Moby-Dick will be consuming my life for the rest of the month.
In my continuing quest to rest from my labors on Sunday, I am trying to avoid reading Moby-Dick that day. It’s a nice break and keeps me from getting burnt out on all the whaling.
So this Sunday, I pull out Howard’s End, by E.M. Forster. (Yes, that is for class, but it’s for a class I’m not taking right now, and besides, it’s fun and it’s not assigned reading yet!) Tom bought this copy sometime before we were married. I flipped open to the title page, and there is this handwritten inscription:
To Francine,
Without whom this book would never have been sold.
E.M. Forster
It appears this Forster chap had an excellent sense of humor, even at his book signings.
And you think I’m kidding when I say I married Tom for his library.
I love long weekends, though this one is a little too busy for my taste. I have forty chapters of Moby-Dick, half of a biography of Melville, a John Winthrop sermon, and a long article on Calvinism to read for class on Wednesday, and a paragraph to draft on one of the Moby-Dick chapters for Tuesday night, plus a screener of an Iranian film to watch and review. There are also a stack of publisher’s catalogs next to my couch that I need to wade through to find books for the Sept/Oct issue of RELEVANT. Oh, and Indy 4 out this weekend. I’m not complaining, exactly; I’m just a little tired and the weather is too lovely.
Luckily, the Melville biography is quite interesting. Did you know that he spent many of his growing-up years in the general Albany area? He lived in Albany, Greenbush, and Lansingburgh. Just a like a certain other New York-dwelling writer. :)
Happy Memorial Day, Americans, and everyone have a great weekend!
This will be my fourth summer living in New York - oh, my word - but you might be shocked and mildly appalled to know that in all that time, I’ve barely made use of the wonderful free things that go on here in the summertime - just a Philharmonic in the Park concert in 2006, and some of Midsummer Night’s Swing last year in Lincoln Center (which was not free).
So, I’ve put a lot of the more amazing things I’ve found going on around town, from classical music to free film screenings to rock and folk and readings. Highlights include:
• Readings by Richard Price and Junot Diaz
• Several free NY Philharmonic concerts, in Prospect and Central Parks
• Chris “formerly of Nickel Creek” Thile’s amazing band, Punch Brothers
• Lots of great outdoor movies
• The Philip Glass ensemble, Ailey II, and Beth Orton in Prospect Park
• Wilco in McCarren Park (sadly not free)
I’ll be constantly updating, so feel free to bookmark!
I never actually mentioned it when I talked about the New York Times Reading Room book blog, but Kathleen Norris - one of my very favorite authors, and whose little book The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and Women’s Work I finished yesterday - is one of the people blogging about the great novel Housekeeping by one of my other favorite authors, Marilynne Robinson. That is such an inspired combination that it should forgive the Times of any of its faults for at least a couple years to come.
Thank God there are still papers out there that believe in literature.
Also on the Times, Randall Bourscheidt, president of the Alliance for the Arts, is taking questions on the health of the arts in New York City this week. It should be an intriguing discussion.
All the Sad Young Literary Men - Keith Gessen
I read this for a review (forthcoming, RELEVANT July/August issue), but I was wonderfully surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It’s the intertwined stories of three young men as they overthink college, then pursue their ambitions. It reminded me a lot of Jonathan Franzen, who is in fact quoted on the back cover. If you like slightly dark, sardonic literature with a hint of hope, this is a good one. [4/5]
Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling - Andy Crouch
Also for a RELEVANT review; I can’t recommend this book highly enough. As someone who grew up in the kind of Christian environment that delighted in being critical of culture, this was a great encouragement to move on and create culture - and not just art, but law, cities, and omelets. A must-read. I think it comes out in August. [5/5]
Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture - Heather Hendershot
A really great ethnographic/sociological look at evangelical culture (pre-2004) and media, by someone from the “outside”. It’s one of the main sources for my term paper. Everything in it was (sometimes painfully) familiar, and it was interesting to get a more academic take, especially on how certain emphases within evangelical culture can contribute to common psychological problems that pop up (especially eating disorders). It’s very gentle and very balanced, and I have to say, I agreed with pretty much everything she talked about. [4/5]
Keep the Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell
I started reading books for my Modern British Novel course in July; this was the first. I have always enjoyed Orwell’s books, but I hadn’t read this one, and it was great (though the main character is frustrating, on purpose). A gentle satire of socialism - or really, more of certain types of socialists. Very redemptive in the end. [4/5]
I was going to plow through a bunch of my other books for class this month, but now that I’m taking Moby Dick, I know what I’ll be reading. I’m also in the midst of Brideshead Revisted right now, as well as The Quotidian Mysteries. I kind of want a month off to read!
Hi, netheads.
I haven’t much to say, except I did manage to bang out the required number of pages for my paper and make some kind of cohesive argument, and the rest of the week is devoted to lots of rewriting and some introducing and concluding and bibliographing. It’s odd, though, because now I have no reading for class and I’ve tied up my articles, and suddenly I’m doing things like reading for pleasure again. Granted, I’m reading the novels for my summer class, but they are wonderful. Currently, it’s Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying.
It’s very rainy out, but I can’t complain. As they say in Jane Austen books, “we’ve been enjoying exceptional weather of late.” I do hope I can go out for a run tomorrow morning, though.
I took today off to work on homework; I spent most of the afternoon in the park reading and marking books, then came home and typed up notes wildly till I couldn’t carry on. I’m going to have my hands full this weekend. But I’m finding that research is intoxicating, especially synthesizing ideas into new ones. Am I a nerd?
I’m far from a Luddite, but I’ve been falling out of love with technology for a while now. I just don’t really get excited over fancy new techie gadgets or technologies any more. I’m not sure that I ever did, but it avoided lynching when I was at the Tute. (Though I retain a healthy amount of gratefulness for things like WordPress and Facebook and all things Google, which make it easier for me to be an efficient writer/worker/human.)
Rather than being at Calvin like, oh, pretty much everyone in the universe right now, I’m still at work, hoping to have the magazine packaged at at the front desk for the printer to pick up on Monday. Hurrah!
So I’m going home once that’s done to start trying to gather research for my paper. Not to jinx it, but I’m postulating something along the lines of how the “new” evangelical film, produced by filmmakers from outside “the church”, has a lot in common with the classical definition of kitsch. I think I’ve got a lot to draw on for that. (If you’re in IAM, you know what I mean, but I do have a lot of scholarly work to back it up as well.)
Happily, today was delivery day at the house; the cable guy came to hook up our internet, the new bookcase was delivered, and the refrigerator has finally arrived (hurrah for groceries again!). Oh, and yesterday we got a coffee table, so now I finally have a place to scatter all my papers and set down my cup of tea while I work, since I don’t have a desk. Tom uses our desk and his job requires a lot of papers to be around all the time. I don’t really mind. After sitting in front of a desk all day at work, it’s nice to work from the comfort of the couch.
I have grand plans to spend most of tomorrow writing reviews for three books that only just came in the last couple days, watching a film and writing a review, wading through the five scholarly books I have from the library and tagging what’s useful, hopefully getting the skeleton of an outline down, then heading off to a pre-Tribeca Festival press screening and a friend’s staged reading. It’s times like these that I have a love-hate relationship with being a writer; on the one hand, it’s pretty easy for me to start writing a paper. I’ve gotten past the whole fear-of-the-page thing by now, since I’m always under the gun. On the other hand, it’s surprisingly hard to write scholarly work when you’re used to turning out Paste-worthy snappy writing. Academia seems not to look kindly on wit. My academic prose will never be too dry, but I have to kick myself into big-word mode.
It’s nice to be able to use big words, though. I’d gotten out of the habit.
We had many different invitations to do many different things Friday night, but after working very long days we decided to skip it all. Instead, we ate yummy food at the Hampton Chutney Co. and went to see My Blueberry Nights, which, though flawed, was enjoyable. Sometimes you just need a night off.
Saturday was busy; I gathered up some old clothes that either don’t fit or aren’t my style and brought them to a clothing swap, wherein many other girls had brought their clothes. We all went home with a bag (or more) and donated the rest to a local clothing drive and the Salvation Army. I scored a few short-sleeved tops that I needed desperately for summer work attire and a short-sleeved black dress, an essential. I love free clothes, but happily exercised restraint. After all, I don’t want to move anything more than I have to if the move pans out.
We had Renee and Adam (of Cult of Sincerity fame) for dinner and examination of their wedding pictures, finally, and after they left we unfortunately watched Into the Wild, which had its high points (chiefly Hal Holbrook) but seemed kind of a waste of a few hours. We had intended to watch The Squid and the Whale, but the Netflix disc was neatly broken in half, which kind of made the disappointment of Into the Wild all the more disappointing.
But on Sunday we had quite a lovely brunch at one of the many French places whose name I can never remember with a number of people we know but who didn’t know each other, and then went to Milk and Cookies (YUM) and hashed out the death of traditional journalism, since over half the crowd work directly in the field. Cheery.
And last night we watched Bug purely for Michael Shannon, who was really amazingly crazy reprising the role he played when “Bug” was onstage, and the movie doesn’t exactly work but it comes close, especially if you think about it as a play instead of a movie.
Oh, Monday.
Off to see My Blueberry Nights tonight! I have no idea what to expect, partially because it’s Wong Kar Wai’s first English-language film, partially because it stars Jude Law, partially because it also stars Norah Jones (yes, that Norah Jones), and partially because the release date was pushed so many times that it’s hard to know whether it’s really great or bad or just confusing. One thing is for sure: it will be visually stunning.
I’m sipping Bolero and plotting out my next few weeks of work. I worked three hours at the coop this morning, stocking produce starting at 6:00 am, then came home and threw on the blooper reel for season 3 of The Office while I ate my breakfast and ironed my clothes. How I do love that show.
Speaking of, I also love Battlestar Galactica, but unfortunately I haven’t seen season 3 yet and so I’m not watching the premiere tonight. But! I have caught inadvertent wind of some of the plot developments in 3 and WHOA. Dude. I am dying to get our hands on the DVDs. Not having cable is generally great, but occasionally it’s bad, and this is one of those occasions.
Anyhow, I made my very first venture into the actual book areas of NYU’s Bobst Library at lunchtime in search of some volumes for my term paper, which is (I think) about the specialized arms of big movie studios aimed at evangelical audiences, and more generally, the American evangelical box-office power recognition phenomenon since The Passion of the Christ came out in 2004. Also something in there about aesthetics and critics. Can you tell I haven’t really ever had to write a bona fide research paper in the humanities? I found some interesting-looking scholarly volumes and reveled in the fact that when you check out academic books, you get five months till you have to return them, which can also be a curse when the one book you really want is checked out until the end of June (yep). Yes, interlibrary loan, blah blah blah, but unfortunately I’m late to the game and the paper’s due in a month and I don’t have a NY Public Library card and I applied for one but it could be a month before it gets here. Anyone have a copy of Shaking the World for Jesus by Heather Hendershot that they want to mail me? I’ll pay postage.
This weekend entails a swap at Carey’s (yay for getting rid of old clothes and maybe picking up some new ones), possibly Leatherheads (George Clooney! Renee Zellweger! John Krasinski!!!), lots of reading, maybe some games, hopefully some relaxing.
I am reading Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch right now for a RELEVANT review. It comes out in August.
And let me just say, this is really good stuff. Finally, someone wrote a comprehensive view of culture that prompts one to act and do work. It’s smart and it’s well-researched and it handily avoids being uber-hip or uber-dull. This is not the same thing we’ve been reading for years. Don’t miss it. In fact, go pre-order it.
Ah, I sent the original article to Tom on Sunday but forgot to blog about it. Everyone’s favorite Office sales guy on adapting David Foster Wallace.
How did you obtain the film rights to the book?
Basically, I was waiting tables, and trying to get the rights to do it as a theater piece, and repeat the performance that I had done. That didn’t go over great, as far as getting the rights. It’s a much more difficult process than a 22-year-old waiter would fantasize about. So I started to get a few more roles, and then all of a sudden I got “The Office,” and right after we shot the pilot, I took pretty much all the money that I had made on that, and went and bought the rights for a film. They said the theater rights were gone, but the film rights were still available. I’ve had the rights ever since, which is about five years.
I did manage to get some books read in between the hundreds of pages I’m reading for school.
Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste - Herbert Gans
This was actually for class. It’s apparently a classic in the academic study of popular culture; it was originally published in the 1970s and then updated via postscript around the turn of the millenium. Gans tackled the idea of popular culture in a time when nobody was talking about it in the academy. He surveys different “taste cultures”, from high culture to middle cultures to low cultures and the different entertainment/art-related choices that they make, and then makes some nebulous policy proposals for funding popular culture. Unfortunately, I (along with my classmates) found the book a bit patronizing and realized that the arguments had become woefully dated with the advent of the internet, but unfortunately, the “updates” didn’t sufficiently address the changes. [2/5]
Love, Work, Children - Cheryl Mendelson
The second in Mendelson’s “Morningside Heights” trilogy, this is a comedy/drama of manners and hearkens back to Dickens and (especially) Austen in its language. The catch is that it’s set in present-day upper Manhattan. As with most books that try to get inside the heads of lots of protagonists (The Corrections, so far, being the grand exception), the book ends up lurching around a bit and doing too much “telling” instead of showing. However, something keeps drawing me back to Mendelson’s books. I think I just enjoy reading about the intelligentsia of my town. I don’t think it will be abiding literature, but it was enjoyable, and despite its length, a quick read. [3/5]
Slow Food: The Case for Taste - Carlo Petrini
Yes, at long last, I’ve finished it. Petrini is the founder of the “slow food” movement in Italy and the book is his extended essay outlining the founding of the movement and the many ways it has manifested itself, from educational outreaches to “convivia” to publications to the “ark” concept, which seeks to preserve dying (think “endangered”) forms of regional food. The first part of the book would be a great starting place for people trying to get a grasp on what slow food is all about. A bit pedantic at times, but still thought-provoking and very short (despite how long it took me to read it). [3/5]
Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading - Eugene Peterson
This took a while, too, but it’s not Peterson’s fault. He’s a wonderfully engaging writer. The book takes the reader through a comprehensive (but still short and not drawn-out) overview of reading the Bible, from where it came from, to the ways we’ve subtly bent the Bible to fit what we want it to mean, to what we mean by “inspired”, to lectio divina, to a historical explanation of how we got the text we have now from the Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek. Peterson concludes with an explanation of why he embarked on “translating” The Message, which should help those who are dubious to see it in a new light. Definitely recommended to anyone who’s spent their life reading the Bible and are finding it a bit stale, or who find the Scripture explanations they’ve always been given to be less than intellectually rigorous. [4/5]
My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro - Jeffrey Eugenides (ed.)
This was probably the best Valentine’s present ever. Almost 600 pages of classic and not-so-classic love stories, carefully edited by Eugenides, who is officially the best short-story anthology editor I’ve ever encountered (and not a half-bad novelist, either). The stories deal with “love” in all its forms, from lust to infatuation to romance to real true commitment, in marriage and outside marriage, old, young, beautiful and wince-inducing. Recommended to the married folks mostly. (Probably not a book to hand to your teenager, either.) [5/5]
With probably-moving and writing a big research paper this month, I don’t think I’ll get much read in April, but who knows.
One more post today. Literary Dealbreakers - for anyone who’s ever found that someone’s taste in books (or your own literary prejudices, rational or not) posed an insurmountable challenge in a relationship.
James Collins, whose new novel, “Beginner’s Greek,” is about a man who falls for a woman he sees reading “The Magic Mountain” on a plane, recalled that after college, he was “infatuated” with a woman who had a copy of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” on her bedside table. “I basically knew nothing about Kundera, but I remember thinking, ‘Uh-oh; trendy, bogus metaphysics, sex involving a bowler hat,’ and I never did think about the person the same way (and nothing ever happened),” he wrote in an e-mail message. “I know there were occasions when I just wrote people off completely because of what they were reading long before it ever got near the point of falling in or out of love: Baudrillard (way too pretentious), John Irving (way too middlebrow), Virginia Woolf (way too Virginia Woolf).” Come to think of it, Collins added, “I do know people who almost broke up” over “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen: “‘Overrated!’ ‘Brilliant!’ ‘Overrated!’ ‘Brilliant!’”
I wrote a little on slow food, growing up with an organic-veggie-loving Mom, and working at the Co-op at ConversantLife.
Also, I’ve suddenly become very popular on Goodreads, getting several “adds” a day. I’m not sure why. Do I read weird books or something?
Lastly - I started a Redbubble store recently, which appears to be a much better venue than Etsy for photographers looking to offer prints/notecards/framed versions of their work. I like the set-up of the site, too. Designers, artists, photographers - check it out.
I’m a relatively early riser - not by preference but by choice, because I like to do things like exercise and clean up and eat breakfast and pack my lunch and talk to my husband before I leave for work - but this morning was an aggravated version. I had to work a shift at the coop because our membership would run out tomorrow otherwise, so I signed up for a 6am shift of stocking the shelves.
So at 5:50, I’m at the coop (which is around the corner, so I’m not complaining), signing the sheet and ready to work. For the next three hours or so, I stocked vegetables. Lots of vegetables. It’s kind of fun to stock vegetables, but I got about halfway through my shift before I realized that I should have used some gloves, and my hands were so caked in dirt from the baby bok choy that I just shrugged my shoulders.
Slippery cucumbers, dirty bok choy, lots of bags of fresh herbs (94 cents apiece!), alfalfa sprouts, dandelion greens, carrots - loose, baby, and in 1-pound bags, red cabbage, salad greens in lots of varieties, various varieties of turnips, enormous heads of romaine lettuce, tomatillos, and even some fruit. To be honest, it’s not a bad way to start your day, with dirty hands and a crew of cheerful people putting good food onto shelves. It’s a little like being in an urban farm, without all the outside-ness. And it’s rewarding to start the morning with boxes of produce stacked high in the room and end three hours later with shelves full of fresh, brightly-colored organic fruits and veggies.
Still, my back hurts from the awkwardly-placed height of the shelves, and there’s a few scratches on my hands that weren’t there last night. It reminded me a little of being a kid and helping Mom at the coop. It also reminded me a little of being a kid and pulling weeds one of our two giant gardens in our suburban backyard, before we moved to the country. It definitely made me wish for a rooftop to grow a few things this summer.
Last night Tom brought me home the best blueberry pancakes in the world from the Clinton Street Baking Company, and we watched The Simpsons and The Daily Show and went to bed early. I agonized a bit more over my term paper, and I reformatted my iPod and finished my readings commentary for class, and all in all, it was a nice, homey evening.
I ordered the nine books I needed from the eleven books on the syllabus for my summer Modern British Novel class (we already have Mrs. Dalloway and Howard’s End, though I’ve only read the former), and I’m very excited. The five new ones came today from Amazon (the other four I ordered used). The ones that came:
It’s eleven novels in fiveish weeks, plus critical readings, so I’m not sure how that’s going to work out with the whole “full-time job” thing, and I’m thinking that I should start early . . .
Four times this week I’ve bumped up against the name of Tobias Wolff; just today, I’ve heard him compared to Flannery O’Connor twice.
Guess I’d better get cracking. :)
I know that there is actually a day left in the month, but I will be at the IAM conference and certainly won’t be looking at a computer, and there’s no way I’m going to finish anything before then. So.
Exiles - Ron Hansen
This was a pre-release read (I believe it comes out in May) for a RELEVANT article. It’s the story of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins as he studies for the Jesuit priesthood and is deeply affected by a shipwreck; it’s also the story of five nuns who were on the shipwreck. Ron Hansen is a professor at Santa Clara University, a Catholic, and a prolific and celebrated novelist whose book The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford was made into a movie this year starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck. The book’s style isn’t my preferred reading - it’s fairly formal - but I enjoyed the book nonetheless. [4/5]
The End of Reason - Ravi Zacharias
Also pre-release - I think it comes out in May. Ravi Zacharias’ relatively reasoned plea to the more bombastic of the new atheists for a rational, reasoned conversation instead of mud-slinging and yelling. It’s also a defense of belief in God; it certainly doesn’t prove that God exists (as if you can actually do that), but it is well-thought-out. Zacharias is well-known for his apologetics work. Quick read, too. [4/5]
No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories - Miranda July
Well, I love Miranda July, and these are really wonderfully written stories. She is an expert at writing stories of the tiny moments experienced by slightly strange people. There’s a lot of very human emotion in this book (and also a lot of squirmy moments, including some strange sexual activity). July is one talented human being - she also made the indie hit You and Me and Everyone We Know. [4/5]
Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices - Brian McLaren
Another pre-release; this is the first in a series of books on spiritual disciplines. I have to say that though I’ve never read McLaren before, this book at least convinced me that he has an excellent grasp on church history and a great appreciation for and love of tradition, not as something dry and routine, but as something that helps us train ourselves to live rightly toward God and our fellow man. The book still has me thinking about spiritual disciplines in my own life. [4/5]
I am reading many less books than I usually do, because I’m reading hundreds of pages for class and they are not light, to put it mildly (though they’re terribly interesting). However, I’m in the midst of three books:
- My Mistress’ Sparrow Is Dead, edited by Jeffrey Eugenides. This is a simply wonderful collection of great love stories - all short stories, by authors from Chekhov and Faulkner and James Joyce to Lorrie Moore and Miranda July and Alice Munro. Absolutely highly recommended.
- Slow Food: The Case for Taste by Carlo Petrini. I’m enjoying it but I don’t get much time to read it. Hopefully will finish soon and be able to do a little more thinking on it.
- Eat This Book by Eugene Peterson. I love it, but I’m taking it very slowly. I do hope to finish it this month.
I got an email from BAM this morning saying that they’d just released a handful of tickets for the Chichester Festival Theatre’s production of Macbeth, which had frothing-at-the-mouthingly ecstatic reviews when it was in London. Oh, and it stars Patrick Stewart. So I very quickly bought two tickets at the cheapest price they had available (ouch) and we’re going tomorrow night.
Good thing, too, because it sold out in a couple hours.
This is embarrassing, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a production (film or stage) of Macbeth. I’ve certainly read it. I’ve seen Hamlet (plus Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead) too many times, but somehow never Macbeth.
(Mwahahaha, something wicked this way comes.)
Also, we exchanged presents this morning. Tom got me an amazing T-shirt from Threadless with ink blots and musical notes that I can’t find on the website, and a DVD of Sweet Land, and My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro
Tonight, because we are kind of lame and also kind of busy, we are staying in and ordering dinner and relaxing. Our Valentine’s Days are always a bit harried (two years ago we celebrated days later because Tom was catering on the day, and last year we ate late and it was snowing and Tom had been shooting in the cold all day). So this will be nice.
Hooray, I just registered for the second summer session of class, and I’m taking “Modern British Novel”.
Seriously. How fun does that sound?
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
I was at Angela’s place on New Year’s Day and saw this on the shelf and decided it was high time I finally read it. It really is rather good, though it didn’t shatter my world as I expected it to. It may have if I’d read it ten years ago. Still, a great portrayal of disordered thinking. [4/5]
Women Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews - George Plimpton (ed.)
A collection of Paris Review interviews with various female writers, including (but not limited to) Eudora Welty, Katherine Ann Porter, Anne Sexton, Toni Morrison, Dorothy Parker, Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates, and a bunch of other hard-working, successful women. I’d actually read only a few of them before, but now I want to read them all. They have lots to say about work, writing, family, culture, and life. [5/5]
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But Kerouac’s writing is so wonderfully full of life and craziness that even if I hadn’t know the historical significance of the book, I would have enjoyed it. Its fiftieth anniversary was last year. [4/5]
River Grace - Makoto Fujimura
It doesn’t appear that you can buy this online yet. Mako is a friend and mentor of ours, and my review of this book should be popping up sometime soon. But it’s lovely and elegant and lyrical and so insightful. An account of his growth as a painter, a husband, and a man of faith.[5/5]
Crowded Skies: Letters to Manhattan - Tara Leigh Cobble
(Psst, Tara Leigh: why is this not on Amazon yet?) Tara Leigh Cobble, an independent singer/songwriter, Christian, newly minted New Yorker, and friend wrote Letters to Manhattan as a follow-up to her first book, Here’s to Hindsight. It’s funny and friendly and basically a lot like TLC herself. (Oh, and Tom and I show up early on at a party!) My review should be popping up of this one as well. [4/5]
Chasing Francis - Ian Morgan Cron
I’d been hearing about this book for a long time and just finally read it. It’s a fictional account of a pastor of a fairly standard large evangelical church in Connecticut who experiences a crisis of faith in the pulpit and ends up on a forced sabbatical in Italy with his uncle, a Franciscan monk. While he’s there, and with the help of other monks and a lot of discovery about Francis of Assisi, he begins to understand the ways that his tradition has rejected the communal and compassionate Christian lifestyle that Francis preached from the life of Jesus. Really wonderful and so inspiring. I’m still challenged by it. [5/5]
I am in the midst of Eat This Book by Eugene Peterson still (hey, I’m taking it slowly, it’s not a long book), and I’m also reading the Slow Food book. And I have about five or six books to plow through before February 20 for a RELEVANT article, several about which I’m very excited. Right now I’m working on Ron Hansen’s upcoming book, Exiles, which is sort of about the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. This guy can write.
Sorry so posty - last one for the day.
The New York Times “Reading Room” blog (subtitle: “Conversations About Great Books”) is discussing Walker Percy’s quirky first novel, The Moviegoer. This promises to be a great discussion.
We’re in this mode of eating all the stuff in our cabinets, mostly because we’ve both been too busy to go grocery shopping during the last few days. The co-op is a wonderful place to buy groceries, but you do have to plan your trips strategically, lest you end up in line for half an hour. I try to go when they open at 8am, but haven’t been able to make it.
In any case, when I got home last night, we rooted through the cupboards and decided on minted peas (frozen peas + sauteed in a little butter + add chopped fresh mint), garlic-parsley-butter pan-fried shrimp, a couple pieces of breaded cod from Whole Foods, and half a package of orzo (rice-shaped pasta that cooks up fast). I am finding that I really enjoy cooking lots of random things at once. It’s kind of fun to do mentally.
In another life I probably spun plates on sticks balanced on both my hands, feet, nose, and forehead.
We watched La Vie en Rose - well-acted, lovely to look at, and overall well-made, but a little confusing due to a really scattered narrative structure, but then again, I’m not French and don’t know much about Edith Piaf to begin with.
Today is heart-breakingly lovely outside. I can hear someone playing saxophone on the sidewalk, and everyone’s out in just a sweater (which is really unnecessary, but it is, after all, January).
I’m heading out in a couple minutes to rush over to Film Forum and see I’m Not There at long last. This is the good thing about January - all the good films are out and there aren’t a lot of must-see new releases, so it’s time to backtrack and see everything I missed in the fall and early winter. We’re also hoping to see Atonement before it leaves theaters, which shouldn’t be hard since it’s probably going to be nominated for a bunch of Oscars.
I’m about to finish my book (Women Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews), which has been fascinating. This morning I read interviews with Joan Didion and Joyce Carol Oates. I’m a bit ashamed that the only author besides Joan Didion that I’d read in any kind of recent past was P.L. Travers, whose most famous work is the Mary Poppins series - much darker than the movie, of course, and containing many books, all of which I read somewhat uncomprehendingly as a child. But I shamefacedly admit that I have not read anything by Toni Morrison, or Dorothy Parker, or Eudora Welty (aside from a few short stories in high school), or Maya Angelou, or Elizabeth Bishop, or Susan Sontag, or Joyce Carol Oates. My list is slowly growing.
It’s also interesting in the interviews to see the three authors that everyone cites as the best or most influential: Ernest Hemingway, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf. I’ve read a book or two by each, but they merit more attention. Joan Didion actually said she was “paralyzed” by all the possibilities that James’ books presented to her.
I feel so young.