Books to the Ceiling

The Fault in our Stars (R + J)

2012-02-11T15:05:00.000-08:00

I like John Green, think his YA fiction is smart instead of totally sappy. This read, too, is an assignment, a book I finished in about three hours and will dutifully report on in terms of likability and objectionable elements—the new reality of our planning for school. (FYI: boob feeling by page 20 and losing virginity and mild—depending on how sheltered you are—swearing. It’ll probably be a no go as a “school” read, but the kids love John Green.) (I cannot believe I am commenting on boobs and such: I believe there are several someones already doing that.)

(Coincidentally, Markus Zusak, the author of “Book Thief” is the first blurb writer on the back. “A novel of life and death and the people caught in between.” Well, okay.)

“The Fault in our Stars” follows Hazel Grace/Support Group Hazel, a 16-year-old cancer patient as she falls in love and navigates life and love and death. SPOILER ALERT: I, of course, knew she would be living on the last page—though certainly not forever—because she is the narrator, and John Green is too classy to have a character narrate her own death, a trope popular for young inexperienced writers and silly old ones.

Hazel knows Shakespeare and Allen Ginsburg and William Carlos Williams and Emily Dickinson and an obscure novel that I’m too lazy to look up to see if it’s real. (Okay, it’s not.)

I thought of calculating the chances that a girl like this ends up with cancer AND falling in love with someone else with cancer. But I didn’t.

Do we really want to read about someone who falls within the realm of probability—or someone who sparks the imagination, who's quirky, whom we “can’t-believe-exists” in the same way we react to a really cool person we meet at a party?

Speaking of probability, I’m suffering from “Beowulf” fall out. My feminists of first hour hate it, don’t see the point, while the athletes and gamers in third hour said, “Finally, a book about someone who actually does something.”

What is it we want out of a book? To sit crying at the end (oh, SPOILER ALERT), reminding Chris that this is a YA novel so, of course, it’s going to be sad. Crying because, yes, young people do die and parents lose their children. But recognizing at the same time that Green has captured the love of life, not the sappy sort, but the want to live longer, to live, period. Just as I was typing this paragraph, Lurlene McDaniel came to mind, she of the books that always end with a teenager dying of some horrible affliction, leaving a true love behind.

Thank goodness John Green knows how to write.

The Book Thief (keep)

2012-02-11T14:43:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I look at the blurbs on the books and wonder what the “. . .” is, added between “BRILLIANT and ambitious” and “It’s the kind of book that can be LIFE CHANGING.” (No kidding? Caps?) I wonder how the reviewer decided on the adjectives, maybe having a sliding scale of laudatory comments, kind of like the pain scale at the emergency room. This is between ambitious and brilliant. (“Ambitious” sounds like something I’d say to a kid who wrote a 30-page short story that was absolutely agonizing to read.)

When “The Book Thief” showed up on my desk at school, an assignment really, students were all like, “Well, finally you’re reading this book, Mrs. Smith.” And then I vaguely remembered that several of them had read it over the summer and dutifully reported on it. Death follows little German girl Liesel, fostered by a couple after her brother dies and her mother, a Communist, can no longer care for her. She-who-is-not-Jewish also suffers loss in Germany at the beginning of World War II, a revelation for many of the readers at school, readers who have been school primarily in Holocaust stories. So thinking about their reactions and reading the book educated me, too, along the way.

What I liked was how her foster father—Papa—read together with Liesel when nightmares nightly interrupted her sleep, stumbling reading that Papa could hardly sustain, that taught Liesel to read and create her own book. And what I liked was Max, the young man hiding in the basement to escape Nazi capture, both losing life and coming to life there without the light of day. And what I liked was the mayor’s wife who became magic for Liesel. What I liked was the style—because I’m a sucker for post-modern narration.

And I find starting this list, that the list can go on, a sign that the book is—brilliant?—worth reading: beautiful language and voice and plotting. And not too heavy-handed in this genre that easily leans into distress.

The Big Crunch (almost)

2012-01-23T16:28:00.000-08:00

I knew that I’d heard of Pete Hautman before but waited until I finished this book before I looked him up. Turns out he wrote “Godless,” the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. I remember seeing the book in the library and reading about it: wanted to read it, in fact, but never have. “The Big Crunch” made it into my lap because a student left it at school, and when we hustled out last Wednesday—under orders to vacate because of snow/ice/sleet—I picked this up off the counter. It took a little over an hour to read, and it’s cute. Quirky Jen moves to town and sees Wes through a side glance. They don’t fall in love. And then they do. It’s a magnetism that pulls them, and even when Jen moves (again), she can’t quite let him go. It’s not as good as a John Green book (sorry, Pete Hautman, whom I don’t know anyway), but it was fun. To its credit, the book isn’t a predictable teen romance, there’s no indication that they’ll live happily ever after. But they’re happy for now.

I googled Hautman after I read because young adult authors fascinate me. He’s almost 60. Now I’d like to think I’m not an ageist, but he’s not even a middle school teacher. Does he read Seventeen or something. Hang out at after-school spots. (Creepy.) I want to know where he gets his ideas.

APPS (tangent)

2011-12-30T16:42:00.000-08:00

If children are nothing else, they are a prompting to stay up-to-date in the digital world. (Love you guys!) While we were in Hawaii, Andrew showed me Flipboard, a cool app for the iPad. It allows you to flip through news, conveniently sorted into categories. It’s possible, I think, to endless flip, until you are folded into those nice digital pages.

I’m addicted.

He and Mo also said I need to have Foursquare so I can check in. (Andrew became mayor of Baby Beach while we were there because he checked in on five consecutive days.) As I sit here in the dark post-Hawaii, I’m considering whether it was an ironic suggestion. I did create an account and dutifully checked in, gaining my jetsetter badge by the time we landed at PDX. But when I opened the app the next day, I noticed I have no friend activity within miles. I’m not sure Foursquare is going to catch on in Richland.

The Glass Castle (clear)

2011-12-30T16:22:00.001-08:00

First, I have to tell you about the Farmer’s Market in Hanapepe. (Trust me, it’ll tie in somehow.) Andrew, Mo and I wanted to get local produce, so we wandered up the road to this little town. At the park, vehicles backed up to the edges, and farmers set out their produce. (Starfruit, avocado, watercress, local bananas, bok choy: all beautiful.) We started to look around and were ready to buy. But the people weren’t selling. At the stand where I was I asked when they would begin selling. The woman showed me her whistle: “When I blow my whistle. Eighteen minutes.” Then she saw someone start to pick up produce at the next stand, and she scurried over to assert her authority. We began precisely at 3 p.m.—when the whistle blew.

The point is: I got “The Glass Castle” because we got to Hanapepe early and wandered the (single) street, poking in shops along the way. Near the end of the street, was Talk Story Bookstore, the only bookstore on Kauai, according to their poster. Talk about books to the ceiling. They were everywhere and every which way, mostly used and mostly organized. But I found this nicely used copy and grabbed it.

I loved the book, just as I loved “Half-Broke Horses.” It’s a heart-breaking read, thinking about the selfishness of Walls’ parents. On the other hand, it’s inspiring to read: these parents, flawed as we all are, raised imaginative, responsible children--from all accounts. (The youngest of the four seems to have suffered the most long-lasting effects from the upbringing.) And I can relate to a certain extent. (No, I’m not headed for a sob story.) From the outside, many of us who grew up in a certain time and a certain place looked impoverished, looked a little neglected, but there’s a richness to this wild upbringing that not everyone can understand.

I love Jeannette Walls' writing: her books (I’m making them twins) are in my top 10. They’re true—both the fiction and the nonfiction. And they’re without apology or manipulation.

The Leftovers (rapturous)

2011-12-30T16:06:00.001-08:00

The last week of school before break, a student asked if I was one of those people who read on vacation—he knew I was headed to Hawaii. For some reason, I lied. I wanted to appear full of adventure, I guess. But the two—adventure and reading—coexisted nicely in our little bungalow across the street from the beach.

I read this first book—“The Leftovers” by Tom Perrotta—on the plane ride from PDX to LIH. I bought it as an early gift for myself: I’d read “The Abstinence Teacher” and liked it. Perrotta gets fundamentalism, and I can’t resist a look inside the chosen. Maybe I’ve mentioned my obsession with the Rapture when I was growing up—there was no way to avoid that obsession, in my defense. I wondered how to turn just right so that I wouldn’t get splinters flying through the roof. This book begins post-Rapture, but the disjointed mix of people who disappear cause havoc to the leftovers. (Think pope and murderer down the street.) (Okay, a tangent. Several times Perrotta mentioned the missing, and each time I thought, “Isn’t that what grace is?” See “Love Wins,” a previous post.)

What I like about the book is that it isn’t really about theology, but it’s about disappointment and confusion and love and frustration. It’s about life. What do we do when circumstances don't match up to our expectations? The Guilty Remnant are dealing with their response to the Rapture, but they’re also just seeking redemption, regardless of the circumstances. (The plot element of the pairs in the GR was the only part that I thought was too much. It didn’t make sense to me.)

I can’t remember the ending. I’m tempted to peek at the last page, but that misses the point. The ride was enough, no matter where I landed.

Early Winter (hardly)

2011-12-17T12:24:00.000-08:00

We’ve been socked into a temperature inversion for—forever. One day the forecast called for overnight snow. It did not materialize. One gray day followed another—against a backdrop of naked brown trees. Sounds depressing. But winter offers that two weeks off—and the polar plunge.

But first they staged an intervention. Carolyn came by my room as a spokesperson, concerned that I should not plunge because my back has been hurting. (Here’s a little side whine: I’m not ever going to play softball again, unless it’s in a geriatric league where there are 20-year-old assigned runners for each player. I’m not sure my back will ever be completely well. And I’m a little bummed about that. And then the physical therapist had to go and say, “Nothing’s going to change unless you change something.” You mean I can’t grade for 10 hours straight anymore? You mean I won’t be 30 again? Oh, to top that off, one of my students said the other day—in reference to 33-year-old Offred in “Handmaid’s Tale”—that life is downhill after 25. What? You mean it doesn’t get better? Okay, I’m done. Where was I?)

Of course I was going to jump. We even recruited a new jumper (that doesn’t sound so good): 25-year-old Beth, across the hall from Carolyn. Last year she gave the excuse that she had just gotten a new cat and couldn’t leave her alone. This year, her cat’s a year old, so she joined us
.
I always feel like I’m going to be sick before I jump: I’m afraid of that piercing cold. My stomach churns a little. Carolyn said (I put “remarked” first, but I nag my journalists that people “said”), “I’m a chicken, but I have brave friends.” Isn’t that true for us all?

Lena (Bertha’s daughter) and her friend Jesse went first—screaming like school girls—they are—on the way in and then giggling as they got out. Then we lined up: Carolyn, me, Beth and Bertha, plopping in one after the other, screaming, rushing out. Exhilaration.

Then hot chocolate and Bailey’s and whipped cream. And then more whipped cream.

Delight. And two weeks off.

(I have got to stop holding the phone/camera like that. What’s with that chin?)

Far from the Madding Crowd (hardly)

2011-12-17T12:04:00.001-08:00

I’m not sure what “madding” means. I should look it up. Hmm. Maybe it’s the “unwise” definition.

Being in a book club, again, pushes me to read the “should have read” books. (Though I gave up “should have” awhile ago, or at least softened the wagging finger.) All the characters are crazy, though. (They are the madding crowd.) Bathsheba (I’m on a jag of noticing names. Whoa) shakes her booty at poor sheep farmer Gabriel (an angel!) who responds—well, as he should with a request of marriage. Then suddenly she disappears only to reappear as a landowner, employing Gabriel, who has lost his farm. Then Troy (think Wickham in “Pride and Prejudice”) lures her away for some sex. That Hardy. This is the first book that I’ve read completely in digital form (hello, 21st century!), and I enjoyed the experience. My back was hurting (yada, yada), and so I relaxed for a whole day.

It sounds like I didn’t like the book at all, but it was a fun read. One of my students talked to me about “Tess of the d’Urbervilles,” and I think I might read that as well. Nothing like a Victorian seeking shock value.

Hunger Games (+ 2)

2011-12-17T11:46:00.000-08:00

My students kept saying, “You’ve got to read it.” And so I did, plus the second one (what was it again?) and then “Mockingjay,” too. They were my Thanksgiving present to myself, staying up into the night reading and waking early to finish. I loved "Hunger Games." The minute I started to read, I said to myself, “This is ‘Handmaid’s Tale,’ ‘The Lottery’ and ‘The Giver.’” When I reported back to my classes that I had read the trilogy—including to my seniors who are reading “Handmaid’s Tale”—they were shocked. “But you don’t read series.” (My excuse for not reading “Harry Potter” and the multitude of whatever’s and especially not for reading the “Twilight” series.) This series supports my thesis though: stop at the first one. It was a couldn’t-put-it-down read. I read the other two to see what happened next. I liked some of the second two, but the first one was my favorite. I didn’t really need to know what happened next. I’m especially stoked for the movie to come out in the spring. Katniss is played by Jennifer Lawrence, who was nominated for “Winter’s Bone.” (I just watched the trailer again.) So satisfying.

Half-Broke Horses (imagine a grandmother)

2011-11-14T18:42:00.000-08:00

Lily could be any of our grandmothers. Any of us, that is, who had pioneer foremothers, women who braved all sorts of danger, including the elements and the elemental. I’m reading the books in backwards order, Jeannette Walls’ books about her past. “Half-Broke Horses” is about the life of her grandmother, a novel based on stories and pictures and imaginings. The other, “The Glass Castle,” is about her own life. “Half-Broke Horses” digs deep into the dry southwestern soil for a story of stark perseverance, no whining, just bold living in the middle of nowhere and then to the city and back. On some pages I would sit and gaze at sentences with phrases ornamenting solid subjects and verbs. Beautiful sentences just like the landscape. And Lily’s first-person voice sounds like I imagine my own grandmothers’ voices, women who homesteaded, and made a rich life in spite of the circumstances.

My sister Suzanne and I wandered through Southern Idaho one day this summer trying to imagine the life of our grandmother Putman, a woman neither of us knew except through Mom’s stories. A batch of pictures that materialized last year made me think twice about those stories. I’m envious of Walls’ journey, a sign that I loved the book.

Diane, you asked about book clubs. You should find some friends who like to read and who like to talk about what they read. Assign them a book and invite them over to your house for wine and dessert and conversation. This book would be a great place to start. (You’ll see your mom on some of these pages.)

Cleopatra (wow)

2011-10-18T15:16:00.000-07:00

If I weren’t in a book club, I wouldn’t have read this. And I’m so glad I did. (Molly, you should join a book club. It’s not just for middle-aged women.)

I had no idea: That Cleopatra ruled so much of the world. That she killed all of her family members to keep the throne of Egypt. That murder was expected behavior of a soveriegn. That she was the richest person in the world. That she slept with Julius Caesar before she slept with Marc Antony. That she was brilliant: a linguist, a historian, a logician, a politician.

I just had no idea.

I teach Julius Caesar, and I had little coherent understanding of the historical flow beyond what my (shamefully) quick research allowed. That her life bumps up almost to the time of Christ. That Alexander the Great held sway for so long. That the carving of kingdoms and maneuvering of people is not a modern manipulation. That the East and the West viewed women differently.

So while ancient historians excoriated her as an evil seductress, Stacy Schiff provides a rounder, richer portrait of this amazing—and yes, sometimes scary—woman.

Wow.

(A little side note: I was puzzled by the spare use of commas in the writing/editing. Almost nonexistent with introductory phrases, even when a comma aids understanding.)

Maisie Dobbs (a little mystery)

2011-10-18T15:01:00.000-07:00

I read this a long time ago—at least three weeks. It wasn’t until I looked at the back cover that I remembered details beyond—it’s about a female detective. But now I remember. I’m not a fan of mysteries. Not sure why, but I don’t usually see the point: there’s a mystery and it must be solved. And it is. The pretension of the British mysteries puts me off. (I feel like a heretic saying that because friends love British mysteries. I guess I just have never wanted to live in a castle in a dreary place.)

All that preface to say that I kind of like Maisie Dobbs. She’s got spunk, the kind that helps her overcome that difficult childhood, the kind that keeps her going when her plans don’t turn out. Her mystery solving has back story that slowly unpeels in a surprising way. And the backdrop of World War I gets me every time.

A slim read that’s worth the jaunt.

Summer’s Edge (equinox)

2011-09-23T16:40:00.000-07:00

Every day should end like this: a swimsuit, a towel and the Columbia River.

I can only take so much of a meeting, and today was the return to the half day early release with an afternoon of getting on board whichever train happens to be pulling into the education station this year. (That makes me sound so old.) Even as I type that, I feel my jaw tense up.

Which is why the swim was such a relief. At first we thought our dock wasn’t available, that a group (including a former encroacher to our tradition: male) had co-opted our jumping spot. But after we waited a bit, there was only one woman left down on the dock. So we ventured down for the swim, our favorite, the fall equinox swim.

I’m thinking in clichés today. The long, slow strokes of our swim is akin to this time of life. What’s the use of hurrying when we can enjoy this bit of life longer. And the water is just right. Our first 100 degree day this year was in September - the eighth, I think - and it’s 91 as I sit and type this. But it’s not an August 91 degrees: the sun just soaks in, and then we dip into the water again, finding a line of sun-warmed water and pushing out into the current again, bobbing on our backs, unwilling to return to shore.

We don’t want to get out because the time is outside of our day, outside of the clock. I’m thinking about my cousins today, the loss of their dad, and the grief that comes in waves. I wish they were here to swim with me. We began these dips when Bertha got divorced, and as we walked away from the river today, Bertha mentioned how happy she is, how time is a healer. There’s a reason country songs have rearview mirrors with towns/people/houses shrinking away in the background.

We’ll go out tonight to celebrate Bertha’s birthday, we’ll laugh and tell stories.

It’s a good day.

The Long Way Home (the end)

2011-09-05T16:59:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure why I read a book about friendship and loss and expect something other than a tearful ending. I do know why I picked up the book, though. It was one of my waning-days-of-summer books, a protest against looming school, and so it’s fitting that I finished it this afternoon on the deck. The 90 degrees of Labor Day is a far cry from the 90 of July when I can barely read on the deck, can hardly keep my eyes open.

Gail Caldwell’s “Let’s Take the Long Way Home” is on lots of lists: most notably one of the top 10 nonfiction books of the NYTs 2010 list.

And it is good, not because two women become friends and one of them dies, but because it’s a beautiful story, told more in retrospect than in raw grief. Caldwell’s friend Caroline Knapp, also a writer, came into her life through the mutual love of their dogs, and the arc of the story follows the hours they spent outdoors walking and rowing.

I think the time lapsed, almost 10 years now, gave Caldwell the words to show her grief. And those words are beautiful:

Remembering the suck and force of death is like trying to hold water in your hand. What I took away from that dark alleyway was that, when it came to God, I needed not to know—needed the humble ignorance as to whether anything existed outside that grim tableau. In the months that followed, I kept thinking of the phrase “requisite mystery,” as though that could capture my necessary position in the universe now, posed on the line between Knowing and Not Knowing, between what seemed to me the arrogance of religious certainty and the despair of a godless world.

End of Summer (fleeting)

2011-08-31T17:03:00.001-07:00

The days are already so much shorter. I know I say that every year, but it’s a shock every year. We didn’t have the normal Richland summer, not even achieving 100 degrees. Instead the temperate days lay one after another, and not until the week before school started did the mercury creep near that mark. No bleached out sky and yard. Just beautiful.

I didn’t go to the opening workshops—a funeral and a root canal preempted. Last Wednesday I sat in the Barnes and Noble parking lot after the endodonist appointment trying to decide whether to go to the last three workshops. I didn’t. Instead I went in and bought three books—I can’t remember the names off the top of my brain—just to try to extend that feeling of summer, the days of reading what I want.

Of course, I haven’t read voraciously during the summer for years. Instead I enjoy the out-of-doors. But books still symbolize leisure to me.

It’s the end of the second day of school, and I’m not as exhausted as I was yesterday. This calendar is ingrained, though—anticipation at the beginning and then the counting until the end: end of week, end of quarter, end of semester, end of year.

But for now, it’s a beginning.

P.S. Did you see “The Help”? I liked it so much better than the book.

Beautiful Boy (Tweak/We All Fall Down)

2011-08-08T17:17:00.000-07:00

So there’s an essay I’ve used for several years in class, a “My Turn” essay by Nic Sheff about his parents’ divorce, how he was always saying goodbye to someone he loved. He wrote it at 16, a perfect essay to use with 16 year olds.

During Creative Writing this year, my TA said, “Oh, Mrs. Smith, you’re not going to like this.” Turns out Nic was an alcoholic/meth addict, whose dad wrote a book—“Beautiful Boy.” The book is haunting, a beautiful, terrible picture of what it’s like to have a child in and out of rehab, a child whom you fiercely love but who can’t be trusted.

I couldn’t stop there, though. I read Nic’s first memoir, “Tweak,” and then the second “We All Fall Down.” Well, I didn’t read all of “Tweak.” I read about 50 pages: I just couldn’t take it. It was page after page of recounting drugs he’d taken and women he’d screwed. Too much. No narrative arc (at least not in the first 50 pages)—I already knew the story from his father’s view—and no good writing. I read “Fall Down” this afternoon, and at least it had some motion to the story, though I’m not sure I trust his story. And it’s about story rather than great writing. His dad is a writer, who wrote a magazine piece for the NYT about being the father of an addict, and the publishing contracts grew from there. (Sorry, Nic, I don’t doubt you love to write, but your dad got you the gig. Really, sorry, I know writing’s important to you. Wow, I can’t believe how bad I feel for saying that. I’m codependent, too.)

Anyway, now I know. (It was time I found a new example essay anyway.)

Pinterest (so addicting)

2011-07-29T14:44:00.001-07:00

You know how you used to cut/tear pictures out of a magazine when you liked an idea. Or kept a mental list of places you wanted to visit? I just started a Pinterest (thanks, Andrea), and now you can virtually tear/pin all that stuff. My link is out to the side. So fun. I hope the fun doesn't stop when school starts. While browsing, I found this poster: "Dorothy never said, 'There's no place like the office.'" Okay, so I just tried to (re)find that poster because I didn't pin it, and I couldn't find it. Lesson learned! (My pinterest link is out to the side.)

Turn of Mind (forgetting)

2011-07-27T18:12:00.001-07:00

This book group mystery choice is haunting, pitting a doctor with Alzheimer’s against the secrets of those around her and against a police detective who just won’t let a murder go. Amanda, Jennifer White’s best friend, turns up dead in her home down the street, and Dr. White turns into the primary suspect. Narrated by White—a woman who remembers her children one day, their faces the next and then not at all the next—the mystery becomes a heart-breaking look at loss—the loss of one’s children and the loss of one’s parent, though the person is still alive. The plot moves along with jerks, stalled and then pushed by White’s faltering capabilities. Her relationship with her children parallels the mystery, and in the end there’s resolution with both.

Although Alice LaPlante, the author, experienced Alzheimer’s first hand with her own mother, choosing White to narrate is a challenge—I’m sure for the writing and for the reading as well. (She was interviewed on NPR. That's how we chose the book.)I have friends whose parents died from Alzheimer’s, so the book is even more poignant to me.

Summer has entered that long and lazy time: the July me is enjoying this time with little responsibility. Next week, I begin to creep back to school, but for now I’ll enjoy—though, as always, I tend to read less in the summer because the projects call. The house is mostly painted—a Prairie look emerging, I hope—and I’ve got plans for some deck accessories that I saw on the Garden Tour this year. Our corner of the world is looking inviting. I’m making plans for a NYC trip in the fall as well. (I love to have a trip in the works.) Andrew & Mo are moving to a bigger apartment, so we’ll get to see their new spot. Andrew’s turning 25 this week—I can hardly believe it. That’s the age I still think I am.

Broken for Me (crash again)

2011-07-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

On the way back from Idaho, we stopped in downtown Baker City instead of just running in and out of the Shell station. We ate at a great café (very slow) and then wandered the streets. My attempts to interview people to find out why people come to Baker City, why they can have cool cafes when we can’t, came to naught. But as we wandered, we found Betty’s Books, a great independent bookstore. I probably carried around a total of 10 books, but I came out with just two: an old hymnal that I got for $1 and a hardback for $6, a signed copy of “Broken for You” by Seattle author Stephanie Kallos, who received several awards for the book including winner of a 2005 Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association Award.

It’s always fun to read a book set in places you know, in this case, Seattle. The story revolves around two women—Margaret and Wanda--at the opposite sides of life—one receiving a terminal diagnosis and one making her way in the world. Both have history they don’t easily share, and both need each other to heal those pains.

And they heal by breaking dishes—dishes that Margaret’s father collected from European sources, sources that took from Jews as they were taken to camps. The breaking of the dishes and the creating of new objects becomes a story in itself, drawing in an ever-increasing cast of wonderful characters.

I suppose 2005 is the right year for this crash book—a year after the “Crash” movie. I’m trying to be more open-minded about trends in fiction, in this case the absurd tying up of loose ends where—surprise—everything is connected. This was a sweet book, a fun book, a well-written book. (The writer shows the beauty of language.) If only life were so neat.

And on a life note: I’m using the library again—partly because it’s summer and partly because I have too many books. I’ve begun foisting them off on people when they leave the house. Nat’s girlfriend Diana carted off quite a few. Thanks! The summer mania has hit, and I have seven paint colors striped in four different places on the house; I’ve cleaned my office, filling up a trash can; and my room is almost in order (Thanks, Mo & Will, for helping!), again, filling trash cans with stuff. I had lessons from 30 years ago. How did that happen?

The weather is just right (sorry, East Coast), and July isn’t even half over. Yes.

The Lonely Polygamist (simplify)

2011-07-07T22:25:00.000-07:00

Poor Golden has a few too many wives—and not enough time for himself, not enough time to be himself because he’s supposed to take care of everyone else.

I had to push aside recent conversations about polygamists whose families are on welfare, who use free and reduced lunches to support their habit of collecting wives. I had to beckon Golden forward, let him be a person in his own right. And he is.

The premise is counterintuitive: Golden is grieving the death of a disabled daughter, and although he is surrounded by family, he cannot find comfort for his loss. Instead he disappears in numerous ways, including taking a job away from the family where his heart quickens with yet another woman.

I loved this book, loved Golden and his dilapidated family. I also wanted to kidnap a couple of his wives to take them to some feminist camp, invite little Rusty to live with me for awhile so he could have some attention.

That’s what Brady Udall (he’s a Boise guy!) does: makes me want to wander into this family and rescue them. But I can’t and neither can Udall. Instead, he takes the story in unexpected places that make me root for these polygamists despite my misgivings.

In the news (again)

2011-06-26T06:30:00.000-07:00

We're becoming famous. Aargh.

The River (muddy)

2011-06-25T21:56:00.000-07:00

I feel as though I’ve lost my moorings this year. Ideas that I’ve spent my life hanging on to seem unsteady now. My vigorous constitution more fragile. (There’s that back again.) So I looked forward to this immersion in the river, this solstice swim, to anchor me at least through tradition. We had to skip the spring swim because—well—our lives have been chaotic. Carolyn’s in-laws are frail, I was afraid of drowning because of my ham leg (it’s still numb and feels like a big ole ham hanging off my hip), and Bertha’s had everything going on: one daughter getting married (now married), one having a baby.

We went early: usually we go just at sunset up river from our other three jumps. But the river is wide and swift this year, much colder than it normally is, too. So we went early to be in the safety of daylight. I said that we should tie a rope to something stable on shore and then hang on, so Carolyn brought a rope.

The water was cold. And murky. One lone boat was out by the almost-submerged island, a water skier yelping at the shock of the water. And there were bugs. So many bugs that created a wall between the roadway and the water. No elegant wildlife that we’ve seen in past years, no pelican or stealth beaver sliding along the water. Just debris bobbing along swirls of mud.

We stood for awhile, our feet already numbing from the water. Bertha went in first and turned a tight circle and back out: it was really cold. And then I dove under. I’m not going to do this half way. We Baptists believe in immersion. And then in went Carolyn, a quick up and down dip. Then I took another slide into the water, trusting its restorative powers.

I drove to Seattle and back today for a meeting, a drive that left my back and leg throbbing. But I came out of the water relaxed and loose, good medicine for the body and soul.

On my drive I listened to “The Year of Living Biblically” by A.J. Jacobs of “The Know-It-All,” about—coincidentally—his year of reading the encyclopedia from A-Z. Anyway, I enjoyed it. One of the things that struck him, and thus me, was that most of what he read in the Bible was carried out in community. Faith is not for the rugged individual. This year has been a tough one—maybe three out of 54 have been tough so that’s not so bad. But I’ve had a community of friends who carried me along.

We took a last look across the river--that time of night when the sun makes the houses look like they have glowing eyes--and then we got in the car to head out for a little libation. And we didn’t need that rope, didn’t need that solid mooring. We helped each other out of the river.

The Man from Beijing (think global)

2011-06-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

Maybe this book suffers from topicality, a penchant for exploring a topic, writing about something instead of about people.

And maybe not.

Henning Mankell came to me through “The Dogs of Riga,” a book club selection a while back. This is his latest book, I think, and I borrowed it—didn’t buy it! I enjoyed that book and this one, too, partly because they take place in another country. “Beijing” roamed the Eastern Hemisphere—going from Sweden to China to Africa—and off to 1800s America for a bit. If the book suffers from topicality, it’s because it takes a swipe at the mistreatment of the Chinese in railroad-building America, colonialism in Africa and modern China’s corruption.

But it doesn’t falter too much. You know those eye tests that show if you can see in 3D, if you can see the pattern emerging from all the amoeba-like dots? In this book, the clutter of the background is all the topicality (interesting but a bit much). The main character, though, is vivid, stands out from that background. A Swedish judge, Birgitta Roslin is drawn into a violent mass murder in a small town in Sweden because of her mother’s connection to a family there who fostered her. It’s a revenge play--think Hamlet spread over a century—that comes to a satisfying conclusion without everyone dying. A quick read, the book let me lounge on the deck, enjoying sunshine and a little nodding off.

Summer Reading (where to start)

2011-06-23T20:01:00.001-07:00

Confounded: what to read with this time.

Well, not that much time yet. The first week out of school, I went to Ashland, Ore., home of the Shakespeare Festival. Nine of us went—four adults and four seniors—and one twenty-something graduate. What a delight to leave town; I hadn’t gone anywhere except a short jaunt to Spokane since my back surgery. (Yes, that again. It will mark my life for awhile.) We saw five plays in two and a half days—probably the best set of plays I’ve seen. (Not the best single play, just the set.) The highlight was “The Imaginary Invalid,” an adaptation of Moliere’s play. Hilarious.

I decided to start my summer reading with a periodical, “The Atlantic.” (Is there a way to get all magazines for the iPad? I hate all this paper.) The cover story caught my eye because I saw the author interviewed on the Today show. Lori Gottlieb wrote “How the Cult of Self-Esteem is Ruining our Kids.” It’s required reading for you parents and educators out there. Through the use of research and anecdotal information—she’s a therapist—Gottlieb argues that we’re too consumed with our kids’ happiness, that we give them too many choices. We make everyone a winner and sooth any mistakes we see. (This year in class, one writer, who got a D on a first essay, was so frustrated. She told me she had never gotten below an A, that every person she knows has said she’s a great writer. She was a great thinker, though, and she worked like crazy all year and got better.) Worth a read. Then throw in a crazy article about the art of camouflage, a review about a Cesar Chavez biography and a review of Beverly Cleary’s body of work (“why topicality derails great literature”). Cover-to-cover: read it.

And it kick started my summer reading.

(For those of you waiting for the solstice plunge, it’s late this year. Hang on.)

Ros & Guil (they’re dead)

2011-05-26T19:01:00.001-07:00

We’re ending the year in AP Lit reading “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” out loud. Yes, you heard it: out loud. No homework, no journals, no papers. Just reading aloud and laughing. (For some reason—for a lot of reasons—this year seems crazier than most: there are field trips, sport trips, college trips. And after the AP exam, after all their exams, after “Heart of Darkness,” we needed a break.

But it’s a deceptive break. The two guys reading the main parts are hilarious. They read pitch-perfect: one, flustered all the time; one quicker than the other.

Today as we started laughing at Ros and Guil—affectionate laughter—I reminded the class to reread the title. We’re falling in love with these fellows, and they’re doomed over and over.

So much fun to know the laughter is knowing: they understand the semantic tussles, the existential.

Sometimes it’s okay to enjoy a good read. But don’t forget. These guys die.

Oxygen (can’t breath)

2011-05-26T18:50:00.000-07:00

Why I would read about an anesthesiologist who has a patient die, I don’t know, other than I think doctors (for this book, Dr. Carol Wiley, a practicing anesthesiologist) make great writers. All that medical talk. All that description. Why don’t teachers make the same kind of great writers?

So much is going in this novel—father-daughter issues, sister issues, lack-of-love issues, exhaustion issues. Sounds like too much. But art imitates life, and often life is just like this: so much converges at once until we (at least the main character) need to get out of Dodge to take a breather.

Set in Seattle, this novel tiptoes along the line of literary fiction and mystery, a nice blend in this case. Dr. Marie Heaton also tiptoes along a line, unable to accept the death of a patient (a child) and unable to talk about the case for legal reasons. The ending, unexpected for me, seems a bit contrived, but it didn’t fall into a dramatic face-off either. (Again that line.)

An engaging end-of-the-year read, just more information than I want to know about anesthesiology.

Bossypants (small doses)

2011-05-14T22:06:00.000-07:00

First, I’ve just got to say that I almost didn’t read the book because of the cover. I can’t stand photoshopped bodies, and just take a look. (Why did I even put it here?) But I read what turns out to be the last entry in the New Yorker, and I laughed. And I love Tina Fey.

She’s a regular person. She must be a gazillionaire now, but she eats at Red Lobster and stays at the Holiday Inn. She’s self-conscious, and she doesn’t have a perfect body. And she’s made it.

My 10^th graders just had a nonfiction assignment—their choice of read, within bounds—and several girls read this book and said it inspired them to go for it. They said Tina showed them how to make it in a man’s world. Good for them. Good for Tina. (And haven’t they read all the recent research about girls out-achieving boys left and right. At least until it gets to the board room.)

But take the book in small doses. I’m used to reading a book straight through. (That’s a lie: during the school year I muddle through books. But I like to read straight through.)

And now she’s six months pregnant. Did you see her on SNL last week? Yes, you go, Tina.

Love Wins (what if)

2011-05-07T11:39:00.000-07:00

First a disclaimer: if you don’t want to be dragged through fundamentalist angst, don’t read on. If a chart showing the end times will freak you out, exit now. But really, I grew up with this chart. Life was black or white, summer or winter, boy or girl, heaven or hell.

So when I saw the article in the NYT about Rod Bell’s new book, “Love Wins,” I had to buy it. (I first had to get over my aversion to the use of sans serif fonts for the text of his books and his fragmentary writing style.) I read about the book just about everywhere. The comments especially amused me. On one side, people couldn’t believe that Bell’s book was even worth the controversy. What do you mean people are going to hell? That’s so old school. The other view couldn’t believe we’re all not going to hell. I mean, how dare we think God means to save everyone. (I find this view—not coincidentally—the most amusing: I mean, we spout this mantra that we’re saved by grace, nothing we’ve done ourselves, but the thought of people being in heaven who haven’t said a formulaic prayer? Grace can only reach so far.)

Bell first challenges the word “hell,” noting that the word that appears in the religious lexicon and in the Bible isn’t really a single word at all. I won’t go into it—and plenty of people have argued that Bell is misreading the Bible—but it’s another example of how translation and cultural layers cloud meaning. He shares a similar viewpoint with N.T. Wright (and C.S. Lewis, too)—a belief that heaven and hell are here and now--and later. We’re hung up on the linear, on time, in ways that the Jewish culture was not.

I loved his comment about heaven: “What is it that when you do it, you lose track of time because you get lost in it?” I loved lots of his comments really. “Which is stronger and more powerful, the hardness of the human heart or God’s unrelenting, infinite, expansive love? Thousands through the years have answered that question with the resounding response, ‘God’s love, of course.’” And he talks about the Prodigal Son—along the lines of Timothy Keller’s short book, the one we just finished in small group. The younger son was lost, but so was the older son who was following all the rules.

I could go on. But I won’t. But I’ll say what I believe: Love wins.

Cutting for Stone (all the ingredients)

2011-04-30T16:09:00.000-07:00

First a note about the title: for some reason, I had in mind that this book took place in a granite quarry in New England—wasn’t there a John Irving book there? “Owen Meany”? But no, Thomas Stone is a surgeon who fathers twin boys with a devout nun and then disappears at their birth and her death, leaving Marion and Shiva in Ethiopia at the Missing Hospital—a mission hospital—with wonderful adoptive parents Hema and Ghosh, both doctors. Add in civil war, a little fabulous realism (Marion narrates from the time of his birth), romance and betrayal, and “Cutting for Stone” has all the ingredients of a great read.

I bet you think I’m going to drop a bomb now, declare the book a dud. But, no, I loved it. Even stayed up way past my bedtime Thursday night to finish it—almost late enough to turn on the TV and go right to the Royal Wedding.

And it was worth it. Heartbreaking and satisfying.

Outliers (work, time, place)

2011-04-10T20:51:00.000-07:00

Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” takes on the edge of success from two perspectives: descriptive and prescriptive. The first part of the book provides several examples of the 10,000 rule, a description of genius that shows the investment of 10,000 hours in a particular skill or expertise. It’s the “work hard” rule, but that rule is nothing without timing. The statistics of the Jewish lawyer in NY to the Canadian hockey players to the computer geniuses, ala Bill Gates, are fascinating. It’s tough to argue that hard work alone gets anyone anywhere. My fascination turned a bit despairing, though, because this first half is a look back. Success seems determined by fate.

In the second half, Gladwell takes on a predictive posture. What can we do to encourage success? He discussed cultural patterns, how they can skew success both negatively and positively. He provides proactive examples of training people away from negative cultural patterns—the Korean pilots who were too polite to say they were about to crash or the South Bronx kids who didn’t go to school. It’s a lot to think about.

Here’s some of what sticks:

1. For work to be satisfying, it has to have three qualities: autonomy, complexity and a connection between effort and reward. (p. 149)
2. The power of cultural forces: “They have deep roots and long lives.” (p. 175)
3. Again, culture is a powerful force: “Each of us has his or her own distinct personality. But overlaid on top of that are tendencies and assumptions and reflexes handed down to us by the history of the community we grew up in, and those differences are extraordinarily specific.” (p. 204)
4. Work hard: “No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.” (p. 224)

Of course, that last one made me think of growing up on a dairy farm where we rose before dawn all year, and I’m still mulling over the culture of the dairy farm. Our family value was that working hard makes us quality people. Did we become rich? Not in monetary terms, at least not then. But there was a richness to our lives. And we all went to college.

The school section fed my current jag about the state’s budget crisis. The nation’s. Across the nation, teachers are being laid off. Just down the freeway, a small district—only 1500 students—will have to lay off 10 teachers this spring. That in a district that has high-risk students who have shown real progress in the last few years through innovative planning. The culture of American schools runs counter to academic success. This time of year, we send students off to numerous events during the school day—my golf kids are gone sometimes two days a week. A friend—Bertha, I think—mentioned one time that if we took academics as seriously as we do athletics—ran “camps” all summer--we’d catch up with the Japanese. (Now I’m wandering.) But I’ve been thinking—during this budget crisis—about all the extras. How much do we spend on extracurriculars? I’d like just once during this budget debate for someone to give the honest amount that goes into athletics—coaches, fields, transportation, etc. It’s a lot of money. Then when teachers are laid off, show how many teachers we would keep if extracurriculars were cut. (The argument is that for some students, sports is the only reason they stay in school. Well, shame on us.)

And as I finished the book with the chapter about KIPPS (a charter school company), I thought about the magazine piece in the NYT today about a South Bronx school trying to make it in the midst of the charter school movement.

My students are reading nonfiction this month on their own: can we trust nonfiction with the facts. In this case, Gladwell’s worth the read.

Reading (new york times)

2011-04-04T13:39:00.001-07:00

You may have read about the NYT’s foray into the world of paid online subscriptions. I’m all for it. (In fact, I’d love a way to subscribe to just the online New Yorker instead of getting a magazine to throw away each week. But that’s another thread.) As we readers move to digital formats, the money needs to follow. I read the NYT exclusively on my iPad, though I drool at the Sunday magazine and book review at the coffee shop.

I was ready to pay, really. And then I get a pop-up saying that Lincoln (the car company) is ready and willing and cover my subscription the rest of the year. Oh, yes.

This turn of events must mean something: I’m in a valued demographic or Lincoln knows of Chris’s secret desire to own an old person’s car.
In any case, I’m enjoying the reading guilt-free, though I feel a twinge thinking of you young readers who can’t afford a subscription. But, wait, isn’t that like everything else? (I used to be irritated every time someone in front of me got a senior discount to a movie, knowing that people 55+, statistically, have pretty sweet money. That, too, is another thread.)

I noticed something else in my reading this week. When I go to the NYT from my email, the sidebar lists recommended articles for me to read. Because I have nothing else to do, I read the fine print: “What’s This?” Apparently they know my taste in articles, and the algorithms are at work to predict what I will like. And I’ve read 260 articles in the past month—with help, I think.

That’s a bit over the limit of 20 for free viewing. I think if I were paying, I’d be more discriminating, but for now I’ll relish the ability to read about groundbreaking coverage of the royal wedding.

(By the way, I watched "The Killing," the new AMC detective show set in Seattle. It's not something I would gravitate toward just because of the title, but I read a NYT article about the show. So good. I love the main character.)

Strength (remains)

2011-03-20T12:04:00.000-07:00

I finished this book as bombs go off in Libya. I can’t quite wrap my mind around this turn of events, especially as I’m finishing a book that has the atrocities in Burundi and Rwanda in the background, atrocities that we largely ignored.

Tracy Kidder is the go-to guy for nonfiction. “Strength in What Remains,” his newest work follows the life of Deo, a displaced refugee from war torn Burundi. Escaping the violence against Tutsis in his homeland, Deo made it to New York City, a brutal escape to an almost-hopeless life here. A doctor in Burundi, Deo lived in Central Park and worked as a delivery boy for a grocer.

“Strength” wouldn’t be a book if Deo were still in Central Park. Through the kindness of strangers, Deo finds a way in NYC, through Columbia and eventually to medical school. He meets Paul Farmer—featured in another of Kidder’s books, “Mountains Beyond Mountains.”

And they all live happily ever after. Deo returns to Burundi to develop health clinics for his impoverished homeland.

I’ve been thinking about people who pour themselves into the lives of others, who dig in against endemic problems like AIDS and poverty. Of course, not everyone is Paul Farmer, not everyone is Deo, but many people invest in their own corner of the world. I’ve been thinking about my own corner of the world.

And, of course, I’m thinking about books. An essay in the NYT today explores nonfiction and the disappointing last chapters. “Strength” sidesteps that trite last chapter, the last lines fading: “What happened happened,” Deo said to the woman. “Let’s work on the clinic. Let’s put this tragedy behind us, because remembering is not going to benefit anyone.”

A fitting ending to a thoughtful read.

Room (closing in)

2011-03-13T12:05:00.000-07:00

I had a beginning sentence in my head—“I was skeptical. . .”—and I realized that I’m often skeptical about a book before I read it. But a five-year-old boy narrating a story about his life in a room as a captive? Really?

But Emma Donaghue makes “Room” real. It works. Jack’s voice—a combination of the innocent child and the wise child, couched in awkward language--is right for the story. If Ma told the story, the horror of the situation (she’s been held captive for seven years) would color the wonder of Jack’s experience.

I don’t want to give anything away, but Donaghue sustained a suspenseful plot beyond the conventional archetypal structure. And only a couple of times did the book descend into a “message” mode: mostly, Donaghue kept the voice and the story true to Jack’s character.

I see why it’s on so many top 10 lists.

Aren’t you proud I’m reading? My Netflix queue also continues to grow. I especially loved two documentaries I watched this week: “Lord, Save Us From Your Followers” and “The Parking Lot Movie.”

I have my post-op appointment on Tuesday, but I don't think I'll be cleared for full-time work yet. What to read next?

Winter’s Bone (chilling)

2011-03-12T15:02:00.001-08:00

“Winter’s Bone” was one of my favorite movies of the year: so gritty, but so beautifully filmed and acted, so honest in its portrayal of the rough life in the meth hollows in the Ozarks. I wasn’t sure if the book could match up, but this is one of the rare pairings where both versions—print and movie—are equally beautiful and compelling.

I have to admit that the first two pages put me off a little. It was just too much, like it was written for a workshop assignment. “Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again.” Okay, I’ll go for the red cheeks at the end, but the beginning of the sentence? Too much.

But once I got into the book, the story pulled me deeper into the hollow, and I winced my way through. Ree’s search for her absent father, her resolve to save her family seems impossible without being hopeless. That’s a tough line to draw. It’s a hard book, harder than the movie, I think. But nothing is wasted.

Stanley Fish in his book “How to Write a Sentence, and How to Read One” says that we should be on the lookout for beautiful sentences. There were plenty to choose from in this book:

“Ree crossed the schoolyard snow toward the scraped hard road that led north. She saw pregnant girls she knew huddled by their special side entrance holding textbooks and bumping bellies. She saw boys she knew sharing smoke, crouched beside their pickup trucks. She saw lovers she knew kissing back and forth with enough wet kisses to hold each sated and faithful until the lunch hour. She saw teachers she knew watching with sad eyes as she left the schoolyard alone to stand beside the north road with her thumb out.”

My ratio of reading to TV watching is shifting this week—reflecting a shift in the amount of pain medication I’m taking during the day. I think I should go to the library now.

Going Nowhere (fast)

2011-03-07T11:35:00.000-08:00

You’d think I could read a book a day. Well, not so much when I drift off after taking a pain pill, drool creeping down my chin and onto the book.

A chronology:
Feb. 9 – I go to the ER to get hooked up to painkillers. My leg (thanks to my nerves) is in bezerk pain.
Feb. 11 – I try to get an MRI. No success.
Feb. 12 – I get an MRI thanks to valium.
Feb. 16 – I get an appointment with the neurologist. We talk about options. I sign for a pain shot. I get home and think, “What?” I make a new appointment.
Feb. 23 – I go to another appointment – this time for pre-op. I’m scheduled for Feb. 28.
Feb. 28 – I get my back cut open and an errant piece of disc cut out.
March 5 – I can sit again.

I’m one week past surgery, chomping at the bit to do something, anything. Yesterday, Chris and I took a walk for almost a mile, and it was glorious outside. Then we went out for lunch, something I haven’t done for a full month.

I thought I would be ready to go back to work immediately, but I’m not so sure now. I’m not so sure I’ll ever wake before 9 a.m. again.

But I’ll hold to my mantra: “Each day I’m feeling a little better.” And my post-op is next Tuesday, so I ain’t going nowhere until then.

Except maybe to the counter to grade some really old essays. (How will I even remember my students’ names?)

Stuff (books to the ceiling)

2011-02-21T13:47:00.000-08:00

So Suzanne came bearing books, her string bag filled with library gems or the dregs—you never know until you open them. She checks out heaps at a time, so there’s always something to read when she’s around. (That’s not all she’s good for, believe me. It’s been wonderful to have her at the house for practical reasons, but we haven’t just lounged together for some time. So nice.)

One of the books she brought was “Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things” by Randy Frost & Gail Steketee. You’ve probably seen ads for “Hoarders,” a voyeur-like program on TLC. I’m repulsed by those ads: unlike the Duggars who are getting rich on letting people view their creepy lives, I can only imagine that the hoarders aren’t getting anything of benefit other than lurid curiosity. So how is reading a book any different?

I think rather than exploiting hoarders, the two professors who have studied hoarding for over a decade and written a treatment manual (thank you back of the book) are seeking to explain, to understand, to educate. There are no pictures, no real names. The perfect creative nonfiction, the book weaves between some history of the obsession—Mary Todd Lincoln was apparently a hoarder—and case studies. I’ve always been squeamish about too much stuff—I grew up on a farm where, from my grandfather on, no one threw anything away. But acreage camouflages some of the junk—though I distinctly remember as a child seeing the junk through someone else’s eyes for the first time. Let’s just say that when Chris and I married, I made him promise that everything has to be contained in the garage. (While he was home this last week, we talked about this book, and my piles of books drive him crazy. At least I don’t literally have books to the ceiling, with “goat trails” to the door. Thank you very much, the majority of my books are organized by type in my beautiful bookcases. The piles are just current possibilities.)

What struck me about the book—a great read, by the way—is how difficult the disorder is, how almost-impossible it is to overcome. So much meaning is attached to each item, whether a receipt or a glass vase. And forced cleanouts--“Just get rid of it all and clean the place out”—don’t help. The piles—we’re talking floor to ceiling, wall to wall—just return, sometimes within a month. And I was amazed at how common it is. In some apartment buildings in NYC, there might be one hoarder on each floor. (Door can barely open. No room is really usable.)

One comment really struck me:”Maybe hoarding is creativity gone amok.” Some of the people see so much possibility in each item. I thought again about Dad—about Chris, too—who see the possibility of fixing something, of “needing something someday.” (Both of them in a category of highly creative people, I think.) And though that wasn’t the thesis of the book—if anything, the book illustrates how difficult some disorders are to overcome—the comment underscores how differently some of us are wired from others. And if nothing else, it makes me see that "someone else" in a more understanding light.

Back (the couch)

2011-02-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

My perch for the last two weeks has been the couch.

I’ve had this back thing for about three years. Who knows how it began: lifting yearbook boxes, sitting too long grading. Anyway, it’s been a nagging condition. I went to the chiropractor (disastrous), physical therapy (great), doctor (steroid packs work). In January it started hurting again. Not my back really, mostly my leg. (I can’t believe I’m posting something about my back, but it’s relevant to reading.) So I was more careful—I went to Pilates and weight lifting and walked—but even those normally soothing activities began to make me more uncomfortable. When I drove to Idaho a couple of weeks ago, I got back and didn’t feel great. The next day I was worse and stayed home. The next morning, I got up and my leg exploded. (I saw it that way, anyway.) I couldn’t get back to bed, so fell to the floor next to the bed. And couldn’t get up. And Chris was out of town.

It’s a pretty dramatic story, funny now if I tell it because I include tangents about the manatees on the Hawaiian beach that can’t be moved, cordoned off with caution tape but surrounded by people who are watching.

I’m so grateful for good friends, and for good friends who just live down the street. Let’s just say I ended up in the ER by ambulance.

So I’ve been mostly drugged for two weeks. I have “Middlemarch” and “Moby Dick” sitting on the end table. The New Yorker had a great article about “Middlemarch” a couple of weeks ago, and I thought this would be a perfect opportunity. Pain killers and muscle relaxers don’t mix well with 850 page Victorian novels, however.
So I've watched the changing light during the day—I love the sky—and dozed with the TV on.

I hope to have surgery next week (a piece of disc broke off and is pressuring the nerve, causing referred numbness and/or pain all down my leg) that will miraculously provide relief. (Honestly, I hear it does.)

For now, I’m taking fewer meds, so I read a great nonfiction book, short enough for me to concentrate on it.

Maybe I’ll even make it to “Middlemarch.”

Great House (crash)

2011-02-08T15:08:00.000-08:00

I was in Idaho this weekend, and while Janet was having an intense discussion with Mom, I sat next to Dad for a bit. He was getting ready to read, a book by John Grisham, though I can’t remember the title. He always has a stack of books on the TV and notecards that list the authors he’s reading. He keeps track. I asked him if he liked the Clancy book he just finished. “Not really,” he said. “It’s hard to find a good book now. You know, I like a story that makes sense—and a happy ending.” He said that modern writers start a story and then throw in someone new, a whole new story that he can’t keep track of. In some ways these comments surprised me. Not his indictment of the modern writer, but the happy ending part. But don’t we all. Like a happy ending, I mean.

So as I finished Nicole Krauss’s “Great House,” I thought about Dad and his comments. Normally, I’m sustained by quirky characters, by beautiful writing, but today, I, too, wanted a happy ending. I should have known better.

I try to understand the sensibility of loss, of tragedy, how some people do not find peace. But as the four stories emerge and extend in part two, the loss—the secrets—become hard to bear. And maybe that’s the point: some people can find moments of contentment—I backspaced on that word, unsure if it’s too happy—but no peace.

We’re beginning the (in)famous group choices in 10th grade this week, and as I shared the books with some students who were absent for the first book talk, one student said, “I hate the Holocaust. How much more do we need to read? All through middle school, that’s all we read.” I felt that same sentiment reading this book. Yet if I were writing, I’d probably write and rewrite the tragedy of fundamentalism, of legalism, and some reader would throw his hands up: “Enough already.”

I tired of “Crash” books last year—so named because of the movie that neatly joins several stories, several characters, with a literal crash. This is another crash (also literal), so convenient, so unbelievable. Yet the book is clearly a work of the imagination, a journey into the fabulous, that the crash is all that could happen.

I realize now that I haven’t even said what the book’s about. This giant desk becomes a symbol of longing, of missed connections all through the book. (Why is it called “Great House”?) The desk itself is a sign of a gaping hole in the holder’s life, but its loss an even bigger hole.

But here’s a quote: (in the context of a character explaining that she owns little, feels little connection to the trappings of collecting) “The only exception was books, which I acquired freely, because I never really felt they belonged to me. Because of this, I never felt compelled to finish those I didn’t like, or even a pressure to like them at all. But a certain lack of responsibility also left me free to be affected. When at last I came across the right book the feeling was violent: it blew open a hole in me that made life more dangerous because I couldn’t control what came through it.”

I want to talk to someone else who read it.

Why I’m not reading (iEverything)

2011-02-08T10:20:00.000-08:00

What is wrong with me? (That’s a real question—as I like to tell my students.) I used to have three books going at a time, finishing at least two books a month. Now? Unless it’s a holiday—and sometimes not even then—I’m hard-pressed to read a book a month. It’s the iThings that are getting me. Let me explain:

I got an iPad for Mother’s Day last year—well, after Mother’s Day, but that’s another story. Now I can read just about anything anytime, especially newspapers and magazines. So I read the NYT more fully every day. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, can’t sleep. What else? Reach for the iPad, and check the NYT. Used to be I’d reach for the latest book on my nightstand. Just this morning, I linked to the New Yorker and read three articles—one by Tina Fey, one by Malcolm Gladwell on college rankings and one on “Middlemarch” by George Eliot. All great articles. While reading the “Middlemarch” article, I thought, how is it that I haven’t read this book, other than I don’t gravitate to 19th century British novels. I want to read it now. But there’s so much competition.

And that doesn’t even include Solitaire, Words with Friends, and the glorious Weather Channel app. Alas.

I’m home today with an old back—when did this happen? I drove back and forth to Idaho and can’t straighten up this morning. Alas. But I turned off the TV, powered down the iPad. I want to finish “Great House” by Nicole Krauss.

Blue (so beautiful)

2011-01-13T19:25:00.000-08:00

It struck me today—when I was thinking about this heading, actually—that we use “blue” to mean feeling down in the dumps. But when blue sky comes out (blue ribbons, etc.), it’s a great day. (Did Picasso's Blue Period play off of "feeling blue" or did we feel blue after seeing Picasso's paintings?)

I knew blue was creeping in because I saw light. The kids going to the library looked almost saintly. (My new window looks out to the sidewalk to the library.) For just a moment, their bodies caught the sunlight.

After school when Bertha and I went walking, there was blue everywhere—well, almost. And winter’s blue has a different quality than any other time. (Summer, washed out; fall, brilliant; spring, fresh.) It was a puzzle blue, and the clouds like that painting from the 1800s.

I felt like I was walking in a cliché. It was so beautiful.

Remembering (Nothing)

2011-01-09T15:28:00.000-08:00

I gave Nora Ephron’s “I Remember Nothing” to a friend as a birthday gift, remembering that I enjoyed “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” a gift for my 50th birthday. She read it right away, and now the book is back in my lap to read.

It’s not as funny as “Neck.” In fact, at times the “other reflections” seemed so sad that I wanted to just pass the book along to the next person: friends die, she reminisces on her divorce, her movies flop. But then a little essay would come along that made me smile. The one about her addiction to Scrabble. The one about her life as a beginning journalist. (I had no idea she started as a Girl Friday at Newsweek.)

(Speaking of Newsweek, I finally let my subscription lapse. It had become nothing, and it made me so sad. But when Jon Meacham quit as editor, I knew that was the end. Besides I have my iPad for reading magazines. Did I tell you about my iPad? That’s later.)

(Now when do I let my newspaper subscription lapse?)

At the very end, Ephron has two lists, musing about what she won’t miss when she’s (dead) (incapacitated) (in a home) and then one about what she will miss. I felt a little emotional reading that last list, partly because the last thing on the list was pie.

It’s a new year, and although I don’t believe in resolutions, I did complete a project today that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. You know how you make folders on your computer, and family members make folders, and then you make another set of folders? I pared down my folders so that now I can click on “Nancy” and choose among several clear folder options. I moved or deleted every single document in my many folders.

And now I’m looking at “Great House” by Nicole Krauss, Nat’s gift to me, and I think I’ll go lie on the couch and read.

Freedom (elusive)

2010-12-30T08:31:00.000-08:00

I’ve reached that point of Christmas vacation when I’m not sure what day it is, not sure if I’ll ever go back to work. Not sure how long I’ve slept. It’s the only time of year–other than a rare bout with the flu—that I don’t get up with the sun, partly because there’s precious little sun to get up to. But I feel a sense of freedom, no task but looking for my reading glasses or doing the dishes after the boys have cluttered up every room with glasses and bowls. Yes, all three boys are here—Chris and Andrew and Nat—and add in Will and then Adam last night, and we’ve got a delightful houseful.

But I did have a task: complete “Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen before school starts up again because then I’d never make it. As it was, I had to restart the book and then half way through I thought to myself, this is more depressing than I bargained for, but I had that task. And I finished it tonight.

I think one review referred to a sprawling, dysfunctional family spreading through the novel: that’s an understatement. I winched as I read, seeing parts of me, parts of our families, parts of our boys in the book. In some ways, the characters sit on this continuum of human intent, but the little sliding scale—think a slide rule here, if you’re my age—is nudged up a few notches toward neurotic—extreme. Patty, the mother, isn’t just passive-aggressive, she’s totally lost and ineffectual. Walter, the father, isn’t just an idealist, he’s off his rocker with desire to help the warbler. The children aren’t just—well, you get the drift.

The book’s also rich with big and little cultural jabs: old people (anyone over 22) don’t understand social media; the American government ‘s corrupt; “Atonement” is a dull set of descriptions. (A little author envy there.) In other words, it’s sprawling. Speaking of sprawling, the first sentence of “2004” was a page long. Rarely do I try to imagine the writer sitting and writing, but I did with this book. What was he thinking as he typed away, unraveling sentences on the page, unraveling the lives of these perfectly nice (or even not-so-nice) people? And some of the writing struck me as trite, especially the sex scenes, seeming more “Twilight” than upper brow literature.

And from the beginning I wondered about that word “freedom.” I even noted its explicit use in the book: the right-wing foil of Walter who uses it in a Tea Party sense, Walter’s assistant who uses it to explain the deeply held values of the hollows of West Virginia. But implicitly a thread of freedom or the lack of it follows especially Patty all the way through—how free was she to choose her own life, in what ways did she paralyze herself.

I don’t know what I think about the book. I’d say it’s not a book for a quick holiday read, but it’s also not a book for long solitary contemplation. I do think it would make a decent book club pick because it has so much worth talking about. In fact, I think it’s on our list for later this year when it’s out in paper.

Now the unavoidable. I have to grade papers.

POD (canned food, anyone?)

2010-12-19T15:59:00.000-08:00

Stephen Wallenfels, a local writer, imagines an invasion of PODs and how two young teens—a boy in Prosser, Washington, and a girl in Los Angeles, California—cope with a sudden disaster of universal proportions. And he does several things well. First, by making all media crash, he doesn’t have to deal with New York City or Washington, D.C.: no president taken into hiding, no astronauts flying out to face off with the aliens. Second, he’s created two likeable and believable protagonists in Jamie and Megs. The parallel first-person narratives bounce between the rural and the urban, tight wire episodes in which any person who leaves cover is instantly vaporized by—something--in which precious food is scavenged and rationed.

There’s no vast journey through space described or alien face-to-human face combat that culminates in a heroic climax. Instead, this YA novel is a psychological thriller in many ways, a look at human nature under extreme conditions. I have to admit that Megs is my favorite, partly because she’s a girl and partly because her response to her parking lot prison produces the most tension. But the interactions between Jamie and his dad—and Jamie and a girl across the street—generate plenty of heart-pumping anxiety, too. It’s just a good read.

Nor does Wallenfels stoop to easy outs and sunny outcomes. It’s a hard read in lots of ways—I’m interested to talk to students who read it—without real closure at the end. I think Maureen said it’s got a sequel coming. I hope so. I’ll read it.

I was scanning the channels earlier this afternoon and saw a bit of Will Smith in “I am Legend.” I’ve never seen that movie, but I’m really creeped out by apocalyptic stories. I turned the channel once I figured out what I was watching. And then I thought about how much food I have in the pantry.

On to “Freedom.”

Winter's Leap

2010-12-18T12:50:00.001-08:00

We were laughing so hard, I almost forgot why. Oh, yeah, we were making up new safety tips to top the ones we get by email at work. Don’t sit in your running car in a closed garage. Don’t use your hair dryer while you’re taking a bath.

Don’t swim in the Columbia in December.

But that’s how it ended, not how it began.

No one would have guessed that it was the last day of school before the break, except maybe for the two girls dressed as reindeer giving out candy canes in the hallway. And the teachers' smiling faces. It’s been sunny, no snow to distract our school day.

This would have been the perfect year for someone to join us. One new teacher was going to and then she decided that she needed to bond with her new cat. Really? So it was only we three—along with Bertha’s daughter Lena and her friend, new blood for the leap.

You can see the light in the picture. If you were just looking--not standing, looking down to the river--it might be just another spring day. We had scoped out the dock the day before, noting how low the water was. The winter plunge is just that, though, no creeping in from the rocky shore: that’s too cold. But when we arrived Friday after school, it looked just fine.

It was one of our most efficient jumps ever. After strategically placing our towels and sweatshirts at the spot where we climb out, we raced back to the dock, jumping in on one, two, three: Carolyn, Bertha and then me. Lena and her friend Jessie screamed for a bit and then jumped. Lena jumped twice because “after you do it once, you might as well go again.” She is her mother’s daughter.

Then hot chocolate. Then laughter. I’m so grateful for friends. And traditions.

This morning was a new landscape, snow everywhere. Chris is back from New Mexico, and we slept in until 9 a.m. Glorious. I shoveled snow, thinking all the while that it would be better to make a snow man.

But here it is, the first day of break. I’m going to read a book.

Dreamers of the Day (Dear Mary,)

2010-11-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

I feel as if I can call you “Mary”: I’ve been your number one fan since I picked “The Sparrow” off the new book shelf 14 years ago, since I sat in the front of the auditorium at an NCTE convention and listened with rapt attention at your story of rewriting “The Sparrow” 38 times in response to each editor’s rejection.

But, Mary, do I have your permission to speak frankly? I don’t like the current trajectory of your writing career. I don’t like your version of historical fiction. Yes, it’s true that my Facebook page has the quote “Trust me, fiction is better,” a response to a question to you about the research for this book. And, yes, I knew nothing about Gertrude Bell and the carving of the Middle East after World War I. But a book about a woman who at 40 throws caution to the wind and takes her little dog with her to Cairo? A woman who hasn’t really tried anything in her life and then (spoiler alert!!!) beds a German spy? And in about 220 pages?

It’s clear to me now that your true love is history not Jesuits in space. Maybe CNN needs a Middle East analyst?

The River (metaphorically speaking)

2010-11-08T21:44:00.000-08:00

Occasionally, I read a YA book—thank you very much, Kristen.

“The River” by Mary Jane-Beaufrand, a Seattle author, was on the rounder on the checkout desk in the library because it’s one of the selections for the spring readers conference. I was curious. It falls into the dramatic murder mystery solved by a young person genre, but it was kind of a fun read. A quick read, which at the end of the quarter is a good thing.

Rats. I thought I marked a spot. See, I get the feeling when I read YA literature that there’s a set number of pages and a set number of similes and metaphors that the author has to use. (This is a little zag.) Now I haven’t written a book, so I shouldn’t complain—“sour grapes” was our idiom of the day. (I can’t find the page. You’re going to have to believe me on this.) The cover has “The River” and then “What dark secrets does the river hold?” (All in caps, though.) There’s a symbol. And then I get to a page and the figurative language is—figuratively—tripping over itself. Everything’s got to be described and compared. I guess that makes for some rich language. I mean, characters can’t just have brown hair. It has to be brown like chestnuts. Skin has to be leathery. It rained biblically hard. What?

But I liked the book. Realistic and unrealistic as murders solved by teenage girls tend to be. (Wait, how about Nancy Drew?) But it takes place near Portland and Salem and the characters ring true, and Ronnie (Veronica) gets caught in her own naiveté, fooled by a boy, and her dad has been crushed under the pressure of his job. What’s not to like?

Maybe it’s the space between the lines. Maybe it’s the metaphors. But I think YA novels just aren’t for me. (John Green? Are his novels YA? I love them. The lines aren’t spaced out so much. And what’s with that. Kids have good eyesight. Why do they need so much space?)

All the Pretty Horses (landscape)

2010-10-30T16:27:00.000-07:00

I don’t even like horses.

Fortunately, Cormac McCarthy’s book isn’t really about horses but about a boy and his friend and a series of unfortunate events. Midway through the book, John Grady Cole sits across from his true love’s aunt and she explains how she lost two of her fingers in a shooting accident. Then she says, Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. The events that cause them can never be forgotten, can they? The book is a series of scars: of death, of love, of betrayal, of naiveté—of rootlessness.

It’s also a book of wide vistas, sweeping landscape. Take the landscape out of this book, and what’s left is blunt conversation. We are spectators in this story, and because the people say what they need to but not much else (except the aunt toward the end) and the narrator doesn’t pry open the psyche of the characters, we’re left with the feel of dirt under the fingernails, the thirst of days without water. The force of subject-verb declarations leaves nothing to the imagination—except the motivations of the characters.

And that’s the richness of the read. John tells the judge at the end of the book that he doesn’t want the judge to think he’s something special because he ain’t. But some force did drive John Grady from his childhood ranch in Texas, over the border deep into Mexco and then back again. And something in John Grady kept him alive despite every reason not to be.

If you haven’t read it, read it.

(I read parts of an interview with McCarthy—a rare interview—and loved his explanation for using sparse punctuation—no quotation marks, no semi-colons, few commas and an occasional apostrophe. He sees no need to clutter his writing with “squiggly” marks. Even the writing is raw and blunt.)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (revisiting)

2010-10-08T18:38:00.000-07:00

I read this book as a child during the phase when my cousin Diane and I were trying to see who could fill up a library card first. I remember loving Francie, a gritty girl who loved words.

I just read a totally different book.When I finished chapter 1, I realized the book is about a gritty life, about alcoholism and deprivation—and Francie, a gritty girl who loved words. In many ways, the book calls back to another kind of literature, literature with a chronological line that starts in childhood and flows to a satisfying conclusion: Francie’s ready to leave the nest, and it seems that everyone will live happily ever after.

But it doesn’t fall into an improbable deux ex machina. No, Mr. McShane arrives long after hard work and disappointment have dogged the Nolans for years and after the plot wanders along until it seems it will go on forever.

I didn’t love the book this time, but I can see why the New York Public Library called it one of the most important books of the last century: it’s a book of the American Dream and a book that boldly tells the truth about a life of poverty. (Although they classed in under “Favorites of Childhood and Youth.”)

I’m glad I read it again.

(Now I can finish “Freedom.”)

Shout Out (hey)

2010-09-29T20:18:00.000-07:00

Proof once again that the pen is mightier than the—highlighter.

A shout out to Molly for her brave op-ed in the TCH.

Read it yourself.

Equinox (familiar)

2010-09-22T17:14:00.000-07:00

You’ve heard this before and that’s the joy.

I was thinking about that word “familiar.” I grew up along the canal, the Indian Creek, and water brought the dirt to life, water brought us to life. It was familiar.

There’s another meaning of familiar, tame and domesticated. I haven’t heard that use, but I think our jump, our slides, our dips into the water are just the opposite. We middle-aged women will not be familiar in that sense, not the everyday variety. We’re pushing against time as much as we’re marking time.

And I saw that same pushing as we walked to the river. With trees around starting to brown, dry at the edges, life bursts. Small red bugs—I’ve never seen them before—covered the sidewalk, clumping into tiny red bundles and then spiraling away. Minnows scattered out from under the rock, catching light as they swam.

It’s beautiful today. Seventy-one degrees and sunny, a celebration of last night’s beautiful full moon. When I saw the forecast, I thought the river might feel cold—we’ve had an unseasonably cool summer and fall. It’s low today, so we couldn’t jump from the dock. I’m squeamish about the plants that cover the bottom, grabbing at legs. We walked back and forth about a half mile and then settled on a spot and walked in.

What an invitation. No cold. No shudder. Just delight at the motion of the water and the cool that deepened as I slid under. Underwater—and then just lying still. Sound absorbed by the water, I lay there with eyes closed, feeling the sun and the cool.

The friends are familiar: we laughed together as we toweled off and walked away.

It’s been a long summer, and I’m ready for fall.

Freedom (moving on)

2010-09-16T20:49:00.000-07:00

I couldn’t stand to look at that last post and had to say something new.

I ordered books from Barnes and Noble. (I’ve been using the library, so it’s been awhile.) “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” for book club this month. “The House on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet,” a book I already bought, probably loaned out, and want to look at for use in class. (I think it’s squeaky clean.) And (drum roll)—

“Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen, proving that I succumb to hype. Nope, I haven’t read it, but I did start it last night, and love it already: rambling, engaging from the first. “The news about Walter Berglund wasn’t picked up locally—he and Patty had moved away to Washington two years earlier and meant nothing to St. Paul now—but the urban gentry of Ramsey Hill were not so loyal to their city as not to read the ‘New York Times.’”

I managed my way through open house without too many questions about books: I talked from before the bell to after bell, tried out a new presentation program prezi.com. So much fun to learn something new.

This is Just to Say (fatigue)

2010-08-31T17:29:00.000-07:00

I’m so hesitant to bring the real world onto this book blog, but the real world encroaches. In the never-ending saga springing from ELIC, a new chapter arrives. My syllabus now states that I subject my students to objectionable material, that parents should be very careful before allowing their children to read. I now prominently mark books that went through the old process but that are now being reconsidered under a new policy. Today was the first day, and it took all my self-control not to launch into a sermon (ette).

Then 5^th hour a student asked about those books, including ELIC. I had to speak: “I grew up not drinking, not dancing, not smoking (mostly), not playing cards. But we could read. And we did. The only reason I knew the world beyond my small town was because I read and learned about people.”

The students blinked. Who knows what they thought, who knows what they will tell their parents.

We have reached a time when reading has become scanning with a highlighter, assuming that a book is dangerous because it has 3 f-words, 4 shits, and a troubling comment about Christianity (a D on the rating scale now linked to our district’s web site).

I say a book is dangerous when there isn’t anything troubling in it.

So there.

The Mercy Papers (visceral)

2010-08-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure if Robin Romm’s memoir about her mother’s death from cancer has been compared to Dideon’s “A Year of Magical Thinking,” but the visceral style made me think of “Year.” The clipped sentences bookend invisible pain, anger. Romm cannot extend those thoughts of disbelief, the habits of mechanical, grief-filled living.

“It’s dinnertime. Another pasta dish. I’ll make pot stickers for my mom. But first, we need her to try the chair. We set the table. My dad goes to unmask her, to wheel her in for dinner. We cluster around.”

Almost a recitation of the automatic.

I have not lost a parent, and, in fact, Romm’s mother was just older than I when she died nine years after a diagnosis of breast cancer. My parents are in their late 80s, so I will never know the grief of losing someone so close before her time. (And is there ever the right time?)

Romm, who teaches creative writing, wrote her grief in those pressing three weeks before her mother died, revealed the harsh, aching truth of a wrenching death. It’s hard to read the words.

And what do I take away from the book? I’m not sure. The writing is beautiful, there’s that. And because I have not experienced the same pain, I’ve got a window in. Romm mentions hospice several times—her anger is raw. She lashes out at everyone. Maybe it’s not fair, but it’s honest, and loss doesn’t always have a fair byline.

And I guess that’s the power of this memoir: Romm has not watered down, beautified, her experience. She lays it on the table in an unformed state, letting me feel the jolt of the immediate. And she doesn’t offer a “one year later” glimpse to make me feel better.

It’s a tough read.

(BTW, I picked up the book because it was on NYT’s “Notable Books of 2009.” Same list I found “Lit” and “Gateway to the Stairs.” So far, so good.)

A Gate at the Stairs (novel)

2010-08-20T16:52:00.001-07:00

Lorrie Moore’s “A Gate at the Stairs” was on the NYT’s “must read” list of 2009, so I put it on my list. (The NYT and I mostly see eye-to-eye.) Set it 2001, it’s described loosely as a post 9/11 book—but I suppose that any book written now is post-9/11. But the history, the trauma, doesn’t pervade the book like, say, ELIC (my go-to book for post-9/11). It’s more like “Saturday” by Ian McEwan: there’s a vague uneasiness in the background, but people aren’t going to therapy or anything.

The daughter of a Midwestern boutique farmer—supplying fingerling potatoes, for example, to restaurants—Tassie’s wandering through her first year at college, looking for a part-time job, falling in love—at least into bed, and dabbling in classes that span the range from Sufism to Art History. It’s the part-time job as a nanny for a newly-adopted biracial girl (not on the radar at the time of her hire) that provides the backbone for the novel, sort of a tugging mystery that pulls Tassie along.

What I liked about the book besides the quirky characters (my favorite kind of novel) and the beautiful writing is that behind-the-scenes tug of the whole world pulling people along to their fate. I won’t say more because I’d spoil your own revelation. It’s worth reading.

And something to think about: “Tragedies, I was coming to realize through my daily studies in the humanities both in and out of the classroom, were a luxury. They were constructions of an affluent society, full of sorrow and truth but without moral function.”

happy (birthday ride)

2010-08-17T14:12:00.000-07:00

No, it’s not my birthday, but today was the birthday ride. Chris is still under the weather—his shoulder can’t take a bike ride, though the rest of him would love to—so Bertha rode along. We started at 5:30 a.m., good thing because it is hot today. The north Pasco route took us by crews harvesting potatoes and onions, and the good smell of dirt—and a little dairy smell thrown in—accompanied our ride. As we got closer to 395, fields lay perfect, windrowed hay ready to bale and mountains/hills rising all around us. It was mostly uphill on the way to Country Mercantile, a chocolate factory/fresh food market/salsa store. About 22 miles, and we had breakfast.

The way back necessitated a side tour of Chiawana Park—we were going to be 10 miles short—and the ride became a duty, my legs pumping, face sweating. Then at 50 miles, my back tire went almost flat. A fitting metaphor, I think, for aging. Bertha’s tire gave out, too, goat weeds picked up along the way. Nat met us at the Marina Park, providing air—and we got a little respite.

I hit 53 on the dike near Maureen’s house and stopped to take a picture of the odometer, but pushed the movie instead. It’s short, don’t worry, with no narration, except maybe breathing in the background.

I’m lounging now, sucking down the water and Diet Coke, feeling like I don’t want to ride 50 miles tomorrow, but I’m looking forward to 54 next year.

Locavore (a dinner)

2010-08-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

I can tell you're envious at my dinner. Four beautiful plates: tomatoes, corn and watermelon. The fourth plate is a recipe I found on Epicurious. Zucchini or crook squash sliced thinly with a dressing of whisked olive oil and lemon juice drizzled over. Course salt and ground pepper. A green onion slices. Plops of ricotta cheese (the recipe called for homemade. WHAT?). Chopped basil on the top. All local except the topping stuff. So good.

Jane Eyre (who knew)

2010-08-12T14:23:00.000-07:00

My mother had a book—a heroine—that I remember vividly from my childhood: Elsie Dinsmore. I read the book—and found a sequel at a garage sale that I bought for decoration but didn’t read. Elsie lived through challenges, faith in tact, a martyr of sorts.

I thought about Elsie as I read “Jane Eyre,” one of those books that I think I read ages ago, but maybe I just read about. Anyway, the book came up on the AP Listserve, so I checked it out. Last night at dinner with the girls--“You are not girls,” Nat said before I left--I asked how a book like “Jane Eyre” differs fundamentally from the romance of say “Twilight.” Well, I did not realize that Carolyn—whom I thought loved “P & P” best of all—loves Jane even more. An offense against literature.

I hate “Twilight,” as you all know, but I was just thinking about Bella (?) and Elsie and all those other romantic heroines who stand against the odds, who are themselves. I don’t really have an answer to that question other than I’d rather read “Jane.”

And it’s so Christian. I was stunned by the long biblical considerations. About character and trials and creed and purpose and life and death. (Okay, there’s something “Twilight” doesn’t have.) And I love the pre-pre-feminism: “Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a constraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings. . .” Yes. (I should have read this as a 12-year-old to use as ammunition against the surrounding fundamentalists.)

And the description Mr. Rochester makes of his emotional texture—are you reading, Suzanne?—sounds like Suzanne’s description of many members of our family. Like a hard and tough India-rubber ball, “pervious, though through a chink or two still, and with one sentient point in the middle of the lump.” (And there’s that SAT vocabulary there.)

When I got to page 255, and Jane was to be married to Mr. Rochester, my first thought was that the plot triangle was tilted in the wrong direction, but Jane had to endure even more—and she did with grace. She did not have to be married, did not have to meet society’s expectations. (Sadly, Charlotte Bronte married and died the next year “in pregnancy.”)

All’s well that ends well, but nothing is easy on the romantic horizon. And Jane is a heroine worth admiring.

Juliet, Naked (naked)

2010-07-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

I like Nick Hornby. As I wrote that I put “love”—too much—and then “really liked”—an unnecessary adverb and then settled on “like.” Okay, I could probably stalk him because I was a fan of his “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” column in “The Believer.” I also bought his column collections. I also like his books. So maybe. . .

I love Nick Hornby. “Juliet, Naked” combines his ability to create quirky characters with his musical knowledge and creates a story of obsession and wasted lives. (See “Songbook,” a collection of his essays about songs.) Duncan, a small-town English English professor, lives for Tucker Crowe’s “Juliet” album. Crowe, who disappeared not long after the album hit the stands, has sprouted websites, conspiracy theories and lyric interpretations. That’s Duncan’s real life: forget his job. His significant other Annie is along for the ride in a passive kind of way, and then her interest is piqued with the arrival of “Juliet, Naked,” an acoustic studio rough of the original album. What emerges is an odyssey that forces the characters to decide who they really are—forget about Tucker Crowe.

The book’s about music, about obsession, about love and not love, about identity, about the internet. About life. What a fun read.

Motorcycles (an aside)

2010-07-21T18:35:00.000-07:00

My vision of summer isn’t the reality it turns out. You’d think after years of teaching I could organize a relaxing summer schedule. I knew back-to-back classes were a stretch, but that was all I scheduled. I can’t control everything.

A short jaunt to Idaho turned into a longer stay because of Dad’s heart procedure, and then this last weekend Chris slid into a wheat field in the middle of Oregon. He’s on the mend now—a concussion that leaves him exhausted and a separated shoulder. Poor guy. I’m so grateful for the kindnesses of strangers (farmers forgiving a huge swatch of downed wheat) and friends alike (people who continue to check in, who were with Chris and got help right away). People have been so sweet.

Andrew and Mo are here for a bit, though, and we’re having dinner late on the deck each night and lazy mornings. Not my regular summer routine. And maybe that’s okay. Just so August 31 doesn’t come barreling in too quickly, before the “July me” gets a good rest.

A Mountain of Crumbs (behind the mask)

2010-07-21T18:26:00.001-07:00

Have I said I’m trying to use the library? (Thanks for the inspiration, Alyssa.) My bookcases are full. I get books, and I have a really tough time then parting with them. Why? I don’t reread that often.

“Mountain” is from the new book shelf. It’s the memoir of Elina Gorokhova, a Russian who finds English in her imagination and her studies and who finds an American that brings her to the States, a marriage of convenience brought on by his fascination of and sympathy for his Russian teacher. The memoir peers behind the concrete walls of the Russian apartments into a history of the modern USSR and of Elena’s growing cynicism of her country. It’s a story of love for her family and a collection of the stories not told, what is real, what is secret. Gorokhova’s a beautiful writer who shows us her longing for some kind of identity that’s not packaged for her.

Imperfect Birds (again.almost)

2010-07-21T18:10:00.001-07:00

I’ve said before that Anne Lamott tells the same story over and over again: read “Traveling Mercies” and you’ve read all of her fiction and nonfiction. I’m not being snarky. I’m a huge fan of “Traveling Mercies,” and I heard Lamott speak at Willamette, and she was great. Funny. Smart. Irreverent. Reverent. “Imperfect Birds” is her latest fiction that includes repeats of tennis, addiction, Rosie and family messiness. Maybe because I haven’t read her fiction in awhile I found “Birds” fresh. Elizabeth and James are navigating the parenting of a teenager who is skating under the radar: she’s a mess on the interior but she maintains an enviable exterior. She’s leading a group of children at the local church daycare for her mom’s friend Rae, and she’s getting high at night with her own friends. The message isn’t that getting high is messing her up but that she’s getting high because she is messed up. What’s cliché is forgivable because the grace between the lines is honest. Each person on either side of page needs that grace, not just Rosie.

Summer (at last)

2010-06-26T22:35:00.000-07:00

Our dunk was late this year, but then again, so was summer. Rain and spring temperatures stretched from spring break through the end of school—possibly the result of my prediction. I spent the solstice in Idaho, watching the sun dip down, leaving a dark blue sky late at night.

I got home last night, and the temperatures are climbing--as is the river. Carolyn and Bertha rendezvoused at my house about 9:45 and we took off, Chris warning us that the current is swift and we should be careful.

We were.

The dunk isn’t some foolhardy race against the river. It’s a marking of time. This time the moon is full, maybe 20 degrees up from its point of rising. Instead of the dark of years past, the moonlight creates a steam across the river and darkened silhouettes of the island and scrub trees along the river.

The wildlife is a treat, sometimes a terror. I imagine an aging sturgeon lumbering along, ready to bump up along me and push me off my footing. But this year a pelican swooped along the midline of the river, heading north. Bertha began her Dutch swim, ignoring the cold of the barely-summer water; Carolyn reminded us that we have a tradition to complete, jumping in and out with precision; and I just stood. The summer dunk is the one I’m most reticent to begin. Maybe because I want summer to last as long as possible. And as Carolyn began drying off, Bertha dipping under again, the pelican swooped by, this time so close I thought to touch it and then thought again.

I dove in, pushing the water back with my arms, barely out into the river and then back to shore. I wanted to stand for a long time, wait for the next thing that would appear.

Stealing Horses (a wander)

2010-06-26T21:41:00.001-07:00

I’ve said before that plot is secondary for me—I want to meet characters—and a meandering route in a book doesn’t bother me either. I read “Out Stealing Horses” by Per Petterson perched in a chair in a hospital room. My dad had a cardiac “procedure” last week, and my sister and I spent two days sitting, waiting most of the time for a doctor to show up.

This is a side note. The vocabulary of hospitals has changed. The doctor was late for the procedure because he had several interventions for patients who experienced events. No more heart attacks—except for Dick Cheney—nothing too frightening. And it was amazing. An itty-bitty auger pushed up through the femoral artery effectively rotorootered out a dam of plaque, bringing back a bit of pink to Dad’s face.

But we all sat waiting for a long time, punctuated with trips back and forth to the farm, taking Mom home at the end of a very long day, coming back to sit with Dad and Janet. And stories wove in and out throughout the day. Mom talked about her own mother and grandmother without chronology. I pieced together the time, making my own sense of the stories, building on different versions of the same stories I’d heard before.

And that’s what it was like reading “Horses.” The book opens with Trond in his sixties. He’s at the edge of civilization and runs into another man who brings Trond’s youth rushing back. And so the story curves back and forth, picking up more details with each swoop and ending with neither a gaping wound nor a tight knot.
I dog-eared several spots, some references to outside: Dickens, plots, movies. There’s a self-knowledge in the voice that the plot isn’t a tightly woven Dickens novel. One of my favorite sections (it’s long):

“. . .and my father had vanished round a bend, and all this as if I had been thoroughly rehearsed in the film we have seen so often, where the fateful farewell is the crucial event and the lives of the protagonists are changed forever and take off in directions that are unexpected and not always nice, and the whole cinema audience knows just how it will turn out. . .but the point is that I did not know how things would turn out that day. No-one had told me!”

The turning out fell so far from cliché that it took my breath away and made me want to read the book again.

(When the doctor came to say that Dad had done well and we could see him, he glanced at the book. That’s a really good book, he said, but I won’t say how it ends. He touched his heart. A good sign that the cardiac surgeon was a human being as well.)

Girl (tattoo, fire, nest)

2010-06-26T17:54:00.001-07:00

What can I say? I’m part of a trend. The books are addicting. Do Scandinavians really have that much sexual perversion going on? After I finished the first book, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” I had a decision to make: I do not read series. But before seeing the second book, I committed to it. Then I saw it. Really long, but I’m a person of my word, plus I was on the way to Idaho and needed a book. Much of the book was ridiculous. How is someone killed, buried alive and then digs her way out with—what? I can’t remember. How does a person live through a bullet to the brain. How does a person recover from an axe wound to the face. I mean, really. (Oh, spoiler alert. Back there.)

But when I finished the second book, my sister offered the third. We were, by that time, overstaying our original timetable on the farm (more on that later), and I still needed something to read. So I plunged into yet another long book. And I’ll give this to the series and its translator: I didn’t notice the irritating flat repetition so common in best sellers—think “DaVinci Code” or “Twilight.” The book ended with closure, slightly believable, and I closed the cover on the series.

Check, Check and Check : )

2010-06-06T17:07:00.001-07:00

Almost (summer)

2010-06-05T07:45:00.000-07:00

It’s Saturday morning. I have no papers to grade, no frantic organization to complete. I could have slept in until noon. But at 5:30 I woke up feeling that summer rush. I can do anything I want. (And I want to empty the laundry basket that is carrying 150 percent capacity right now.) Light’s been creeping in at 4:30 a.m. and the evening stretches long past (my) bedtime. I have flowers to put in pots, a lawn to mow, a bike to ride. And I can do all of that or none of that.

Last night was graduation. I spoke. Weird, huh? And afterwards we went with good friends to a wine bar in downtown Kennewick and laughed. And then we had ice cream and laughed.

I feel a lightness this morning that has nothing to do with scales and everything to do with time.

Disreputable History (YA)

2010-06-05T07:36:00.000-07:00

Kristin’s going to ruin my hatred of YA books. Now a former student (!), Kristin drops an occasional book my way. This book, “The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks,” was an NHS secret pal book, one she promised would have word play AND feminism, my two favorite topics. She was right. Frankie’s an underclassman at a boarding school and catches the eye of a big man on campus. She stumbles on his secret society and becomes a sort of puppet master of the society’s prank season, not starting with a why-can't-women-do-this attitude but ending with that. What a fun read for the end of the school year—a balance to end-of-the-year essay grading—and what fun to read smart YA fiction.

Veggie Tales (I do like you)

2010-05-06T19:27:00.001-07:00

I just got my first box of vegetables from the CSA—Community Supported Agriculture. (the CSA?) Beautiful. Just look. You can’t smell, though. Pungent cilantro. A faint radish smell. Sweet onions. Bits of dirt, not quite washed off. Heavenly. Tonight I had a beautiful salad from the box. There’s my first meal. And I didn’t even touch the asparagus or rhubarb.

The Help (I want to like you)

2010-05-06T19:21:00.001-07:00

I really do. “The Help” shows the lives of two African-American maids in Jackson, Mississippi, and one white woman, just out of college and suffering through a return home to 1960s Jackson—no husband, no job. After reading the first chapter, I looked at the book jacket, the author photograph. Read her snippet. I just felt uncomfortable with the chapters from the maid’s point of view. The author is so white, and the dialect is so—stereotyped. But I didn't grow up in Jackson. (I did visit there during my 11 years in the South. Odd place.) Kathryn Stockett is from Jackson, though, and—I won’t tell all—she includes a personal note at the end. The story is compelling and irritating—in the right way—and unbelievable as well—not the experiences of the maids, but the overarching plot. The book sits at #2 on the NYTimes bestseller list—the author knows people, and the book has gotten a lot of buzz.

I feel guilty for not liking it that much. It’s a quick read, it’s readable. But I think I would rather read a memoir, an honest way to deal with southern white guilt.

Come on Shore (and we will kill you)

2010-05-06T19:10:00.001-07:00

What begins as a memoir of an adventurous young woman traveling to New Zealand becomes a study in culture, in understanding and misunderstanding and missed understanding. Tired of using her college degree in an office job, Christina Thompson headed to Australia to study Pacific literature and ended up in New Zealand on vacation, in a bar in a little town, in a eyelock—apparently—with a Maori man whom she eventually married. Now in the interest of full disclosure, this was our book club selection for April, and we spent considerable time discussing the relationship of Ms. Thompson and Seven. And that discussion says something about how we view culture and class. I mean, here is a woman with a—now—doctorate, she edits the Harvard Review, and she seems happily married to a man who has little conventional—Puritan, pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps—ambition. I voted for sheer sexual magnetism. One minute they’re meeting in a bar and the next they’re staying together in a hut on the beach. Who does that?

Thompson intersperses her own memoir—and it’s not really a tell-all kind of memoir, we’re left wondering about a number of things—with the history of New Zealand. The title “Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All” refers to the greeting the New Zealanders gave to the early explorers. The explorers, of course, immediately began shooting, but the greeting was a ritual to see what the other people were like. Kind of like the children’s chant. “Here I come.” “Where you from?” “New Orleans.” “What’s your trade?” “Sweet lemonade.” “Tell me something if you’re not afraid.” (Did you play that game when you were a child?)

You can imagine that the greeting didn’t win friends and influence people. And each group that came planted a flag for his country—France, Britain. How arrogant. (“King Leopold’s Ghost” got me started on this dismay at planting flags where people already live and have a government.)

The look at culture and class, expectations and hurdles made for a great read and an even better discussion because a member of our book club is from New Zealand.

Zeitoun (I thought it was German)

2010-04-25T20:32:00.000-07:00

Before I wanted JF Foer to be my new best friend, Dave Eggers was at the top of my list. I fell in love with the introduction of “Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” years ago, and continue to admire his fine work. But beyond being a writer, he’s an all-around good guy. (Pause. I’m browsing the internet for bad press about him. Can’t really find any. He’s like the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie of publishing. Maybe. Erase that. He’s like—hmmm—who’s gives a lot of money away. I’m way far afield now.)

Okay, so what I’ve appreciated lately is the “Voice of Witness” series, books that give first person voice to areas of tragedy—immigration, strife in Africa, the horror of Katrina. One of the people included in the Katrina book was Abdulrahman Zeitoun and his wife Kathy, and their story resonated with Eggers.

And so now the book.

The cover shows a man in a canoe—by the way, the book cover is classic Eggers, like the books printed in Iceland. Indeed, the first part of the book shows Zeitoun and his family before Katrina hits and relates the struggle to cope with the aftermath. Kathy leaves, but Zeitoun wants to ride out the storm, believing that like past hurricanes, this one won’t be so bad. It is—bad—at first in the physical sense. Water invades the neighborhood, and Zeitoun sets out to aid those around him, sacrificing his own safety and comfort for others. He’s an all-around good guy. That’s why what follows hits hard: he’s arrested and suspected of being a terrorist. I’ve already spoiled enough—though the information is on the back cover—but I won’t say more.

What I appreciated was Eggers’ willingness to contextualize the horror. He doesn’t ever say all law enforcement officials are racists. He doesn’t say the U.S. is corrupt. But he does show how, post-9/11, we can completely misinterpret those around us.

And as a side: I found Kathy’s story compelling, how she converted to Islam before meeting Zeitoun—what drew her and why she stayed.

(And the book was on my want-to-read-in-2010 list. Score.)

Shadow Tag (she’s it)

2010-04-14T19:53:00.001-07:00

I’m looking at the title for the first time—I didn’t remember it when I finished the book. But now I want to reread the book with that title in mind. When I was a kid we played shadow tag, running through the sunshine trying to leap on one another’s shadows, aiming for the head. Louise Erdrich plays shadow tag with this novel, sending an omniscient narrator from one character to another, saying, “Ha, you’re it.” I don’t want to spoil the novel because I think you ought to read it. But I’ll give you this much: the novel begins with a marriage of two sometime Indians, one a visual artist and one a historian. Their marriage is troubled, that’s clear, but no more messy than what most of us have experienced. But then as the narrator turns his eye, just a small detail comes out from another character that casts a shadow over the previous 40 pages. (The word “shadow” appears over and over, not in a cheesy way, but with meaning.) And then it happens again. (And I don’t want to say more.) It’s beautiful.

And the first line: “I have two diaries now.”

15 minutes (infamous)

2010-04-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

Well, ELIC finally made the news. I haven’t looked at the actual paper today—my picture was in the teaser for the cover story in yesterday’s paper. But I looked online. This week an email was also being sent around to area PTAs, business leaders and governmental types begging them to care about the children of R.. You don’t have to live in R., you don’t have to be a parent, if you’re an American citizen come and support protection of children. I’m picturing a painting: books languidly melting over sagebrush.

p.s. Oh, an editorial as well. Will letters to the editor follow?

Stitches (a picture)

2010-04-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

I’m a word person, let me be clear. But “Stitches,” by David Small, is one of the most poignant memoirs I’ve read. Who knows if David was destined for the visual even if he hadn’t had desperately unhappy parents and cancer that robbed him of his voice when he was still young. If his grandmother hadn’t been crazy, if his mother had not been hiding her whole life. How can we separate the genetics from the circumstances, like pulling apart the strands of spaghetti squash layered with melting mozzarella? But Small must have found some joy in illustrating children’s books and then found the voice to tell his own story with pictures. It’s haunting. And looking at his half-smiling face on the back flap, and reading his bold “I didn’t” as a response to a path he could have followed provides hope. Read it. View it.

Eating Animals (bring on the tofam)

2010-03-31T08:53:00.000-07:00

I’ve read several eating books now—“Omnivore’s Dilemma,” “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” for example. I’ve been disgusted by animal factory farms and slaughterhouses. But I still eat meat—not lots of beef—but those chicken breasts from Costco are a staple. Now I can’t get the picture out of my mind: Dolly Parton chickens falling over in their pens—only they can’t fall over because they’re jammed in so tightly against one another.

That’s the thing about Foer, he’s got pathos down to a science. With graphics tricks, ala ELIC, he makes that image inescapable. Double page chapter divisions illustrate the point: for example, an 8 ½ x 11 rectangle—a 8 point border, I’d guess—that shows how much space a chicken has to live in. Thus my returning mental image of busty chickens in high heels.

And Foer’s also got the drive of narrative. His grandmother’s cooking. His desire to feed his own son good food. The life of a farmer giving pigs delight before death. That repeated assertion that he’s not saying eating meat is wrong. (But you know—I know—that eating meat the way 99 percent of it is produced inches awfully close to wrong. And what a weird world we live in where eating is the new hot sin. Or is that the oldest sin? I have to review the Old Testament.)

And the bookends to “Eating”: his grandmother’s wisdom. “If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.”

So I didn’t eat meat yesterday. I signed up for a CSA—Community Supported Agriculture—box delivery for the growing season. I can buy eggs from an organic farm, when I eat meat it can be free-range, grass fed (in the real sense, not the happy picture on the egg carton sense.) But that’s my luxury as a rural upper-middle-class eater.

But for the first time while reading this book, I understood that the country can’t eat this way forever.

p.s. If you’re wondering about the on-going drama with ELIC, the latest is a proposition that our syllabi include a three-part rating (0-3) for each book in the areas of sex, profanity and violence. I’ve entered a Kafka-esque existence, waking up as a wicked witch of the west. As if my aim is to sneak in as much perverse material as I can. But this is spring break, so that’s all I’m going to say about that.

in Just- (spring)

2010-03-21T20:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it’s an invigorating plunge, sometimes it’s a liturgy maintained out of discipline. It’s spring, and we mark the time with water.

The water was low, too low to jump off our regular dock, the fishing dock. Spots of rock dotted the river over to the island, almost like a pathway. Too low to jump. So we went to the Snyder boat launch and peered over the edge of the dock. Oil swirled into the water, just barely deep enough for jumping. Off the end of the dock sat the slimy river plants, so we chose the side: a pocket of deep close enough to the ramp to climb out. Spring always feels the coldest: the weather—a beautiful 60 degrees—tempts us into believing that the water will be warm, but it’s bitter cold. Carolyn jumps—the first time she’s jumped first. We’re sandwiching the jump into her busy day, and she’s fighting the nasty cold/flu that’s going around school. Bertha jumps next. I pause, thinking all of this is absurd—that’s part of the liturgy, too. Then I jump, feel my leg cramp and then try to find footing on the slimy ramp. I take pictures on my phone this time.

We head to Carolyn’s for a mix of winter and spring: hot chocolate with kahlua and then strawberries and croissants. But it’s the conversation that renews us. We are three teachers trying to make it to spring break.

Chris and I topped off the day with a bike ride into the farm fields, up and over Dent Road, down Clark Road and then back—30 miles on a day when I felt like I could ride forever.

It’s spring.

The Financial Lives of the Poets (meltdown)

2010-03-14T13:56:00.000-07:00

Samuel Johnson probably rolled over in his grave, filed a heavenly copyright infringement against Jess Walter, when he saw this book show up on Amazon. So vulgar.

And so compelling. This is the third book I checked out with my new library card, having lost the one with Nancy-in-brown-hair sometime after I freaked out at receiving notices from the city’s attorney about my late fees not being paid. The first two books I browsed and returned. But I stayed up late last night—on that night when we lose an hour—to finish this book. (One of the other books was “The Zero,” also by Jess Walter. It didn’t hook me. Jess Walter also wrote “Citizen Vince,” which I loved.)

The premise of “Financial” is part ridiculous and part ripped-from-the-headlines. Matt, a laid-off journalist (look at all these hyphenations today—that’d be a great title for a poem—“hyphenations”), is about to lose his house and his wife when he happens upon some nice BC weed. If you’ve seen “Weed” (“Weeds”?) on TV, you can guess where the plot goes. It’s both hilarious and sad. Walter knows his Matthew, knows the ache of financial instability, the fear of losing a spouse. It reads true. (That’s why we need fiction.) “But it’s not easy, realizing how we fucked it all up. And that turns out to be the hardest thing to live with, not the regret or the fear, but the realization that the edge is so close to where we live.”

The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (you guessed it)

2010-03-03T17:37:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting here looking at the book, trying to remember if the hotel was literally on the corner of Bitter and Sweet. I’m thinking it wasn’t.

But it was. Skipping between 1986, just after Henry Lee’s wife dies, and WWII America when the Japanese were placed in internment camps, “Hotel” follows the story of a young Chinese boy’s first love. Growing up in Seattle, Henry faces discrimination, first for crossing the lines of a white elementary school and then for looking Japanese—he’s Asian after all. He’s a scholarship student and works in the lunchroom, meeting Keiko, a Japanese girl.

[Fireworks.]

The adult Henry has never really shared his story with his son, who’s just become engaged to a lovely Caucasian girl, and slowly the past emerges, merges, into the present.

The book’s fun because the writer has done her/his (Jamie?) homework (I just googled. His.) He knows Seattle, Seattle’s history. He knows jazz. He knows the internment camps of eastern Oregon/western Idaho. (A side note: growing up in Idaho, I remember the Japanese farmers of the border, their children who wrestled on high school teams. It wasn’t until high school, I think, that I understood how they ended up in the desert.)

The book has gotten rave reviews—for those details, I think. It’s a bit too neat and tidy for me. But I think I have classrooms of students who would like it. I just read their comments about the endings of the books they just read for lit circles (“Poisonwood Bible,” “Extremely Loud,” “What is the What”), and the repeated comment was, “I was mad that there wasn’t a happy ending.” It doesn’t assuage them when I tell them life’s not all happy endings, no tidy closure. But this ending? It wrote itself before I got there. (But a nice book.)

Let the Great World Spin (and crash)

2010-02-28T18:01:00.000-08:00

I want to love this book.

It’s got that gold “National Book Award Winner” sticker on the cover. And the illustration? A New York stretched out and up to the corner with the man on the wire. (Have you seen that documentary?)

And that’s where the book starts: “Those who saw him hushed.” It begins with poetry. The book ends with poetry: “The clock. The fan. The breeze./The world spinning.” Tip the book on its side and poetry slides out.

I want to love this book.

But the idea of the book gets in the way. So many narrators are shouting for attention: the prostitute, the Irish brother, the god narrator of Claire’s life, the barely-clean artist, the god of taggers. You get the idea. (And there’s more.) Creating those voices takes narrative skill. Balancing them all on the wire above the World Trade Center takes even more.

But I’ve seen the movie “Crash.” Now “Crash” doesn’t have the poetry, not the intimacy of the voices. But the movie has jaded me when it comes to plots that—well—crash. I didn’t see the purpose of a couple of the sequences, but at least they weren’t pulled into the vortex at the end.

But I like the book. I like the poetry.

Addiction (dc)

2010-02-24T16:46:00.000-08:00

On Fat Tuesday, because I was feeling fat, I began to think about Lent, about living with perspective. I’d been thinking about Diet Coke, too, because signs were everywhere: someone again told me that Diet Coke was bad for me, the Pilates teacher said that her sister-in-law lost 60 pounds after she gave up Diet Coke, and I was waking up every night at 2 a.m. (2:04 to be exact.) Oh, I thought, I’ll give up Diet Coke. On Wednesday, I filled up a water bottle and at 6:30 a.m. in my classroom, I began to sip away. But Diet Coke is all about habit. By lunch I was itching my face, but drank more water. After my last class, logic kicked in. I mean, I’m a reformed fundamentalist and grew up hearing that Lent is a tool of the papists, meant to keep us under bondage (no irony there). And that sounded logical at 1:44. And besides, isn’t Lent about people, about taking on habits rather than denial? By 3 p.m., I had convinced myself and popped open a Diet Coke. So good.

But the next day, filled with guilt, I thought I’d try a modified approach. No Diet Coke until lunch. So at noon, I carried my lone Diet Coke down to the lunchroom and indulged. You’re probably thinking that I drank two diets that day, but I didn’t. Just the one. And I’ve hit a full week of a single diet each day.

But temptation is everywhere: yesterday when I went into Safeway, those cool new two-liter Diet Cokes were on sale for 99 cents each. But it’s a slippery slope. If I buy one of those seductive bottles, it won’t be long before I’m drinking the whole thing at one sitting. I bought a bottle of Propel instead. (Have you ever read those labels?)

(You think this is tongue-in-cheek, don’t you? It’s not.)

And what kept me going that day? When I went to my car, there was a guy next to me with a large cart—I couldn’t see what was in it—and he was shuffling the items from his cart into his trunk. Curious, I peeked over. He was filling his trunk with two-liter bottles of Diet Coke. I kid you not, the trunk of his sedan was almost full. I know this is shallow. But somehow I think imbibing fewer chemicals is a step in the right direction. (But I acknowledge it has nothing to do with Lent.)

(While I’ve been writing this, I’ve been listening to an on-line conference call with Sen. Patty Murray. Should I ask her about health care?)

Mudbound (taut)

2010-02-15T19:39:00.000-08:00

It’s a beginning that’s worth a prize. “Henry and I dug the hole seven feet deep. Any shallower and the corpse was liable to come rising up during the next big flood: Howdy boys! Remember me?”

With a story told by a collection of characters—none of them perfect, none of them entirely evil—Hillary Jordan holds life up until I’m wincing, cringing at the details. Set in the (barely) post-WWII South, the book could have become a book about prejudice, but instead the voices of the characters intertwine their first person stories to form a narrative that’s about—them. When I read other books with multiple narrators, I sometimes hate to have one voice end, but here Jordan makes the story seamless and riveting: I’m eager to hear the next voice, eager to return to a familiar voice. I know there’s a body at the beginning, and early on I’m rooting for an identity, but the outcome, though not surprising, isn’t what I expected. It’s a hard book to read and a hard book to put down. In reading the interview with the author at the end--hearing about her seven-year writing journey--it’s clear the multiple readings/revisions bore fruit. The connections throughout push toward that ending/beginning.

I’m sorry I read it in a weekend.

Travels in a Thin Country (flat)

2010-02-14T15:53:00.000-08:00

I’m not saying that Sara Wheeler isn’t a good writer, just to get that out front. She’s got some beautiful descriptions of her travels in Chile. “We set off south, alongside the grayish-brown Atacama salt flats, frayed white at their curling edges, a vista of emptiness extending to every horizon.” See? And I’m not saying I didn’t learn anything about Chile. In fact, my knowledge of the “thin country” grew by about 1000 percent, since I knew next to nothing. My favorite tidbit was the story about the man who Daniel Defoe co-opted to be Robinson Crusoe. There was a real guy left behind on a small island off Chile. He wasn’t exactly shipwrecked: he didn’t want to get back on a ship that he thought would sink. Quickly changing his mind, though, as his ride took off, he yelled at them to come back, but, alas, he was stuck. But this travelogue was just that, a list of travels. I confess to skimming at the end, so maybe I missed some realization, but I wanted the author to be a changed person through her experiences. After all, it’s a travel memoir. But the episodes are tied together with “the days slipped away,” “the next day,” “I stayed for 10 days,” “By seven the next morning” and “I caught the last bus.” (I just randomly opened pages to find those transitions. They’re everywhere.) Perhaps I’m a hypocrite for expecting an arc when I don’t need one in fiction, but really, Sara, what were you thinking?

On the night stand (finally): “Mudbound.” I bought it last night at Barnes and Noble after seeing “Crazy Heart.” (Jeff Bridges. Maggie Gyllenhall. Robert Duvall. What could go wrong?) I will not go back to Barnes and Noble. No one I talked to even remotely seemed like she had a read a book in the last year. But “Mud” caught my eye—I knew I had read about it—and it’s a winner. I almost stayed up all night reading.

Something Rotten (Hamlet lite)

2010-02-14T15:39:00.000-08:00

Just googled and found out there really is a Denmark, Tennessee. The book “Something Rotten” just went up a notch for believability. After reading “Edgar Sawtelle” last year, I decided to swear off Shakespeare remakes, but one of my (trusted) students handed me this book to read. A “Horatio Wilkes” mystery, it’s a John Green-esque series: smart and funky teenagers with a little angst thrown in. Hamilton’s father, a paper factory tycoon, is dead, and he suspects foul play after his mother quickly remarries her husband’s brother, Claude. You get the drift. Olivia is Hamilton’s ex-girlfriend. Elsinore is the name of the paper company. It’s a fun romp through Hamlet, though, and thankfully, the author saw no need to follow the script exactly.

All’s well that ends well.

p.s. There was no Valentine's Day bike ride. It's another gray, rainy day in Richland.

Bike (ride)

2010-02-07T20:19:00.000-08:00

On two successive Sundays now, Chris and I have ridden bikes—partaking in the weird, warm, wet February that is Richland. The sun poked out both times. The first ride last week was out into the area, brutal for a first ride and only 12 miles. Today we over the bridge to Pasco, my favorite ride into the farmlands. I’m afraid the rides are going to be a chronicle of farmlands turned to housing plots, but for now there’s still dirt, freshly turned.

For today, we chronicled our shadows, going from fuzzy to vivid and back to fuzzy. And a picture, if you look close, that shows a peace sign—for the second ride of the year: 19 miles.

And I’m reading, honest. “Beowulf” for class, a Chile travelogue and a “Hamlet” takeoff for teens—“Something Rotten.” A recap shortly.

Birthday (happy.)

2010-01-25T18:51:00.000-08:00

Is it acceptable to wish myself a happy birthday? Yes.

Though I have to say that the morning began on an inauspicious note: the first story I heard on NPR on my way to work was about a Hurricane Katrina survivor who had been working on rebuilding his house. He had a heart attack last week and died. He was 53.

Yikes. That’s a minus.

I like to think about the number that’s my year. My cousin Diane moves ahead a year—she’s almost 55 now, though she turned 54 in December. Fifty-three was drawing a blank. Then at lunch with friends (it was Semester Day—a get-your-grades-done day), Carolyn (a math teacher) said something about 53 being a good number, and I realized it’s a prime number. That’s a plus.

A walk after school was a plus, and I have a casserole dish full of homemade macaroni and cheese (fontina, cheddar and romano) baking in the oven. Chris is bringing home a sour cream lemon pie. (My mother used to make me a sponge cake every birthday. We got to pick our dessert: it was the one day when we were royalty in our 10-person family.) Plus. Plus. Plus. (Yes, I'm cooking tonight. We went out Friday and Saturday nights, and it's a gray January day, and I wanted macaroni and cheese.)

Maybe it’s the lowering of expectations (I called Nat to let him wish me a happy birthday), but it’s been a great day.

And I’m counting down to that 53-mile bike ride.

Lit (flame)

2010-01-22T16:50:00.000-08:00

Our small group has been reading “The Reason for God” by Timothy Keller, the man with the answer for all those (us) skeptics. So I’m enjoying the book okay, but I don’t really have the luxury of being a skeptic in the conventional sense. My problem isn’t finding my way into some truth from a place of unbelief, but my problem is finding my way into truth from a place of too much belief. That probably makes no sense, but just trust me on this. (And, trust me, this leads to “Lit.”)

Keller approaches every question with such a reasoned response. An example from the chapter “Christian is a Straightjacket.” “This oversimplifies, however. Freedom cannot be defined in strictly negative terms, as the absence of confinement and constraint. In fact, in many cases, confinement and constraint is actually a means of liberation.” And he goes on to elaborate on his argument. It’s like that all the way through. So logical.

I’ll concede—since we’re being logical—that some people respond to all this logic. But for me, “Lit” is a greater picture of faith—a leap of faith—than any of the patient evangelical explanations.

Before you scratch “Lit” off your list, the book isn’t all about faith: it’s about the beginnings of a literary career—unexpected and teetering beginnings—that suffer from a dousing of alcohol. And Mary Karr’s life is colorful, dramatic. It’s good reading.

But her move toward faith caps the book. She doesn’t wander some Pentecostal aisle or nod to the four spiritual laws. Instead she grasps onto “meetings,” until she can’t resist the higher power any longer. And she begins the discipline of faith. She prays, even when the motion seems empty. Because of her son, she ends up in a Catholic church, fighting with her logic all the way. Meeting with the priest, she says, “Maybe I don’t belong here.” And he says, “But you are here.”

It makes me cry.

We’re lucky (blessed) when we all end up there, either from the addiction of some substance—or the addiction of knowing too much.

Morning (light)

2010-01-18T11:27:00.000-08:00

Is it possible to thank Martin Luther King, Jr., for being born around a day on which the sun decided to shine on Richland? Superficial? Yes. Thankful. Also, yes.

After days of gray, I opened the door for a walk this morning-of-no-school, and small birds around the door flew off to the trees. Small birds. I can’t decide if I’m at the point of buying a bird book and wearing binoculars, but I want to know what those birds are. What have they been doing on the gray days? Will they die because of this trick-of-winter-almost-spring? (These are things I want to know.)

Bertha and I squinted along the river, stopping by one tree stump to see if someone had spray painted the sprouts a vivid yellow. But the sprouts were real and so was the kelly green—imagine that crayon—on the branches of a tree behind.

The rain of the last few days clung on the bottom of branches, and I thought about having a camera and wondered if a picture could capture those branches, that water. I suppose. But it couldn’t capture the contrast to yesterday and the day before and the day before and the sheer joy of watching our shadows glide along the grass.

And I finished “Lit” by Mary Karr. But that will be next.

Paris Trout (about neither)

2010-01-07T18:56:00.000-08:00

First, let me clarify that “Paris Trout” is an eponymous novel (just had to use “eponymous”-- twice) about a creepy Paris Trout, who owns a general store in Ether County, Georgia, post-Korean War. (I’m assuming there was a more specific date in the book, but those details escape me.)

I read the book in lieu of “Spooner,” a book by Pete Dexter on lots of top ten lists. Alas, it’s in hardback, so I nabbed a paperback of Dexter’s National Book Award Winner. (Perhaps an exclamation point should follow that notoriety.) The back says, “A PSYCHOLOGICAL SPELLBINDER THAT WILL TAKE YOUR BREATH AWAY AND PROBABLY INTERFERE WITH YOUR SLEEP.” – The Washington Post Book World. That alone made me NOT want to read the book—too cliché. But it was and it did. I’m exhausted.

Thing is it could have been really bad: throw some pages of “To Kill a Mockingbird” in with “Time to Kill” in with “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” in with—you get the picture. I mean, there was a rabid wolf/dog—only it bit a little black girl instead of being shot by Atticus, the keenest shot in Maycomb County. And there’s a jury. And a crime.

But it worked. Compelling Southern gothic, whose characters wouldn’t leave me alone. And despite every sign pointing to the end, I did not expect the end and felt the brunt when I got there. (I hope I’m not spoiling anything for anyone. I didn’t say what the end was.)

And the first line? “In the spring of that year an epidemic of rabies broke out in Ether County, Georgia.”

BTW: If you’re curious about the Twitter thing, I’ve been hearing how Twitter, Facebook, YouTube affect writing. I’ve resisted Facebook. Well, not quite. I lurk on Chris’s Facebook just to see what people are saying. Cowardly. Anyway, I decided as my writing for the year, I’d write the first line of a short story every day. Just for fun. Just to see what 140 characters feels like. (Lots less than this post, for example.) My friend Maureen is tweeting last lines at her Twitter—she’s a real writer, with a fancy New York publisher. I’ve called myself the master of the first line, a cop out. Let’s see if I am, though. (And if you want to, fill in between those two lines. You'll have a short story!)

At last: my box from Barnes and Noble came. Run your hands across Zadie Smith’s new book.

A new year (a new list)

2010-01-01T14:26:00.000-08:00

Just have to say: when I was a kid, 2010 was a date in science fiction. It feels a little freaky to see that date: 010110.

I opened barnesandnoble.com this morning to fill a basket. I haven’t hit the “buy now” button because most of the books are in hardback, but here’s the beginning of what I want to read. Many are on “best books” lists that I’ve been perusing.

1. Zadie Smith’s “Changing my Mind” – I really want to complete one of her books.
2. Mary Karr’s “Lit” – From book reviews to personal comments, everyone has loved it.
3. Tracy Kidder’s “Strength in What Remains” – Kidder’s powerful nonfiction always inspires me.
4. Jess Walter’s “The Financial Lives of Poets” – Loved “Citizen Vince” and I read the first 20 pages at Maureen’s last night and was hooked.
5. Dave Egger’s “Zeitoun” – I’m a shameless sycophant. Love every one of his books.
6. Sara Wheeler’s “Travels in a Thin Country” – Our book club pick for January, so it comes first.
7. Lydia Davis's "Collected Stories" - I just love short stories.

What’s on your list?

I have an iPhone now! (Notice how sparingly I use exclamation points. When I use them, I’m really excited!!!) Best feature: emailing pictures from the phone.

A leap of faith (cold feet)

2009-12-18T16:06:00.001-08:00

It threatened to be a freak sideshow. Bertha sent out her usual email, enticing people likely to take the bait. She had a couple of nibbles, but no solid takers. Then at lunch today, interest swelled. Not from people willing to plunge, mind you, but from women who wanted to watch.

There is no vicarious plunge.

One staff member is new, very nice, and she lives not far from me. She thought about walking down to the river with her 7 and 10- year-old children. “See? When Mommy’s old, she’ll still be able to do things.”

But at 3 p.m., it was just us—along with Bertha’ two daughters—14 and 23—and her 16-year-old exchange student. I hypothesized on the walk from the car to the river that because we women come face-to-face with death in childbirth, jumping into the river recreates just a moment of that feeling. The girls looked wide-eyed, just the reaction I was going for: none of them had jumped.

It was tropical today, though, for this, our sixth winter leap. Forty degrees. No wind. Melting snow. The girls giggled uncontrollably, nervous about heart arrhythmia and hypothermia—they’re teeny girls. Bertha, Carolyn and I were businesslike: get in and get out. Scream.

And on the count of three we did—get in and get out. For the first time, I didn’t feel like I would have a heart attack. For the first time, my feet didn’t cramp. We got out and then the girls flew in—first Anne-Sofie and Anneke, who screamed like they were on a roller coaster. Then Lena stood on the dock-- moving ahead, turning back, turning again. Bertha said she didn’t have to jump. But she did really. Her older sister had jumped and turning back is like climbing back down the high dive—too scared to jump. Shamed. So she jumped and screamed. And the laughter of the three girls drew a couple of walkers over.

We didn’t have a camera this year, nothing to chronicle the event. Just the echoing laughter that followed us back to the car, the reminder that we’re alive.

I stood in the shower for ten minutes, and now I’m off to Bertha’s for hot chocolate and Bailey’s. My feet are still cold.

In the Bleak Midwinter (whodunit)

2009-12-16T07:30:00.001-08:00

(I almost wrote this 4:19 a.m. this morning. Awake. Wide. Read the news to see if the school district had called the weather yet. Read the news. Delay. Go back to bed. Now it’s a cancellation. Ice everywhere.)

Genre: small town mystery
Citizen-Detective: Clare Fergusson – female Episcopal priest, newly dispatched to Miller’s Kill
Crime: a baby abandoned on the church’s doorstep is linked to the body of a teenage girl

What do you expect moving to a place called Miller’s Kill?

This book club mystery was chosen mostly because of the awesome title—can’t get the song out of my head now. And though I’m not a huge fan of mystery, “Bleak” offered sufficient entertainment to get me through a week of—yes, bleak midwinter. A little smoldering romance between the priest and the police detective. A pleasant enough collection of potential murderers.

Several times in the book, though, I was just dumbstruck by how dumb dear Clare was. She’s from Virginia and takes her little sports car out on an abandoned mountain road to meet with the sister of the deceased. She got what she deserved. She certainly wasn’t listening to the Holy Spirit. (Think hypothermia.)

If you like mysteries—and even if you don’t—try it.

You’re probably all waiting for the winter plunge news. Friday after school. The weather is turning warm—a balmy 36 or so. Can’t wait.

The Answer (true love)

2009-12-12T16:29:00.001-08:00

I finished reading the first three short stories from creative writing. What to say? I was afraid each story would end with a bloodbath based on conversations we had in class. But these three had the exact same plot. Misunderstood teen. Alienation. Disgust at the phoniness of everyone else. Then BAM! Meet a girl who is THE ANSWER TO THE SADNESS. I mean, the plots were going straight downhill: I expected suicide, really. Or mass murder. Then deux ex machina. (I just love the phrase and wanted to use it today.) Some girl shows up who has long brown hair, and the main character—who’s clearly a psychopath—is cured of what ails him.

I did read some in process and know I have death ahead of me, though. We read “The Cask of Amontillado” together as an introduction to short fiction. After all, Poe is the father of the short story. One writer, a runner himself, wrote about a runner—the second best on the school’s cross country team—who kills the top runner at the end of their senior season. Very creepy and very well handled. He read it aloud in class, and everyone just cringed. It was good.

But the three right in a row about saved by love? What does it mean?

A faded photo (winter sky)

2009-12-06T09:32:00.000-08:00

When we lived in Corvallis, we checked out a record from the library that became a favorite. I can’t remember the artist, but I do remember one of the songs: “This is a windy day, today.”

I remember singing, perhaps in library story time, “Tumble over, tumble over, leaves are falling round and round. . .”

I loved that song.

I don’t love the Richland wind: this morning, the sunrise was a smeared orange, sunlight caught in particulate. The wind had started blowing during the night, and Chris is on his journey to Las Vegas to meet nuclear types, so I slept and didn’t sleep.

The palette is now gray, gray/green—the only warm colors the tan of dried leaves rolling by and the neighbor’s dog running down the street on his morning constitution.

The gray squirrels are hiding.

I’m off to coffee, having skipped church this morning, off to school, off for a walk I hope when the morning wind moves east and a late afternoon chill settles down.

And through the magic of the internets, the song lyrics (song #5, "Windy Day"). I recommend the dancing exercises at the end.

Half of a Yellow Sun (Africa, some more)

2009-12-02T18:56:00.000-08:00

Does Africa produce any happy stories? Beautiful, yes. Haunting, yes. But so sad. (That’s a whole thread to pursue. Have you read the criticism of these Africa-is- such-a-sad-place books. I don’t think that’s an official genre, by the way.)

So I was in the community bookstore in Park Slope—name dropping because I bet JSFoer frequents the place—trying to get other customers to buy short story books. What’s with that? They don’t know what they’re missing. Anyway, a woman told me this book was really good. (“National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist.” That’s a long award title. “Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize.” What? Sounds like it’s for radio.)

And it was. Beautiful. And so sad. Twin sisters are first caught in the drama of family politics—beauty and the beast, sort of—and then they’re tangled in the emergence and crushing of Biafra. I remember the news in my childhood/teen years—a tumultuous three years of democracy. The specifics are repeated: one tribe is targeted, revolutionaries spark and fizzle and wealth travels abroad. And innocents die. Beautiful description and a shifting third person narrator keep the characters real: a fitting balance of plot and character.

p.s. I need yet another profile pic. It’s not summer. It’s the dark of winter—three weeks until the leap—and I’m stocking up on homemade macaroni and cheese—in my stomach.

Handmaid’s Tale (unfunny)

2009-12-02T18:40:00.000-08:00

Or is it? I’ve read the book four times now—two in years past and two times in the last month. Vacillating between feeling sorry for June/Offred and wanting to strangle her. Deciding that I felt a little sorry for the Commander—it probably wasn’t his idea to subjugate all women—and then wanting to kill him in his sleep. Better yet, stuff his mouth with Scrabble tiles and let him choke.

The best part is the reaction of the students. Last week, one student whispered conspiratorially (he knew he was ahead in the reading), “Page 93. That’s the chapter that those conservatives should use to teach abstinence.” And then today when we were talking about language and names, one student caught on. “Oh, Offred. Of-Fred. Of-Warren. Oh, gross.” And then the best: “What’s wrong with being an econowife: they get to do everything.”

A bonus question—made me glad that students feel free to ask anything: “What’s crotch rot?”

Loving Frank (finding self)

2009-11-18T19:58:00.000-08:00

The line has so blurred between nonfiction and fiction, that reading “Loving Frank” leaves me wondering: does it matter that Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick lived in Chicago, escaped to Europe and then created a life in remote Wisconsin? (The DNA’s probably still behind some nooks, hair caught in a book. I’m creeped out now.) If it does matter, then why doesn’t Nancy Horan write a biography? As far as I can tell, the thread of the novel matches the line of history. And don’t biographers now piece together dialogue, create composite characters. I’m no purist, but I’m a little leery of the novelization of history. I remember reading the introduction to “In the Time of the Butterflies” by Isabel Allende, an introduction that affirms both the reality of the Mirabal sisters and the unreliability of the novel in precise matters of their lives and deaths.

I like Frank Lloyd Wright. (And I both like him and feel sorry for him and detest him after reading the book.) More specifically, I like his sense of style. The long, low, horizontal lines of his houses in Oak Park are beautiful. Chris and I took the El out of Chicago a three years ago and walked through his neighborhood, touring his family house. I could picture the streets as I read the book.

So what’s the price of genius? I know from my biography fixation a couple of decades ago that geniuses don’t make good bedfellows. They’re erratic and selfish. And that’s Wright, so wrapped up in the houses, in the need to make order, that he could not attend to those six babies he made with his long-suffering wife.

And at its core, “Loving” is a book about a wife’s duty—to her husband, to her children, to herself. Mamah choose a solitary road—leaving her husband and children for Frank. And not really for Frank: for love, for self-actualization to put it in psychological terms. But in the early 1900s, there was little tolerance or place for a woman like Mamah. Frank suffers, too, from public shame, but because of his association with Mamah rather than simply leaving his wife to fend for herself and the children.

Implicit in the title, I think, is the question “at what cost?” And across a century, that question remains vital, despite an easier access to that forbidden love.

Reading NYC (so dense)

2009-11-11T16:33:00.001-08:00

Andrew says that you can’t look at everything, there’s too much. But I couldn’t muster the blind eye. There was the glorious sunshine, an unexpected surprise. (Once again a fail on the packing choices.) There was the man on the subway who, in the heat, sat with pools of sweat on the top of his bald head. The aliveness of Park Slope in the evening: so many choices for dinner and for dessert. The crisp leaves pooled along the fences. The dogs. (How does one keep a dog in the city? This country girl cannot understand having a dog in Richland, let alone in Brooklyn.) The preponderance of strollers with white children pushed by black women. (I had several troubling thoughts of what sense the children would be making of the world of black and white at their young ages.)

And then we could put on the tourist eyes: the MoMA, which was closed when we were in NYC six years ago. I can’t get over how big some of the paintings are. The water lilies triptych that spanned an entire wall. The Jasper Johns map of the United States, the one I have posted in my entry. The Kandinsky exhibit at the Guggenheim. (I love the Guggenheim: no stairs to climb, just sloping up and then sloping back down.) Hair: surprisingly timely and energetic. The Transit Museum in Brooklyn. What a find. Empty. Fun for my engineer.

I did not worry about school, just noticed the Helvetica and splashes of Courier New all over Manhattan. And loving the Kandinsky exhibit audio: “tensions working toward resolution.”

This country girl cannot believe the places she goes.

Flu (almost over)

2009-10-19T11:28:00.000-07:00

I told my students to stay home until they were well, but the juggernaut of their classes threatened to bury them. They returned: woozy, sneezing, still-fevered. (About 20 percent of my students were gone last week.)

And now I'm home.

I'm definitely on the upswing, can finally read, am here sitting at the computer. But I hate being sick. The leaves have turned another shade of autumn in the time I've been indoors, and I'd love to start raking the lawn, trimming the shrubs. I'd be foolish to head outside, though. I've missed a Friday and a Monday of school and swallowed a whole weekend in crime shows (Chris hates them) and a brief House marathon.

But at least I've caught up here. I'm looking at a beautiful new book, "The Wild Things," by Dave Eggers. I picked it up at a bookstore in Ashland, which I will no longer call an independent bookstore. They did not know who Dave Eggers was and were ticked off that the book didn't have any bar code/isbn number tattooed on the cover. Beautiful weekend in Ashland, by the way. Gruesome version of "Macbeth"--all the violence right there on stage. Hilarious version of "Servant of Two Masters.")

The squirrels are tramping across the house collecting food. I do mean tramping. They're fattening up for winter--do they hibernate?--and sound like they're wearing workboots.

And I'm about to return to the couch.

Cry the Beloved Country (just cry)

2009-10-19T11:09:00.000-07:00

I first read this book 34 years ago as a senior in high school—thank you, Kathy Corn. Now I’m teaching it in AP Lit. My memory of the reading was that the book was beautiful and way out of my understanding of the world.

I thought maybe the book would show the wear of time, but it remains a terribly beautiful book, a book about what happens when the land can no longer sustain its people, a book about what happens when one race views another race as a commodity.

The grace of the father, Stephen Kumalo, cries out from the book, how he tries to bandage his family back together after it has been torn apart by the lure of the city. How he cannot mend all that is broken.

The Hour I First Believed (unbelievable)

2009-10-19T11:07:00.000-07:00

Costco strikes again: $9.49 for 723 pages of Wally Lamb’s latest. Here’s the deal: it’s like three books. Book 1: Caelum’s aunt dies in Connecticut, and through a series of sad circumstances, Caelum and his wife return to his roots and Caelum makes peace with his past. Book 2: Columbine happens. Caelum’s wife is in the library, and through a series of sad circumstances (duh), she can’t quite connect with life again, ends up snatching/abusing medicines, kills a kid while driving woozy and ends up in the prison Caelum’s grandmother (?) started. Book 3: Lizzy Popper. I confess that because the Lizzy Popper part was in a different font, I totally skipped those chapters. I just didn’t care anymore.

In fact, the only reason I finished the book was that I could finally read again yesterday after suffering the delusions of H1N1.

It’s not like I prefer traditional storytelling. But really. How did all of this stuff get mixed together. Just reading the first paragraph again makes me dizzy.
The ending: “And in my hand resided, too, the tactile memory of what I had felt half an hour earlier, when I’d placed it against Velvet’s swollen belly. Feeling both at once—the cool, silent pull of the dead-but-living past and the rigorous kick of the future: that was when I really understood what had until then eluded me. Yes, that was when and how it happened. That was the hour I first believed.”

So not worth it.