December 8, 2009 at 8:21 am (books)
Tags: beach reading, book review, books, confessions of a falling woman, debra dean, short stories
Just finished this collection of short stories. I’m not saying the writing was bad — it was an entertaining read. The themes of the stories all seemed a little cliched to me. Overall it made me a little surprised that it got published…and hopeful that my writing will be someday as well. I mean, if you can do the opposite of what your best creative writing teacher said and still get a book deal, then I have hope for my future after all.
November 10, 2009 at 4:43 am (humor)
Tags: addiction, books, eat pray love, elizabeth gilbert, infatuation, love, reading, writing
I find this passage from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert quite hilarious:
“Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based loved story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted — an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy, and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore — despite the fact that you know he has it hidden somewhere, goddamn it, because he used to give it to you for free). Next stage finds you skinny and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your neighbors just to have that thing one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you’re someone he’s never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You’re a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes.
So that’s it. You have now reached infatuation’s final destination — the complete and merciless devaluation of self.”
November 9, 2009 at 6:19 am (books)
Tags: book review, books, dogs, oprah book, reading, story of edgar sawtelle
Just finished over the weekend. Highly recommended! Normally I’m not all that impressed with Oprah’s taste in literature, but this was a good pick.
October 14, 2009 at 10:02 am (books)
Tags: book review, books, da vinci code, dan brown, lost symbol, maureen dowd, new york times, reading, reviews
You want a review? Here it is. This book is a total waste of time. I am not one of those people who bashes Dan Brown for his admittedly bad writing, because I generally like anything with a subversive plot. I loved the Da Vinci Code. This book read like someone else trying (and failing) to imitate Dan Brown. The story was uninteresting. He didn’t make me ponder any new concepts. The villain is RIDICULOUS. The whole thing is completely unrealistic and cheesy. For more on why I didn’t like it, read this review by Maureen Dowd at the New York Times. Sums it up completely.
August 27, 2009 at 3:03 am (books, writing)
Tags: books, reading, writing, reviews, earth's children, clan of the cave bear, jean auel, neanderthals, cro-magnon, humans, prehistoric
My friend Cheryl says this is her favorite series of books and has been telling me I should read them for years. I started this one a few years ago and couldn’t get into it at the time. But recently we talked about it again, and I picked it back up. This time, I am really digging it! The series is called Earth’s Children, and it “investigates the possibilities and some likely interactions of Neanderthal and modern Cro-Magnon humans living near each other at the same time.” It’s a fictional story about a little human girl who loses her family in an earthquake and is found by a Neanderthal medicine woman and nursed back to health. She is eventually adopted by the Clan.
I can’t even imagine the amount of research that must have gone into these books, but it is really interesting to me to learn more about how people at that time lived and interacted and survived using the land. Auel is skilled at interspersing the story with scientific details that help explain her characters without detracting your attention from the story. And it’s fascinating to learn about the differences between humans and Neanderthals through a story that imagines their interaction.
Upon having a drink with Jenny and Taper Nerd the other night, we discovered that Taper Nerd is also reading this right now! Strange that we’d both be reading the same book at the same time, especially because it was published almost 30 years ago. He’s farther along than I am so far, and he said he felt it was beginning to get a little predictable. These are thick books with small print, so I am going to need to be pretty blown away at the end of this first one if I’m going to read all six of them!
August 20, 2009 at 3:35 am (books, writing)
Tags: book review, books, gertrude, hermann hesse, novel, philosophy, reading, writing
Book number 3 on Swamp’s “Top 5″ list. The other day I said I felt like I’d read it before, thinking it must have been in college for one of my many literature classes. I said, “I don’t remember much about it, so apparently it made a huge impression the first time around.” Swamp reminded me that he had made me read it when we were in Brazil. Well, no wonder I didn’t remember it, with so many wonderful distractions happening all around! I need light reading when on vacation so I can concentrate on appreciating my experience and adventures. The only book from that trip I do remember reading is Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. It made some good points. 
Oh, and Judy Blume’s Summer Sisters. That one I was reading on a boat, and two ladies who befriended me wanted nothing more than to hold it and finger the pages and look at all the foreign words.
Gertrude was written in 1910, and you have to get used to the antiquated writing style to appreciate what’s happening in the story. This is a philosophical novel, and in fact, the story is much less interesting than the snippets of wisdom sprinkled throughout — observations on the human condition. Plot-wise it can be summed up in just a couple sentences. A crippled composer falls in love with a woman. But she falls in love with his best friend and marries him. But they’re totally wrong for each other, and it doesn’t work out. The husband dies, and the composer writes his magnum opus as a result of the failed relationship. Really, I think Hesse just needed a vehicle for his narrator to explain how his mind worked. The themes of isolation, desperation, and love in its many forms are what make this book worth reading.
I could go on in detail, but I just finished writing a 20-page report for Swamp, and I’m officially tired of talking about this book now.
August 6, 2009 at 8:57 am (books)
Tags: amputation, arm, aron ralston, between a rock and a hard place, book review, books, canyon, climber, climbing, consciousness, enlightenment, limb, phish, review, utah
Swamp and I are currently reading each other’s “Top 5″ books. Actually, I’m having a hard time narrowing it down to just five. I’ve given him my first one, which he is reading now: 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. As for my other four…right now it’s more like the other twenty. Our lists are not in any particular order according to rank, but the second of his that I read was Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston. You may remember his story being in the news a few years ago — he was hiking in Utah when a boulder fell and pinned his right arm. He survived for six days, but he ended up having to amputate his own arm with a pocket knife.
The story appeals to Swamp because he is also the survivor of a near-death wilderness experience, being lost for six days in the Amazon. (That story is one for another post.) I think on the surface he and Ralston have a lot in common — the outdoorsman personality, the near obsession with all things nature related and the very experience of nature. They even have the same favorite bands. But when you go deeper, Aron Ralston’s got nothing on Swamp in terms of spiritual evolution and enlightenment.
Ralston’s personality really comes through in his writing, and at times I was just as fascinated with learning about his psychological make-up as I was the smallest details of his ordeal. From my reading, I thought he came across as motivated by “inferior” qualities, as the I-Ching would say. I thought it was pretty admirable that he quit his high-paying job at Intel to move to Aspen, work in an outdoor equipment shop, and pursue his passion of mountain climbing. At the same time, though, Coocatchoo and I knew plenty of people back in Asheville and Boone like that, and we would call them “Trustafarians” or “Gear Heads.” I guess if I didn’t have to worry about money, I’d probably live a similar existence, hanging around in cool hippie towns and seeing great music and playing outdoors. But it’s hard not to be bitter when you know you’ll never get the opportunity. And you already had to abandon that life once because you couldn’t afford it.
The theme of every damn story he tells about his outdoor experiences is something to the effect of, “I could have died! And I almost did!” It seems that his pursuit of these extreme experiences came more from an intense need to “have a great story to tell his friends,” or impress people with his daring and bravery, than a true desire to nurture his consciousness.
To be fair, he actually admits as much a little farther into the book. He does admit that he spent a lot of time in situations where it was highly likely something terrible might occur, because he wanted it to deep down. I think it has to do with the larger concept of males in the modern, Western world having no real, accepted ”rite of passage” into adulthood, and as a result many of them seek out one on their own. Add into that mix a natural proclivity towards thrill-seeking behavior, and you’ve got a great recipe for disaster.
He talks about a good friends’ response to one of his crazy tales: “Aron, it’s not what you do. It’s who you are.” He didn’t understand what the friend meant by that at all. He claims to have realized the true meaning of that statement while trapped in the canyon, fearing death was imminent, but I have my doubts as to whether he ever really got it, especially taking into account what he has done in the last six years since the accident — he’s become a motivational speaker and now makes his living by telling the story of his ultimate near-death experience, to a wider audience. He still doesn’t get it. It’s not about what you do or what you survived, Aron. It’s about who you are. I’m not sure about the extent of his spiritual development as a result of the accident. But we do know that he is still telling his stories – you just have to pay to hear them now.
I’ll end on a positive note with things I actually like about Aron. He loves Phish and got to meet Trey after his accident. He helped a prosthetics company design mountaineering attachments for amputees, and while that was undoubtedly for personal gain primarily, others are also benefitting from it. And he’s got a smoking body from the neck down.
July 30, 2009 at 2:36 am (books, writing)
Tags: author, book review, books, boys of my youth, collection, jo ann beard, reading, short stories, writing
I have to admit, I wanted to read this book because the author and I share the same last name. Having aspirations of being published one day myself, I was just intrigued by the sight of my name on the cover. I’m pretty sure we’re not related, although who knows? As it turns out, this was a really impressive collection of short stories — even more impressive because it was her first published collection. This will go on my list of books with a writing style I aspire to mimick. She’s very conversational, with an amazing eye for detail and the past. A friend commented here recently that he was amazed I could remember such detail. I remember a few things in great detail, a few things in general, and most things not at all. It continually amazes me, the stories my oldest friends recount — events where I was present and involved — and I have no memory of them left at all. I hate those moments. It makes me feel very guilty somehow. One of the reasons I enjoy writing so much is that it gives me a way to record things I want to remember, but probably won’t be able to years from now without some kind of documentation.
I like The Library Journal’s description of this book: twelve autobiographical sketches linked by the theme of romance and the author’s painful disillusionment with it.
“Beard often edges from serious laughter to high seriousness and back again. “The Fourth State of Matter” is perhaps the book’s standout, a narrative about space physicists; invading squirrels; a beautiful, dying dog; a “vanished husband”; and, alas, a seminar turned 12-minute massacre. On November 1, 1991, she leaves work early and passes by the disappointed graduate student who will later that day gun down eight members of the University of Iowa physics depart. Her piece is complex and heartbreaking, a master conduit of emotion and information. As always, Beard knows the rich value of the minor ritual. Earlier, she had recalled playing “Maserati” with her collie: “I’d grab her nose like a gearshift and put her through all the gears, firstsecondthirdfourth, until we were going a hundred miles an hour through town. She thought it was funny.” After “the newslady” finally confirms her colleagues’ deaths, “Maserati” again figures: “We sit by the tub. She lifts her long nose to my face and I take her muzzle and we move through the gears slowly; first second third fourth, all the way through town, until what has happened has happened and we know it has happened.”
July 16, 2009 at 8:58 am (books)
Tags: books, columbine, education, educational system, high school, learning, lists, reading, review, school systems, teenagers
I have a habit of making lists, and some lists I’ve had going since I was in about 7th grade are “Books I Want to Read” and “Books I Have Read.” My 7th grade English teacher started them for me on a jumbo index card, in her enviably pretty and small cursive handwriting with her signature blue rollerball pen. The advent of websites like Goodreads and Shelfari have made this task so much easier and more enjoyable for me. I started out at Goodreads, but I’ve since migrated over to Shelfari, just because I find it more visually appealing with the graphic display of books (with actual covers) on shelves, which is one great thing about going to bookstores in the first place. I’m sure plenty of people prefer the streamlined minimalism of Goodreads. But I like bright colors and pretty pictures. It does not take much to please me.
These sites make me happy because I can’t tell you how many times throughout my checkered techno-past I ended up with multiple Notepad documents strung out across so many floppy disks, and scraps of heat-sensitive receipt paper from my years working retail in college and reading book reviews while waiting for customers. Eventually, a nicely consolidated list in Microsoft Word vanished along with my hard drive’s pulse one summer. So, my lists at this point are patched together from memory, but now when I add to them, I am comforted to know they probably aren’t going anywhere this time. I really like it when technology brings to my life a tiny shred of stability.
I bring this up because a book I finished recently had been on the “To Read” list for 8 years, and I just got to it. That’s how backed up I am. This is partly because I don’t like chronological anything, usually. My photo albums jump from “The Last Day of 5th Grade” to “College Road Trip to Chicago” to “High School Graduation,” and so on. And I tend to read books as I am able to find them for free or cheap instead of deliberately tackling each successive title in perfect order.
Another Planet: A Year in the Life of a Suburban High School by Elinor Burkett was published in 2001, and I believe I read about it in the Fanfair section of Vanity Fair magazine at work while the seconds shimmied towards midnight. I remember strange things sometimes. Other things that I actually need to remember? Not so much.
The author actually spends a year at a Minnesota high school, talking to teachers, administrators, and students. The book focuses on the graduating class of 2000 (I think, don’t quote me), which was only four years after I graduated. I was struck by how much less these Minnesotan kids seemed to be learning than I did. And not because of a lack of effort on (most of) the teachers’ parts. Words that came to mind about these students: lazy, sense of entitlement, unprepared, lacking big picture thinking skills, eogtistical in a way that was beyond that of normal teenage self-indulgence. The author argues that the Self Esteem Movement of the 1970’s in education is what produced generations of kids who all think they are special and individually important – the exception to all the rules. And that makes a lot of sense until I think about my own generation, and how if that had been such a successful “movement,” then we should all have a lot fewer problems and a lot more self-confidence than we ended up with. I don’t recall being taught “good self esteem” in elementary school, like the kids in this book. Maybe they didn’t do that in the South, thinking it was a bunch of bullshit. Sure, there are a few people I know my age who feel good about themselves without too much effort or struggle. However, I don’t think that came as a result of being taught that as schoolchildren. Depending on the person, I think it came from other sources entirely.
When I was in school, I don’t know if I just didn’t realize how bad things were in so many areas, or if things really weren’t as bad then. Then again, I was always in the honors/advanced program, where we actually learned stuff, and we didn’t have behavioral problems. My graduating class, as well as the one just ahead of me and the one just behind me, was extremely competitive. I graduated 14th in my class with a 4.987 GPA.
There are things I recognize as huge problems with the system now that I’m older and have two teacher parents nearing retirement and a teacher boy-person who only started teaching a couple years ago. Some of it sounded really familiar, like the social dynamics and castes. But so much of it I was a little stunned by. Maybe a big point I’m leaving out is that I graduated before anyone had ever heard the word “Columbine,” and these kids graduated the year after it happened. Maybe that makes all the difference.
There were parts of this book I sort of skimmed through (teachers unions bitching about new contracts, for one) but only because I felt like I’d heard it all before. Analyzing the educational system is something I was raised doing at the dinner table with my parents over green beans and sweet tea. Some of it did not require a recap. In any case, finishing was sort of a let down only because I didn’t have anyone to discuss it with. But I’ve passed it on to Swamp, so hopefully he’ll give his new-teacher insight sometime soon.
May 7, 2009 at 5:12 am (books)
Tags: bands, books, drugs, grateful dead, hippies, max ludington, music, reading, reviews, tiger in a trance, tourheads, writing
Currently reading. Enjoying the descriptive prowess and the authentic dialogue.
From the New York Books Review: “What a surprise, then, to see such a hard-edged, unsentimental book emerge from the tie-dye vat. Tiger in a Trance, Max Ludington’s oddly-named first novel (the phrase is from the Grateful Dead’s “Saint of Circumstance”), with its blotter-acid jacket, is actually a work of clear-eyed realism in psychedelic disguise.”
Update: After reading this post, Jenny said, “Um, but what’s it about?” It’s about a guy who’s following the Dead around the country and the experiences he has with other people on tour and the “scene.” It’s just a perspective from which you don’t often see novels written. Plus, y’all know the hippie in me had to love it.
